DENMARK
15 minutes to daycare
Mayoral candidate promises parents daycare no further than 15 minutes bike ride from their home
Copenhagen has been plagued by a shortage of daycare in the past couple of years and is at the moment 1,000 places short of what is needed. The most recent proposal has been to transport city children to daycare centres in the suburbs, many of which are facing closure due to a lack of children.
But Frank Jensen, the Social Democratic mayoral candidate for the 17 November local elections, wants the city to be among the worlds best cities for children. He criticised the citys failure to adhere to its own child care guarantee, which was most recently amended to do away with the provision assuring a maximum distance of 4km between a childs daycare facility and the parents home.
Jensen told Berlingske Tidende newspaper he couldnt understand why the city wasnt able to do better. Couples are no longer moving out of the city when they have children, theyre staying put. And now its time the city recognises that and provides them with better living conditions, he said.
About 38,500 children aged five and younger require daycare in Copenhagen. That figure is expected to reach 42,000 by 2020. Jensen expected that catching up with the deficit of daycare places would take four years, or a full mayoral term.
But his opponents are calling his proposal hot air with no concrete solution to back it up.
Well see in September whether the Social Democrats will be willing to put the necessary funding toward that vision, the Socialist Peoples Partys mayoral candidate Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard said.
Kjeldgaard, one of the citys deputy mayors, is currently head of the citys children and youth department, which has been put under administration and is operating at a 150 million kroner deficit.
17 August 2009
http://www.cphpost.dk/news/politics/90-politics/46579-15-minutes-to-daycare.html
