For the new edition of the „Toddler+” government programme, the Ministry of Family and Social Policy allocated PLN 5.5 billion from the European and national funds. The programme itself is multi-annual, it is scheduled for the years 2022-2029. Thanks to the co-financing, nearly 90 thousand new places of care for children under the age of 3 will be created all over the country.

4.2 thousand places in Warsaw

For Mazowsze, this means ore than PLN 777.5 million of co-financing, more than PLN 373.6 million for the creation and more than PLN 403.9 million for the functioning of places of care for children under the age of 3. Thanks to these funds, 13,422 places in nurseries, children’s clubs and day-care providers will be created, including 4.2 thousand in Warsaw alone.

For the needs of the new edition of the programme, a special algorithm has been prepared in our ministry, which, based on the number of children in a given municipality, the income of this municipality and other factors, calculated the level of co-financing for each self-government – said Deputy Minister Socha.

Every self-government that expressed the will to build a nursery and to create new places of care in nurseries, received the funds. Some self-governments received more funds than provided for by the algorithm. Such an example is also the Capital City of Warsaw.

Nursery in every willing municipality

We are removing „white spots” on the map of Poland – added the Deputy Minister.

In the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, 53 municipalities will create places of care in nurseries in their area for the first time. In the nearest future, we will launch a continuous call for applications so as to give a chance to those self-governments that would like to join the programme. We would like parents to have a real choice whether to send their children to nurseries, take care of them on their own or use other forms of care. If the choice is to be real, nurseries must be within reach, in both territorial and financial terms.

Parents must have a choice

Parents have the right to choose whether they want to have their child in nursery care. It can be a nursery, a children’s club, a care provider. In 2015, only every ninth child was covered by nursery care, today, it is already every third child – reminded Deputy Minister Anita Czerwińska.

She added that the Law and Justice government had committed itself to consistently pursue the social and family policy supporting families. Families are to develop and this must be done in a spirit of respect for their independence, autonomy and defining needs.

The Mazowiecki Voivode, Tobiasz Bocheński, stressed that this was a fundamental programme, since there were huge problems with nursery infrastructure across Poland.

We managed to induce the authorities in as many as 53 municipalities to accede to this programme and to collect funds so as to remove these white spots – announced the voivode.