Summit demanded

Working from home is often used for vacation care

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In Austria, schools are closed for 14 weeks a year, but parents are generally only entitled to five weeks' vacation. For many parents, this means that they have to "split their time" organizing their vacations, criticized ÖGB Vice President Korinna Schumann on Friday. According to a Foresight study for the Chamber of Labor (AK), a quarter of parents work from home to ensure childcare during the summer vacations. Schumann is calling for a summer childcare summit.

According to the special survey on the school costs study (1021 parents of six to 19-year-olds surveyed, 2.4 percentage points variation), 81% had already planned their entire vacation by mid-June. Four out of ten respondents had difficulties with this, especially single parents and parents of children with disabilities.

meAlso many siblings help with childcare
On average, most of the care (six weeks) is provided by family and friends, the children spend one week in public vacation care, one week in camps and one week on average without care at home, whereby this mainly affects older pupils. According to 17% of respondents, they also look after younger siblings themselves.

According to AK education expert Elke Larcher, parents indicated a "care gap" of two weeks in the survey, for which additional experience-oriented, cost-effective offers would be needed. According to the survey, childcare services in the summer cost an average of 415 euros per child.

Joint vacations often organizationally impossible 
For parents, the gap between the length of the vacation and their own vacation means that they consume their vacation entitlement, overtime and compensatory time mainly in summer, use (increased) home office for care (Larcher: "a leftover from Covid"), but can also reduce working hours or not work full-time. Schumann criticized the fact that parents are often unable to take vacations together because they have to divide up their leave in such a way that childcare is guaranteed.

The government cannot pretend that this is an individual problem, emphasized the ÖGB Vice President and called for a summer childcare summit with the federal, state and local governments this autumn so that the problems can be solved by next summer. In her view, more money and staff would be needed for the municipalities, which are usually responsible for the services, and easier access to funding pots, especially for children with disabilities or children of single parents - "so that all children can afford a good vacation". She also called for a sixth week of vacation and a guarantee that parents of school-age children can take three weeks off in a row.

homA debate about shorter summer vacations is not necessary for Schumann, however. The time off school is needed for recreation, she emphasized. Larcher also referred to studies according to which the new experiences that children and young people can have during this time away from school can lead to enormous skills development - if they have access to appropriate, affordable experiential education programs.