Daycare centre plan 2017 presented

In June, the administration will propose to the city council the creation of additional places in daycare centres. The plan is to build a daycare centre with up to 100 nursery places in the city centre, increase the capacity in Glösa-Draisdorf to 100 places and a daycare centre in Rabenstein, also with 100 places, if the DRK does not give binding assurances that it will implement its own plans. The plan is to build the facilities in model construction, with the ones in the city centre and Glösa to be ready by September 2018 and the one in Rabenstein by December 2018. There will also be changes to the allocation of daycare places. Mayor Barbara Ludwig presented the corresponding plans today.

The City of Chemnitz assumes that more childcare places will be utilised in future than provided for in the current requirements plan. The main reasons for this are the high birth rate, the desire of young families or single mothers/fathers to reconcile family and career at an early age, the good labour market situation and the worsening shortage of skilled workers and, last but not least, the high-quality childcare provision in the city of Chemnitz.

In detail, the construction of an additional daycare centre in the city centre with a capacity of up to 100 places for the exclusive care of crèche children is planned. The locations Rembrandtstraße/Zschopauer Straße and Mittelstraße/Leipziger Straße are being examined for this purpose. This is the only way to quickly cover the current high demand for crèche places.

The capacity of the planned daycare centre in Glösa-Draisdorf or Furth will be increased from the 90 places envisaged in the requirements plan to 100 places. The Chemnitztalstraße/Further Trift and Schulberg locations are currently being examined. The daycare centre is already included in the requirements plan with completion in September 2018. Due to the provision of funds from 2017, completion by the end of 2019 is realistic.

There are also plans to build a daycare centre with 100 places in Rabenstein under the responsibility of the City of Chemnitz at the Kaufmannstraße or Riedstraße site. The city administration will refrain from doing so if the DRK Krankenhaus gGmbH Sachsen has submitted a verifiable building application for its daycare centre by the end of June and makes a binding commitment to create this capacity. The current requirements plan envisages that the facility will be utilised from occupied places for the DRK hospital and that freely available places will be available for children living in the surrounding area. The client is in possession of a valid preliminary licence from 2015, but a building application has not yet been submitted.

Due to the timeline, the intention is to use prefabricated modules for the construction of the three daycare centres. The use of room cells or timber frame construction is an option. The city of Dresden has had very good experience with this construction method, and the use of prefabricated modules has also proved successful in other cities. The advantage of the room cell or timber construction method is an effective construction time of ten weeks. The enormous time saving is mainly made possible by the work taking place in parallel. Modular buildings are also state of the art in terms of energy efficiency.

In addition, changes are planned in the procedure for allocating and reserving spaces. From 15 May, a new service point in the Office for Youth and Family will be responsible for clarifying enquiries or solving problem cases as well as providing specialist advice to the facilities. The centre will also be responsible for monitoring compliance with the criteria for allocating places. From mid-May, parents will be able to specify up to 15 preferred centres when requesting a place (previously 5). The Kitaportal will be adapted accordingly. In future, the highest priority will be given to parents' employment. Siblings already in care, the date of enrolment or the availability of places will also be taken into account. The previous time limit for confirmation (6 months before the desired date) by the daycare centre managers will be lifted so that parents can be given early confirmation of a daycare place.