Childcare and after-school care in Austria and Germany?

[cheminotte]

Hello
Any mumsnetters with experience of this? Dc are 4 and 7 so would be Kindergarten and Grundschule. I know Horte exist but not sure how available places are. Are there any alternatives?
Thanks

It will depend dramatically on whereabouts you are living. I'm in the former GDR and childcare provision here is excellent, since something like 80% of mothers work. Dd's kindergarten is open from 6am to 5pm and afaik Hort must have similar hours. A friend of mine who is a SAHM and picks her child up after school finishes at lunchtime says her daughter is one of only three kids in the year who doesn't go to Hort.

In other parts of Germany it's still far more usual for mothers to stay at home and for most children to be at home in the afternoons. In those areas it may well be much more difficult and/or expensive to get an afternoon kindergarten place or a place at Hort.

Thanks FrauLehrerin - not really looking at East, more likely to be Stuttgart or other Southern or Vienna? Looked at one Kindergarten with places full until 2017!

I'm just outside Vienna and have never heard of Kindergärten being full that far in advance - you register your child about a year before they're due to start (in the November of the previous year IIRC) so I don't think it could happen anyway, unless you're talking about a private Kindergarten.

Children here are generally assigned a place at the nearest Kindergarten; I've occasionally heard about a child having to go to a different Kindergarten if the nearest one was full, but availability doesn't generally seem to be a problem. The Hort at our Volksschule had a waiting list for a short while until they opened a second group but again, there rarely seem to be problems with availability. However, the situation might be quite different in Vienna itself (not very helpful, I know - sorry!).

Also, the place on the waiting list depends on your child's age. In many Länder children have a legal right to a place from 3 years so your 4 year old should be fine. (Not sure about Baden Würrtemberg and Bavaria though)

Sorry I need to add that there should not be a problem for part time places for your 4 year old, which usually means mornings and then (if you want to) back again in the afternoon, but no lunch. In our kindergarten we have a waiting list though for full time places (7-17h) and once I got the places I had to show proof of employment signed by my workplace, otherwise I would have lost them.
Regarding school, I live in a small village in the South West and even we have a primary school with a whole day class (Ganztagsschule). So the majority of kids go home at 12 or 1 and one class has lessons from 8-4 (the bus gets home at 4.30 so I have to be at home for then). And as far as I'm aware Ganztagsschulen are even more common in bigger cities.
But bottom line is every state, municipality, kindergarten has their own rules to some extent so once you've settled on an area call around the respective kindergartens. You also have private providers in large cities.
I was really worried about childcare and it's not as easy as it was in London where I had the choice between 5 nurseries but it all got sorted eventually (for a fraction of the price may I add). Good luck!

Thanks Linzer and Pinksun - that's positive at least. I think it must have been a private Kiga that also ran a Hort. It would need to be full-time as mornings or afternoons only would not be any good long term.

What did you do for childcare while you were waiting for a full-time place? I thought I'd read somewhere about places being prioritised to working parents, but how do you get a job without childcare in place? It would be DP getting a job, with me following with dc and then looking myself.

How old were your dc when they moved? How did they cope with the transition?

My kids were 3 years and younger one was just born (4 weeks I think). 3 year old got a part time place straight away and younger one when he was two (I live in Rheinland-Pfalz where part time places start from two and are FREE!!). They went on the waiting list for full time places straight away when we moved with my requested starting date and about a year before they confirmed that they will indeed be able to start on this date. I used the mornings when the kids were in kindergarten to look for work. But every kindergarten has their own admission policy, it also depends if it's run by the municipality (Gemeinde- or Städtischer kindergarten) or the church. Or a private one, which are usually a whole lot more expensive.
If you're stuck, the local jugendamt (authority for social services for children) may be able to help. They have lists of available childminders for example.