Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/758493
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2016 12 News Operators deny claims of abuse across free childcare scheme PAUL COCKS CHILDCARE centres reg- istered under the Free Childcare Scheme came under fire this week by the Auditor General in the National Audit Office's (NAO) annual report on public ac- counts for 2015, with ac- cusations of "abuse of the system and tampering of records by childcare centres", "inadequate internal controls", "no enforcement of capac- ity restrictions " and a "lack of awareness by parents about the scheme's operational aspect" amongst the most serious of the report's conclusions. The auditor general recom- mended that staff and opera- tions be supervised by compe- tent officers who would be fully conversant with the standing processes, and who could query procedures and decisions when deliberate circumvention of processes is discovered. The report insists that the Ministry for Education and Em- ployment (MEDE) should regain control of the system, albeit without being too bureaucratic, to avoid relying solely on the service providers for data. "In order to ensure effective use of public funds, regular checks and inspections are imperative to ensure that controls are func- tioning as intended, the system is not being abused, and that re- cords provided by the centres are reliable," the report said. In a bid to double-check the data provided by the childcare centre operator, the NAO rec- ommended that a sample of parents be selected randomly on a regular basis to confirm the child's attendance for the re- spective month. It also suggested requesting parents to submit both the ap- plication, as well as changes to booked hours, directly to the ministry, instead of relying on the operators to do so. From its inception in April 2014, up to 31 December, 2015, the administration of the scheme was manually based, supported by the use of spreadsheets cre- ated specifically for this purpose by the Malta Information Tech- nology Agency (MITA). The only data reflecting the attendance was inputted manu- ally by the childcare centres, in spreadsheets, which were then forwarded to the MEDE. No other documentation was avail- able at the ministry to confirm, or otherwise, the correctness of the hours claimed by the opera- tors. The vetting of applications and changes in booked hours, verifi- cations of the monthly records submitted by the latter, as well as the computation of payments to the service provider, among others, fell under the respon- sibility of the Department of School Resources within MEDE. But as from 1 January, 2016, following a public call for ten- ders, a fully automated sys- tem, referred to as the Child- care Information System (CIS), was implemented, intended to strengthen the internal controls and curb the possibility of abuse prevailing under the manual sys- tem. The CIS, which went live in all the childcare centres with effect from January 2016, enables elec- tronic fobbing (through coded keyfobs), providing a log of the child's name, as well as the time of arrival and departure, allow- ing the database to automati- cally calculate the attendance and duration of children at the centres, together with the re- lated payment due to the centre. But the audit also found abuse in the use of the fob system and recommended that stricter controls be exercised over both their distribution and usage. The only way to do this would be if the ministry ascertained that the devices are actually held by the parents, and not left with the centre operators who could use the fob to log children in and out even when they would not really be there. Parents need to be clear on the importance of the fobs and the related time-keeping. Physical inspections carried out by NAO auditors at eight childcare centres confirmed that, despite the introduction of the electronic system, attend- ance records were still being tampered with by certain cen- The Childcare Centres Providers Association refutes claims of rampant abuse and misconduct by operators, following the publication of the Auditor General's report on the Free Childcare Scheme The only data reflecting the attendance was inputted manually by the childcare centres Simon Zammit