Childcare services in cities: challenges and emerging solutions for women informal workers and their children

Abstract

Cities present important challenges for the extension of quality childcare services to informal workers, who make up most of the urban poor across the global South. For women, who are disproportionately responsible for childcare in their own households, access to quality childcare services allows for more time to earn an income and seek new employment. This is particularly important as women informal workers struggle to recover their earnings following the economic recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. For children, quality childcare services can contribute to lifelong health, educational and social development benefits. This article explores the key barriers to childcare provision for women informal workers and their children in cities, and assesses the role municipalities can play in the provision of childcare services. Access to quality childcare services in urban areas can help break the cycle of gendered and intergenerational poverty as cities recover from the pandemic.

I. Introduction

Cities present important challenges for the extension of quality childcare services to the urban poor. Where urban plans set aside space for primary and secondary schools, childcare services such as daycare centres and preschools for young children between 0 and 5 years old are often neglected. It is particularly difficult to extend childcare services to informal workers and their children, who make up a large share of the urban poor. They are more likely to live in informal settlements where the lack of space, infrastructure, and water and sanitation facilities is an obstacle to quality childcare service provision. Data on 31 low- and middle-income countries show that childcare for children under the age of six is mainly provided by employed women who are not childcare workers.⁽¹⁾ This means that many women work alongside the young children in their care. The urban workspaces of informal workers such as landfills, city streets and markets, or homes in informal settlements, are likely to be unsafe and inappropriate spaces to care for a young child.

Lockdown measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic have led to closures of already limited childcare services and other educational facilities. Emerging research suggests this is increasing women’s responsibilities for childcare more than men’s during the lockdown period and as the economic recession sets in.⁽²⁾ In South Africa, for example, the inequalities in childcare provision are expected to deepen due to these closures, while women see a greater decrease in their earnings than men.⁽³⁾ For women, who are disproportionately responsible for childcare in their own households, access to quality childcare services allows for more time to earn an income. As urbanization rates increase around the world, more women are living in cities and working in the informal economy.⁽⁴⁾ Access to quality childcare services in urban areas can help break the cycle of gendered and intergenerational poverty.

This article will first briefly review the early childhood literature on the benefits of quality childcare provision for children from disadvantaged communities. Second, it will highlight the key challenges women informal workers face in caring for their young children in cities, drawing on focus group discussions conducted by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). In this context, caring for a child refers to a variety of activities including breastfeeding, emotional attachment, supervision, and ensuring a child’s safety, hygiene, health and nutrition. Third, the article will explore possible solutions for extending childcare services in cities, through examples drawn from an International Labour Organization (ILO) and WIEGO policy brief series on childcare for workers in the informal economy.⁽⁵⁾ The final section reviews the role and responsibilities of municipalities in childcare service provision. The article points to the importance of dialogue among municipalities, urban planners, childcare providers, and women informal workers and their organizations.

II. Benefits of Quality Childcare Services for Children

There is a growing body of evidence confirming the lifelong health, educational and social development benefits of early childhood development services, including childcare, for 0–5-year-old children.⁽⁶⁾ In Colombia and Guatemala, research points to higher nutritional intake and weight gain among children who attend childcare programmes.⁽⁷⁾ Studies also show that children from high-risk and disadvantaged backgrounds benefit more from preschool programmes than children from higher-income households. This suggests that investments in preschool can be effective in reducing inequalities.⁽⁸⁾

Multilateral institutions are investing more in research and policy development on childcare, given the multiple and reinforcing positive outcomes for children and their caregivers. The Nurturing Care framework jointly developed by the WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank highlights how quality care in children’s earliest years can have a positive impact on their learning outcomes, their future earnings, and the wellbeing of their families and societies.⁽⁹⁾ The ILO emphasizes the importance of quality childcare provision in giving a stronger start to disadvantaged children, contributing to decent work opportunities in the service sector, and boosting women’s participation and earnings in the labour market.⁽¹⁰⁾ The benefits to society include tackling intergenerational poverty, developing a more highly skilled workforce, and raising tax revenue and social security contributions while reducing expenditure on public welfare programmes in the long term.⁽¹¹⁾

Early childhood is considered the most effective and cost-efficient time to invest in children’s development as the returns on investment are substantial.⁽¹²⁾ It is estimated that globally 800 million children under six years old need care, and the dearth in quality childcare service provision is particularly visible in low- and middle-income countries.⁽¹³⁾ The cost of inaction is borne not just by individual children, but by the entire society, given lower learning outcomes and earnings and the greater lifelong healthcare needs of children who do not receive adequate care in the early years. Estimates show that not investing in nutrition programmes costs more as a percentage of GDP than what many low- and middle-income countries spend on healthcare in a year. Similarly, the cost of not investing in universal preschool and home visits can be higher than annual government expenditure on education.⁽¹⁴⁾ The cost of inaction rises sharply in areas in low- and middle-income countries where there are not enough preschools and children are at greater risk of poor development.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ILO estimated it would cost US$ 1.07 trillion, representing about 1.1 per cent of global GDP, to reach a 50 per cent enrolment rate for 0–2-year olds and a 100 per cent enrolment rate for 3–5-year-olds.⁽¹⁵⁾ At the national level, financing estimates for South Africa, Turkey and Uruguay show that part of the costs of expanding quality public childcare provision can be offset by an increase in social security contributions and tax revenue that accompany the new decent work opportunities, due to the expanded number of workers needed to run public childcare centres and staff auxiliary services, such as food preparation and sanitation services.⁽¹⁶⁾ Quality universal childcare provision in South Africa would have cost 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2017, an addition of 2.1 per cent to existing government expenditure; however, 35 per cent of this expenditure would be recouped through tax revenue and social security contributions. In Uruguay, the funding gap is only at 1.4 per cent of GDP, with 51 per cent of the costs recovered through taxes and social security contributions.⁽¹⁷⁾ Investments in quality childcare services are even more critical now to tackle rising levels of child poverty in cities – not only by making it easier for women to work, but also by generating new employment opportunities, as economies rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic.⁽¹⁸⁾

III. Childcare and Women’s Work in the Urban Informal Economy

Though not all informal workers are poor, informal work is characterized by a higher risk of poverty. Children of informal workers are, therefore, more likely to be living in poverty. Informal employment is defined by workers’ exclusion or insufficient coverage, in law or in practice, from labour and social protection regimes. In 2018 there were two billion workers in the informal economy, representing 61 per cent of the world’s labour force.⁽¹⁹⁾ Within the informal economy, in both urban and rural areas, women are concentrated in the lowest-earning and most vulnerable forms of employment.⁽²⁰⁾ Though there are more men than women in the informal economy, those women who work are more likely than men to be in informal employment in Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.⁽²¹⁾ Most workers in the informal economy are self-employed, as own-account workers (45 per cent), contributing family workers (16.1 per cent), and employers (2.7 per cent).⁽²²⁾ Men are more likely to be employers, and more women are contributing family workers. These workers are among the most vulnerable as they participate in businesses operated by family members living in the same household. They are generally not regarded as partners because they do not have the same degree of authority or autonomy as the head of the establishment to set working conditions. Many contributing family workers do not even receive payment for their work.

In addition to their work in the informal economy, women shoulder an unequal responsibility for childcare within their homes and communities. Caring for a young child can bring joy and fulfilment to parents and caregivers. However, it is undeniable that providing adequate care in adverse conditions can also be a source of stress and anxiety. In no country in the world do men and women engage in an equal share of unpaid care work – this includes activities such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children, the ill and the elderly. Global estimates indicate that women perform three-quarters of unpaid care work, or 76.2 per cent of the total of hours provided.⁽²³⁾ Even as women engage in paid work in the informal economy, they typically remain responsible for their household’s unpaid care work. The most common household structure, representing 38 per cent of households worldwide, is the nuclear family comprising two parents and their children.⁽²⁴⁾ In households where both parents or guardians work, there is little scope to redistribute childcare responsibilities to other family members.

During their prime reproductive years, between the ages of 25 and 34, women experience higher rates of poverty than men.⁽²⁵⁾ Caring for a young child compounds the multiple disadvantages they face in the labour market. As workers in the informal economy, women are unlikely to receive any form of maternity benefit or child grant after childbirth. As they are working and earning an income, women informal workers may not qualify for means-tested safety net programmes aimed at the very poorest or those outside of the labour market, such as people living with severe disabilities or older persons.⁽²⁶⁾ Without these income replacement measures, the time spent caring for a young child takes away from time spent working to earn a daily income. Women informal workers, such as home-based workers, street vendors, market traders and waste pickers, explain how working alongside a young child reduces their productivity and results in lower daily earnings and overall income.⁽²⁷⁾

Inadequate shelter and public infrastructure for waste pickers and street vendors means that women in these occupations do not work if it is raining or too hot as they cannot bring their children to their workplace. Home-based workers in Thailand and India noted that children require their constant attention, which often interferes with work duties. This reduces productivity, resulting in lower earnings, as they are paid a piece rate (a fixed-rate payment for each unit produced). Home-based workers may handle hazardous materials while they work, making the home an unsafe environment for young children. Working hours are also affected due to childcare responsibilities, even for those who have childcare available. A trader selling clothes in Durban, South Africa complained that she had to cut her working day short in order to collect her child from childcare, thus missing out on the best goods, which arrive in the afternoon.⁽²⁸⁾

The WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for infants up to six months of age, and continued breastfeeding to supplement solid food until a child is two years of age. These standards are a challenge for informal women workers.⁽²⁹⁾ Here the built environment, sector of work and status in employment can all be obstacles. A street vendor in Ghana explains how the lack of access to facilities for nappy changing and breastfeeding in public spaces affects her earnings:⁽³⁰⁾

“When you sell food with a child who is just some months old and you breastfeed and change diapers alongside, people don’t buy from you because of the unpleasant scene these things create; they see it as disgusting and so is the food.”

In focus group discussions in South Africa and India, women informal workers noted their discomfort with breastfeeding in public in front of customers, and considered their workplaces either unsafe or unhygienic for breastfeeding.⁽³¹⁾ In South Africa, domestic workers were even less likely to bring their young children to work than street vendors, limiting their ability to breastfeed.⁽³²⁾ The financial pressure to return to work and the challenges in breastfeeding at work mean that many women informal workers either introduced breastmilk substitutes early on, shortening the duration of any breastfeeding, or ceased breastfeeding altogether.⁽³³⁾ Women street vendors and market traders say they would prefer to have a childcare centre in the market so they can have a safer space to breastfeed away from the public gaze and remain in close proximity to their infant throughout the day.⁽³⁴⁾

The COVID-19 pandemic is a new risk that women informal workers must consider in reviewing the safest childcare option available to them. As lockdown measures ease and women can return to informal work, questions arise as to the safest spaces for young children. There are many trade-offs to consider as public spaces pose risks to children’s health, but mothers and guardians may have no choice but to take their children with them so they can earn some income.⁽³⁵⁾ Leaving children behind in crowded informal settlements may not be a much safer environment for avoiding exposure to COVID-19 and can compromise continued breastfeeding and care. In South Africa, some parents and guardians are not sending their children to childcare centres for fear that they will contract COVID-19; as a result women are more likely to take on these childcare responsibilities themselves.⁽³⁶⁾

These various constraints impact negatively on household incomes at a time when a new child increases the need for food, clothing, time, space, water and energy. Young children’s health, nutrition and education are inevitably impacted at this critical age of their development. Their need for stimulation, emotional attachment, mobility, and the chance to explore and play in ways that are developmentally appropriate are curtailed. Children of workers in the informal economy tend to have lower education and health outcomes due to poverty and are more likely to engage in child labour.⁽³⁷⁾ The interviews with women informal workers highlight their anxiety and stress about not being able to provide the more caring and safe environments that would ensure better outcomes for their young children. In South Africa and India, women informal workers reported knowing the benefits of breastfeeding as per WHO guidelines, but could not maintain this practice due to their working conditions.⁽³⁸⁾

IV. Barriers to the Provision of Childcare Services in Urban Areas

If women informal workers do not take their young child to work, they may rely on other childcare arrangements, such as leaving the child with a relative or using a childcare service.⁽³⁹⁾ This may be a registered or unregistered childcare service providing either home-based care in the childminder’s house or centre-based care. Data on such childcare services are scant. Estimates of enrolment rates in registered childcare services for children between 0 and 3 years old show that out of the 87 countries with available data, 53 countries had gross enrolment rates below 20 per cent.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The average global enrolment rate was 18.3 per cent. Though global enrolment rates are higher for pre-primary education for children aged 3 to 5, in low-income countries the average enrolment rate is only 23 per cent. As urbanization rates increase, the extension of childcare services in cities is essential to raise enrolment rates in childcare services. This can help to address the gendered inequalities in the labour market, increase household income, and improve children’s health, nutrition and education. However, cities present specific barriers to the extension of childcare services in areas where women informal workers live and work, which are often not made explicit in national early childhood development plans. This section explores some of the challenges related to affordability, accessibility, trust and quality. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and instead serves to highlight some successes and pitfalls in extending childcare services to women informal workers and the children in their care.

a. Affordability

When childcare services are available, the main constraint identified by women informal workers is the services’ high costs.⁽⁴¹⁾ Their low and irregular earnings make it difficult to pay daily, weekly or monthly user fees. This has important implications for how childcare services are designed, implemented and financed in urban areas.

One of the most important costs of running a childcare centre in a city is rent. The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) – a trade union representing close to two million women informal workers – runs 13 childcare centres in Ahmedabad, India for its members.⁽⁴²⁾ The Sangini Cooperative manages these childcare centres in low-income neighbourhoods within rented spaces – often a large room in an individual’s house. The rental payments represent the third-highest monthly expenditure after staff salaries and food and medicine supplies.⁽⁴³⁾ The childcare centres charge parents a monthly fee of INR 150 (US$ 2) given workers’ low earnings. Most of the costs are, therefore, covered through government subsidies, private donations and revenue earned through other SEWA cooperatives. It is difficult to shift an increase in any of the running costs to the women informal workers who are using the service.

Rental costs tend to be higher in prime business areas or transport hubs where street vendors and market traders operate. This suggests higher operating costs for childcare services in these areas. In Accra, Ghana, there are three private for-profit childcare services run in two of the city’s largest markets.⁽⁴⁴⁾ However, some of these private childcare centres end up catering to children from the neighbourhood whose parents can afford the user fees. They are too expensive for kayayeis (headporters) and street vendors to send their children regularly, even if they are more conveniently located in and around markets. For kayayeis who earn the lowest incomes in the markets, the daily user fee can represent half of their daily earnings.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Many informal traders can only afford to send their children to the centres for three to four days a week, or they need to take their children out of the centres when they cannot afford to pay the daily fees. This can disrupt learning and nutritional intake, and suggests that the children are with their working mothers on the other days of the week. The positive impact of quality childcare services on children’s development and women informal traders’ earnings is dampened by the lack of regularity in attendance.⁽⁴⁶⁾

In South Africa, women street vendors and waste pickers reported using unregistered home-based childcare services as these are close to their homes and often cheaper than registered centre-based childcare services.⁽⁴⁷⁾ They are run by women informal workers who are themselves own-account workers, contributing family workers or unpaid volunteer workers.⁽⁴⁸⁾ However, as they are unregistered, they are unlikely to benefit from any government subsidy, which shifts the running costs entirely to parents and guardians. Unregistered home-based childcare services and childcare centres have been hit hard by the lockdown measures introduced to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. A survey of 3,925 childcare providers – including both registered and unregistered services – during the lockdown period in April 2020 showed that 99 per cent reported that they did not collect fees, yet they had to continue paying overheads, including rent and utilities; 96 per cent claimed their income was not enough to cover these expenses.⁽⁴⁹⁾

In the context of COVID-19, running costs have increased due to new health guidelines and standards introduced in South Africa requiring the purchase of health and hygiene products for all registered childcare services. The new standards are particularly challenging in low-income neighbourhoods or informal settlements where access to water and sanitation is more difficult. Many home-based childcare providers and childcare services are unable to reopen due to the higher related operating costs and the revenue lost during the lockdown.⁽⁵⁰⁾ At the same time, their main customers – low-paid workers in the formal and informal economies – have also lost their incomes due to the lockdown and economic downturn. Those workers with more stable incomes between February and June 2020 were more likely to continue sending their children to a childcare provider than those with unstable incomes during the same period.⁽⁵¹⁾ Moreover, of those who did not send their children back to a childcare provider, 88 per cent said they or another household member were taking care of the child. Two-thirds of mothers but only one-quarter of fathers reported looking after children who had not returned to a childcare centre.⁽⁵²⁾

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights how fragile the childcare sector is in contexts that rely on private service providers and user fees paid by informal workers. The available data from South Africa indicate the magnified double-bind women face as they are unable to pay the user fees for childcare services and struggle to find the time for paid work.

b. Accessibility

The location of childcare services, ideally near workers’ homes or workplaces, impacts on uptake. Urban plans rarely include childcare services in a marketplace, near a waste dump or recycling plant, or in informal settlements where many of the lowest-income informal workers live and work. As regards the different places of work, home-based workers work from their private homes and could benefit from childcare services in their communities; domestic workers, on the other hand, work in their employer’s home and may prefer a childcare service either near their workplace or near their home. Street traders, market vendors and waste pickers work in public spaces where childcare services often do not exist. A mapping of the 42 markets and transport hubs in Accra showed that there are only seven functioning childcare services sufficiently close for street vendors and market traders to use.⁽⁵³⁾ In increasingly congested and sprawling urban areas where low-income groups may be pushed to the edges of the city limits, travel distances to childcare services and the associated costs are an important consideration.

Another key factor regarding accessibility is opening hours. Childcare services are more likely to be used by working parents and guardians if their opening hours reflect working hours. Self-employed women workers in the informal economy, such as home-based workers, street vendors, market traders and waste pickers, are likely to depend on a daily income to meet their needs. Therefore, cutting down on their working hours to match the shorter opening hours of a childcare service leads to a direct loss of income.

A promising example on this front was a response to waste pickers’ mobilization for a childcare service adapted to their needs in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.⁽⁵⁴⁾ The Asmare Waste Picker Cooperative (Associação dos Catadores de Papel, Papelão e Material Reaproveitável) called for childcare services in participatory discussions with local assemblies because women were taking their children with them to work at the cooperative. The government and waste pickers also wanted to put an end to child labour in waste picker cooperatives. The childcare service was initially financed through donor funds until the municipality was given greater responsibility for childcare service provision in 2004. The waste pickers’ community childcare centre was integrated into the public childcare service – UMEIs (unidades municipais de educação infantil) – and it is now known as UMEI Carlos Prates. It is the only childcare centre in the city that is open from 07:00 to 22:00 as waste pickers collect recyclables from offices once businesses are closed, either early in the morning or in the evening.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Children do not stay at the centre for the whole day; rather, the day is split into four shifts and waste pickers can choose when to send their children, depending on their working hours. The trained staff members work on a rotating schedule across these four shifts to make sure that the children at the centre are well cared for.

c. Trust and quality

For all parents and guardians, trust in a childcare provider is an important criterion for children’s enrolment. Trust is closely linked to perceptions of quality. Within the early childhood development literature, the quality of childcare services is assessed through structural and process variables. Structural variables include factors such as basic infrastructure, staff qualifications and remuneration, and staff-to-child ratios. Process variables refer to the quality of interactions between staff and children, between staff and parents, and between children themselves.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Structural and process variables are interrelated – a cramped and unhygienic space, lack of training, low wages and high staff-to-child ratios all contribute to low-quality interactions.⁽⁵⁷⁾

Many women workers in the informal economy noted in the course of discussions that they would rather keep their child with them at work, reduce their working hours, or shift into more flexible informal work than use a childcare service where they felt their child could be harmed or neglected.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Consequently, women workers pay the price of poor-quality childcare services by compromising their income security. Assessments of quality by parents are diverse, but when asked “what makes for a good childcare centre”, women informal workers across five countries and from multiple sectors identified the following characteristics:⁽⁵⁹⁾

• 1) Being affordable (either free or subsidized) and accessible.

• 2) Opening hours should accommodate informal workers’ long and irregular working hours.

• 3) Parental participation in the governance of the childcare centre and strong communication between parents and childcare providers.

• 4) Including an educational component and offering learning materials.

• 5) Connected to a health service to monitor children’s nutrition and development.

• 6) Basic infrastructure and an adequate number of skilled staff.

• 7) Provision of nutritious food.

• 8) Childcare workers should have a living wage, training and decent working conditions – all central to the provision of quality childcare services.

Expansion of public childcare services to meet the needs of the urban working poor can address concerns regarding affordability and accessibility as discussed above. In addition, important investments in infrastructure and staff training and retention are needed to address trust and quality concerns. Prior to the introduction of austerity measures and the pandemic, the case of Ecuador stands out as an example of a rapid public expansion of childcare services, including specific investments aimed at improving quality.⁽⁶⁰⁾ In 2006, the government decided to universalize early childhood education for children under five years old. Children between 1 and 3 years old from low-income households are reached through a mix of public and NGO or community-based service provision. The centres offer part-time, full-time and extended opening hours to cater for working parents and guardians. The initial public investment translated into a six-fold increase in uptake of childcare services over a decade.⁽⁶¹⁾

Evaluations of the national programme showed gaps in quality due to a lack of adequate infrastructure and learning materials, high staff-to-child ratios, and lack of knowledge among childcare workers about early childhood development and education.⁽⁶²⁾ The government set out to address these shortcomings by instituting several reforms. In 2013, the government hired an additional 3,000 childcare workers to address the high staff-to-child ratio. As part of efforts to professionalize the workforce, coordinators of childcare centres must hold a post-secondary degree in early childhood education and have at least one year of working experience in directing early childhood development activities.⁽⁶³⁾ By 2017, the government aimed to hire 10,000 new care assistants and implemented an in-service training that would allow care assistants to earn a technical university degree while working.⁽⁶⁴⁾ Both coordinators and care assistants also benefit from continuous training through study circles to encourage self-reflection and peer learning. These new qualifications and training initiatives are elevating the status previously given to childcare workers, who were considered volunteers and received only a small stipend.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Childcare workers in the country now earn at least the minimum wage and are also covered under the social security system.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Childcare workers receive a little under half of the average teacher salary.⁽⁶⁷⁾

In Ecuador, public investments were needed to improve staff training and retention for a higher-quality service. In urban areas, the relatively high fixed costs associated with infrastructure, rent and food mean low-cost childcare services can only operate by reducing salaries of childcare workers, who are often women informal workers, below the expected minimum wage. In the context of COVID-19, these higher urban costs are compounded by the additional costs now required to guarantee better hygiene and sanitation for children and staff. Quality inevitably falls as private low-cost providers cannot afford to attract and retain trained staff.

The availability of space also has a bearing on quality. The recommended standard staff-to-child ratio for children between 0 and 2 years old is 1:10 and for 3–5-year-olds it is 1:15. This is much higher than the teacher-to-student ratio in primary education, set at 1:31.⁽⁶⁸⁾ Meeting this standard is difficult in crowded urban areas where spaces that can hold 20 children, at least two adults and room for play, are limited. A global study of home-based childcare providers suggests that existing guidelines and quality evaluation metrices are not contextually appropriate for low-resource areas and should set less stringent conditions on the number of children per provider and floor space per child.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Home-based childcare services in low- and middle-income countries require specific guidelines reflecting the built environment in which they operate. In Durban, South Africa, the municipal by-laws allow for distinct registration procedures for home-based childcare centres catering to no more than six children, as compared to those with seven or more children.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Drawing on these legal provisions, Asiye eTafuleni, an organization focused on inclusive urban planning and design, is collaborating with informal traders in Warwick Junction in Durban to test a mobile childcare space for women street vendors and market traders that respects and applies the national early childhood development standards.⁽⁷¹⁾ The proposal is to build a “micro-childcare facility” located on the street and in the markets of Warwick Junction. The small mobile structure allows for the care of up to six children, as per the certification requirements for home-based facilities. The micro-childcare structure could also provide semi-private space for breastfeeding and nappy changes. These mobile structures should remain close to mothers and guardians to guarantee trust in the service and support mothers to continue breastfeeding. This is an alternative model to a large centralized childcare centre in a market. In crowded markets it may be difficult to negotiate for a large childcare centre available to the many young children present. In new markets under construction, including a childcare centre or several micro-childcare structures from the start can offer women informal traders a safer option for their children while they work.

V. The Role of Municipalities in Childcare Provision

Since the early 2000s, many governments across the global South have developed national intersectoral early childhood development policies.⁽⁷²⁾ Yet a review of national ECD policies in sub-Saharan Africa shows these are not leading to significant improvements in the provision of early childhood development services, including childcare, as implementation remains a challenge.⁽⁷³⁾ These national plans are not sufficiently complemented by legal frameworks, implementation and enforcement policies to realize their ambition. The multitude of actors needed to roll out an effective and comprehensive national ECD policy complicates delivery and makes coordination more difficult.⁽⁷⁴⁾ One recommendation to improve coordination and avoid fragmentation is to identify a multi-sectoral authority responsible for acting as an “institutional anchor” and coordinating horizontally between relevant ministries, including health, education, gender, children and social welfare, and vertically at local levels.⁽⁷⁵⁾ The national ECD plans outline the different roles and responsibilities between national and decentralized government bodies such as provincial, district and local authorities. In Uganda, for example, the national government is responsible for developing the ECD strategy, and implementation lies with the local government.⁽⁷⁶⁾ The administrative challenge of ensuring quality childcare services should not be underestimated, given the need for both vertical and horizontal coordination across relevant government bodies.⁽⁷⁷⁾

Municipalities can play several roles in the provision of childcare services. In Ecuador, local governments can have the responsibility of directly implementing public childcare services alongside NGOs and community groups. In Accra, Ghana, the municipality is responsible for the registration of childcare services and ensuring that national early childhood development guidelines are met.⁽⁷⁸⁾ The Social Welfare Department in the Accra Metropolitan Authority coordinates with the Ministries of Education and Health, which also monitor the registered childcare centres in the city. In South Africa:

“The Constitution affords responsibility to local municipalities to pass laws and Policy regulating child care facilities, and to conduct municipal planning, including regulating land use for child care facilities. These municipal by-laws and policies frequently relate to the required infrastructure and environmental health norms and standards for child care or partial care facilities that provide early childhood development programmes.”⁽⁷⁹⁾

The municipality is also responsible for the accreditation and registration of childminders – including home-based childcare providers. The by-laws set out specific regulations that need to be adhered to in order for the childcare facility to be registered by the Department of Social Development, or certified – with a health certificate – from the Department of Environmental Health.⁽⁸⁰⁾

As the case of South Africa highlights, many of the childcare services available to women informal workers are unregistered and do not benefit from any government support or oversight.⁽⁸¹⁾ On the one hand, it is a challenge for municipalities to identify, monitor and register childcare services in informal settlements and densely populated low-income neighbourhoods, where childcare services may be offered in a neighbour’s home. On the other hand, poor housing, water and sanitation in these urban areas will make it difficult for any unregistered childcare provider to meet the health and safety guidelines for accreditation and registration.⁽⁸²⁾

Municipal authorities also have oversight of public spaces where informal workers operate and the residential areas where they live. They are responsible for basic services in these areas such as water and refuse removal. The Urban95 initiative led by the Bernard van Leer Foundation highlights the role urban planners and municipalities can play in making cities safer, cleaner, greener and more accessible to children under the age of three.⁽⁸³⁾ Considering young children in urban plans can improve their developmental outcomes in cities, yet these urban plans generally do not extend to the informal settlements that can house the majority of a city’s population.

In negotiating for new spaces for childcare centres, parents and guardians must engage with the municipality and its urban planners. Municipal authorities are more accessible to informal workers than the ministries cited in the national ECD policy. Many informal workers’ organizations have established linkages with municipal authorities and negotiate with them for access to urban productive spaces and resources.⁽⁸⁴⁾ These established relationships offer a negotiating platform from which they can demand new services, such as childcare.⁽⁸⁵⁾ The example of waste pickers from Belo Horizonte, Brazil cited above demonstrates how established relationships with local authorities led to successful negotiations for a more affordable, accessible and quality public childcare service adapted to waste pickers’ specific needs.⁽⁸⁶⁾ The SEWA Sangini Cooperative also offers a model of dialogue among childcare providers, mothers and guardians, and municipal and national government bodies.⁽⁸⁷⁾ As a large trade union of women informal workers and a childcare service provider itself through the Sangini cooperative, SEWA can weigh in on debates for greater investment in childcare services at the municipal, state and national levels. Shawar and Shiffman argue that national early childhood development programmes have a greater chance of succeeding if those who have a direct stake in these services, including parents, guardians and childcare providers, have a primary voice in the design and implementation of the programmes.⁽⁸⁸⁾ Beyond these actors, greater engagement with urban planners and municipal authorities on childcare services is necessary to imagine urban space that is inclusive of young children both where they live and where their parents and guardians work.

VI. Conclusions

There are numerous obstacles in expanding childcare provision in cities among informal workers’ children. These arise from the built environment where these children spend their day – in informal settlements, low-income neighbourhoods or informal workplaces. There are also governance and coordination challenges posed by broad national early childhood development programmes, of which childcare is just one part. Positive examples do exist, such as the public childcare services in Ecuador and some states in India, and these are effective in reaching women informal workers and the children in their care. Free or subsidized childcare services are necessary for women informal workers due to their low and irregular incomes – particularly amidst the global recession brought on by COVID-19. Investment in this sector can also create new decent work opportunities for women and men at a time when unemployment rates are soaring.⁽⁸⁹⁾

If women informal workers are to regain their earnings, support for childcare is as central as social protection, business support measures and access to new decent work opportunities. Yet to ensure uptake and quality service provision for the urban poor, consultations with mothers and guardians are needed to adapt the service to their needs as informal workers and the COVID-19 context. Solutions can be found through dialogue with municipal authorities, relevant national ministries, childcare service providers, and women informal workers and their organizations.