page_title: Child care
section_title: Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Child care / Worldwide / Germany
caption_attribution_description: English: East Berlin childminders, with children and strollers, seated on a wall, 1984.
context_page_description: Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks to twenty years. Child care is the action or skill of looking after children by a day-care center, nannies, babysitter, teachers or other providers. Child care is a broad topic that covers a wide spectrum of professionals, institutions, contexts, activities, and social and cultural conventions. Early child care is an equally important and often overlooked component of child development. Child care providers can be children's first teachers, and therefore play an integral role in systems of early childhood education. Quality care from a young age can have a substantial impact on the future successes of children. The main focus of childcare is on the development of the child, whether that be mental, social, or psychological.
  In most cases children are taken care of by their parents, legal guardians, or siblings. In some cases, it is also seen that children care for other children.
context_section_description: In Germany, preschool education is the domain of the Kindertagesstätte (literally "children's day site", often shortened to Kita or KITA), which is usually divided into the Kinderkrippe (crèche) for toddlers (age up to 3 years), and the Kindergarten for children who are older than three years and before school. Children in their last Kindergarten year may be grouped into a Vorschule ("preschool") and given special pedagogic attention; special preschool institutions comparable to the US-American kindergarten are the exception.
  Kitas are typically run by public (i. e. communal) and "free" carriers (such as the churches, other religious organizations, social organizations with a background in the trade unions and profit-orientated corporations), and subsidized by the states (Länder). In this case, the care is open to the general public—e. g. a Protestant or Muslim child may claim a place in a Kita run by the catholic church.
  Preschool education, unlike school and university, is not in the exclusive domain of the states. The federal government regulates daycare through the Kinder- und Jugendhilfegesetz (KJHG), which stipulates a legal claim to daycare:
  for children over the age of three and before school (i. e. Kindergarten; this law became effective in 1996);
  for children under the age of three and before Kindergarten (i. e. Kinderkrippe; this law becomes effective August 1, 2013).
  Alternative daycare can be provided through Tagespflegepersonen (usually Tagesmütter, "day mothers"), i. e. stay-at-home parents which provide commercial day care to other children. This form of daycare is also federally regulated through the KJHG.
  Preschool education (Frühpädagogik) is increasingly seen as an integral part of education as a whole; several states such as Bavaria have released detailed educational plans for daycare carriers who claim state subsidies. "Early pedagogics" has increasingly moved into the academic domain, with an increasing number of staff being trained at universities of applied science (Fachhochschulen) and regular universities. Non-academic personnel in daycare facilities have usually attended specialized schools for several years. In the state of Bavaria for example, daycare assistants (Kinderpfleger) will have attended school for two years, daycare teachers (Erzieher) for three years with an additional two-year internship.
caption: A group of East Berlin children, with their caretakers, 1984.
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