Transition to Affordable Childcare Scheme
Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Dr Katherine Zappone has announced that the Community Childcare Subvention Scheme (CCS) will be merged with the Community Childcare Subvention Plus (CCSP) scheme once the current programme year comes to an end in August 2019. CCSP, which has been in place since 2016, has identical eligibility criteria, levels of service and band rates as CCS.
As a first step in transition to the new Affordable Childcare Scheme, from mid-August 2019 all Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) eligible children must be registered for the Community Childcare Subvention Plus (CCSP) scheme. As CCSP has identical eligibility criteria, levels of service and band rates to CCS, this will have no impact on the levels of funding to parents.
Community childcare providers will be able to register children on the CCSP scheme for the 19/20 programme year up until the roll out of ACS, which will be mid October 2019. Up until the launch all current targeted childcare schemes, with the exception of CCS, which is being merged with CCSP with no loss of support to families, will remain in place for parents, allowing time for families to move over to ACS in a supported manner.Parents whose children have been registered on all the targeted schemes prior to the launch of ACS, can choose to remain on the schemes for the remainder of the programme year or transfer to ACS.
The move is one of a range of preparations being made for the launch of the Affordable Childcare Scheme (ACS) in October 2019. Once fully launched, ACS will replace the government’s targeted childcare schemes with one single scheme to provide financial assistance towards the cost of early learning and care and school age childcare to families in Ireland.All the current targeted schemes will cease for the 2020/21 programme year.
Speaking on the decision Minister Zappone noted:
“2019 will be a landmark year as we launch our radical new approach to making childcare more affordable for families in Ireland. The CCS Plus scheme launched a number of years ago offers greater flexibility for families and childcare providers than the CCS scheme upon which it is based. This is a necessary part of the transition to the ACS. The funding that has been traditionally available to children, families and providers remains, and in fact Budget 2019 increased my childcare budget by €89m.”