Carta Social

12/12/2023

In view of the commitment of the XXIII Constitutional Government to improve the reconciliation of work, personal and family life, it is imperative to expand the offer of the measure of free attendance to crèches and to strengthen the capacity to respond to crèche in terms of increasing the number of available places.

With the publication of the Ministerial Implementing Order No 305/2022, of 22 December, the Government extended the application of the measure of free crèches to children attending licensed crèches of the private lucrative network, having created, for this purpose, a pool of participating crèches to which crèches of the lucrative network or of the solidarity network without cooperation agreement can adhere by providing vacancies under the measure of free.

After the three phases of the extension of the measure of gratuitousness, and following the priority that the Government has established in order to improve the reconciliation of work, personal and family life, consolidating a policy that identifies demography as a strategic challenge in the direction of increasing the birth rate, it becomes urgent at this stage to intensify the social effectiveness of the measure once again expanding its scope.

Indeed, as the local authorities are peers in this desire to guarantee the access of families to this socio-educational response, the Government understands, similarly to the solution poured into the crèches of the lucrative private network, to define a model of contractualization through the conclusion of membership terms, in order to allocate and increase the number of places allocated to the measure.

At the same time, crèches run by public higher education institutions provide essential childhood support for students, teachers, non-teachers and researchers who have children and, with this response, ensure a balance between family life and professional or academic life, with positive impacts on the daily lives of many families.

It is therefore urgent to adapt the current regulatory framework, in order to ensure the increasing universalization of the measure of free crèches with the respective extension of necessary vacancies, in fulfilment of a social function of the State whose management and operation also calls for the public network of crèches, in complementarity with the crèches of the social and solidarity sector and the lucrative network.

Finally, the simplification of procedures for the installation and extension of existing crèches, as well as the reconversion of pre-childcare spaces that can be used for this purpose, while ensuring the maintenance of quality and safety requirements, is deepened.

Source: Diário da República No 237/2023, Series I of 2023-12-11