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Following is a question by Hon Tony Tse and a written reply by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, in the Legislative Council today (June 24):
Question:
The Government announced in January 2011 that the Neighbourhood Support Child Care Project (NSCCP) would be regularised and extended to the 18 districts in Hong Kong. Some home-based child carers under NSCCP have relayed to me that since the launch of NSCCP in 2008, their incentive payments have all along remained at hourly rates between $18 and $22, which are even lower than the Statutory Minimum Wage rate. In addition, some organisations operating NSCCP (NSCCP operators) have pointed out to me that since the incentive payment rates for home-based child carers have been on the low side, it is difficult for them to recruit carers, resulting in a short supply of home-based child care service. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(1) whether it has reviewed the situation of the rates of the incentive payments received by home-based child carers being on the low side; if it has, why it has all along not raised such payment rates; whether it will consider raising the incentive payment rates to attract more people to work as home-based child carers, with a view to increasing and stabilising the manpower provision of such carers;
(2) whether the authorities will consider providing suitable training for home-based child carers for the purpose of enhancing and standardising the quality of home-based child care service;
(3) of the number of home-based child carers in the territory at present; whether it has assessed the number of families in need of child care services; if it has not, of the reasons for that;
(4) whether, in the past two years, it examined and compiled statistics on the recruitment situation of home-based child carers by various NSCCP operators and the monthly average person-times using such service; if it did, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; and
(5) other than NSCCP, of the respective numbers of creches and child care centres currently providing occasional child care services for children aged two or below, as well as their respective service quotas; whether it knows the monthly average numbers of (i) enquiries on occasional child care services received by and (ii) service applications on the waiting lists of various NSCCP operators in the past two years, as well as (iii) for how long the applicants have to wait, in general, before they are provided with the services?
Reply:
President,
My reply to the five parts of the question raised by Hon Tony Tse is as follows:
(1) The Neighbourhood Support Child Care Project (NSCCP) aims to provide more flexible day child care service at the neighbourhood level for parents in need of child care service and, at the same time, foster mutual help and care in the community. Since October 2011, the NSCCP has covered 18 districts over the territory. Child carers who take part in the NSCCP are volunteers and they receive an incentive payment for their voluntary work. When the operators determine the level of incentive payment for child carers, they will usually consider such factors as the local families' ability to pay and the supply of child carers in the district, etc.
(2) According to the NSCCP service agreement signed between the operators and the Social Welfare Department (SWD), the operators have to provide appropriate training for child carers, which generally cover infant/child care skills, child nutrition, identification of child abuse cases, home safety, etc. so as to ensure the quality of child carers.
(3) As at December 2014, there were about 1 700 child carers under the NSCCP. At present, there are at least a total of 954 NSCCP places in the 18 districts. The service demand for the NSCCP is affected by different factors and will change from time to time. Operators will flexibly adjust the number of places to meet the actual local service demand and SWD will provide additional funding to the operators according to the increase in the number of places as appropriate.
(4) SWD collects service data on a regular basis to review the implementation of the NSCCP. The total numbers of service users were 10 594 and 11 899 in 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively, meaning that there were on average 883 and 992 users in a month respectively.
(5) At present, there are altogether 10 aided standalone child care centres and 204 aided kindergarten-cum-child care centres providing a total of 434 places of Occasional Child Care Service (OCCS) for children aged below six. SWD has not kept any information on the numbers of enquiries and applications or the waiting time in relation to OCCS.
Ends/Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Issued at HKT 13:04
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