Print 1. It is recommended that Member States gradually develop and/or encourage measures to enable women and men to reconcile family obligations arising from the care of children and their own employment, education and training, taking account of the respective responsibilities of central, regional and local authorities, the social partners and other organisations and individuals (and/or in cooperation with them), in the following four areas:
the provision of care for children while parents are:
in employment;engaged in education or training with a view to obtaining employment;seeking employment or seeking education or training with a view to obtaining employment.For the purposes of this recommendation, "the provision of care for children" is taken to mean all types of public or private childcare facilities, whether on an individual or a group basis.
Special leave arrangements for employed parents with responsibility for the care and upbringing of children.
The environment, structure and organisation of the workplace, to make it responsive to the needs of workers with children.
The sharing of family, professional and educational responsibilities arising from the care of children between women and men.
2. Childcare servicesIn this context Member States should try to ensure that:
services are affordable;services combine safe and secure care with a broad education or pedagogical approach;the needs of parents and children are taken into account in determining access to services;services are available in all areas and regions of Member States, whether urban or rural;services are accessible to children with special (e.g. linguistic) needs and to children in single-parent families and are responsive to those needs;The Member States should:
encourage flexibility and diversity of childcare services, as part of a strategy to increase choice and meet the different preferences, needs and circumstances of children and families, while maintaining coherence between different services;
seek to ensure that the training (both initial and continuous) of workers in childcare services is commensurate with the great importance and social and educative value of their work;
encourage childcare services to work closely with parents and with local communities involving regular contact and exchanges of information, so as to be responsive to local parental needs and circumstances;
encourage central, regional and local authorities, the social partners, and other organisations and individuals, in accordance with their respective responsibilities, to make a financial contribution to the setting-up and/or operation of affordable, coherent childcare services which offer choice to parents.
3. Special leaveThe Member States should adopt and/or encourage measures to take realistic account of women's increased participation in the labour force, such as special leave to enable all employed parents who so wish, both men and women, to discharge effectively their working, educational and family responsibilities with,inter aliaflexibility in how leave may be taken.
4. Environment, structure and organisation of the workplace
The Member States should:
support such measures, notably within the framework of collective agreements;improve the status and employment conditions of workers in services providing care for children;promote measures especially in the public sector, to serve as an example in developing initiatives in this area.5. Sharing of responsibilitiesThe Member States should promote and encourage, with due respect for individual freedom, increased participation by men, in order to achieve a more equal sharing of parental responsibilities between men and women and to enable women to play a more effective role in the labour market.
DEADLINE FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LEGISLATION IN THE MEMBER STATESNot applicable.
DATE OF ENTRY INTO FORCE (if different from the above)REFERENCESOfficial Journal L 123, 08.05.1992
FOLLOW-UP WORKOn 4 February 1998, the Commission adopted a report on the implementation of the Council recommendation of 31 March 1992 on child care [C(98) 237 final - not published in the Official Journal]
The report takes stock of the current situation and examines the measures taken by the Member States in connection with child care, reaffirming the central role of such measures in national policies aimed at reconciling work and family life.
Only some of the Member States are known to have taken initiatives specifically to implement the recommendation, although the existing national provisions by and large dovetail with the general principles set out in the recommendation. It is also the case that no country has set up a specific system to monitor the implementation of the recommendation. In most of the Member States, responsibility for child care is entrusted jointly to a wide variety of participants in the social sphere: public authorities (at different levels), the social partners, the private sector, associated structures and parents. Such diversity lends itself to a wide range of services but precludes an exhaustive overview of the childcare arrangements in each country.
The recommendation centred around four main themes:
quality of services;parental leave;workplace measures;sharing of responsibilities.The report reveals that, as things stand, the systems operating in the Member States allow local authorities to be relatively responsive to the needs of working parents with children aged between 3 and 6. However, problems persist in connection with the care of very young children (0 to 3 years), children of school age or families with special needs. In most of the Member States, quality assessment of the services provided is limited and hardly ever goes beyond the formulation of minimum standards covering the infrastructure as such.
Moreover, levels of professional qualifications and training requirements vary greatly according to the different types of service offered and between Member States. In spite of the growing number of jobs generated by the sector, efforts to re-evaluate the importance of people employed in childcare services and in ensuring adequate training remain modest.
All the Member States have some form of statutory maternity leave provision, albeit reserved for the mother (with the notable exception of Sweden). Arrangements differ from country to country: duration of leave, balance between leave taken before and after the birth, pay during the period of leave, etc.
Seven countries provide for paternity leave, limited in all cases (except the Nordic countries) to a few days.
There is less scope for catering for parents of young children or those who wish to care for sick dependants.
The role of the workplace in devising family-friendly policies has come to the fore in recent years, with the social partners and private organisations also having more say in the provision of care. This trend seems set to continue, given the growing pressure on the welfare budgets of the Member States.
As for sharing of responsibilities, there is broad agreement on the need to encourage fathers to make use of the opportunities for childcare that are available to them. Whilst short-term leave at the time of a child's birth is becoming more popular, longer-term care options seem to be ignored by the vast majority of fathers. A radical shift in attitudes is therefore desirable, and the majority of Member States