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The Swiss government plans to support a childcare voucher scheme to help parents reconcile work and family life, according to the interior minister.
Pascal Couchepin announced the authorities were prepared to back a series of pilot projects over the next three years that should give parents much-needed flexibility when paying for childcare services.
"Child daycare options should be adapted to the needs of the parents," Couchepin told journalists on Thursday at his annual media outing to St Peter's Island on Lake Biel.
Young families in Switzerland face a testing time. Many struggle with inflexible working hours and arrangements, alongside high costs and a severe shortage of nursery places.
Parents should be able to use the proposed vouchers to choose the day-care service which best suits their needs. In the past the authorities generally financed crèche facilities directly.
The government hopes that a flexible financing scheme based on demand will stimulate competition and encourage the creation of institutions more suitable for people with irregular working hours.
It is estimated that 50,000 places are still needed based on an average of two days attendance a week at a crèche. The situation is not expected to improve, as by 2015 demand is likely to increase by 21 per cent.
Although a government programme has encouraged the creation of nursery places &em; 13,400 additional ones between 2003 and 2006 &em; there is still a shortage.
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In October 2006 parliament took a further step to address the shortage, approving a SFr120-million ($100 million) credit for the creation of childcare places over the next four years. The new voucher scheme will be financed from the new credit, the interior ministry announced.
The funds will cover 30 per cent of the pilot project costs, with the remainder coming from the cantons and local communities.
But Couchepin admitted that childcare in Switzerland was often an organisational problem rather than a financial one.
"It's foreseeable that the credit for the nursery incentive programmes will not be used up," he said.
Many other details of the voucher system are still to be hammered out.
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For Couchepin, the new proposal fits perfectly with the theme of his day on Lake Biel devoted to "time policy".
"Rather than being a money problem, the middle-classes suffer from a lack of time," he explained to journalists.
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- reprinted from SwissInfo