Hungary would like to increase the number of daycare places available in the country to account for the rising number of births expected over the coming years.
Katalin Novák, Minister of State for Family and Youth Affairs at the Ministry of Human Capacities, said that compared with 2010 the number of places available for young children in crèches has increased one and a half times. “At present, there are places for 48,000 children in the country, but they would like to increase this number to 60,000 in the coming years,” she said.
The minister added that a decision recently adopted by the government seeks to assist with this ambitious plan. She said that from a budgetary allocation of 20 billion HUF it will be possible to create further places.
Minister Novák said that in the past few years the government has spent more than 120 billion HUF on additional places for children in crèches and nursery schools. From this allocation, they have created almost 5,000 new crèche places and another 11,000 have been refurbished, while in the case of nursery schools more than 3,100 new places have come into being and over 58,000 places have been upgraded.
The minister also highlighted that in recent years they have renewed the entire crèche care system, and have also made possible the development of new types of crèches. In addition to traditional facilities, there are now mini, family and workplace crèches as well.
Minister Novák said the goal of the government is to ensure that raising children should not be an obstacle to engaging in employment while engaging in employment should not be an obstacle to the decision of raising more children.
“The government would like to help families where the parents are working and are raising children under the age of three years,” she said.