According to the Labor force survey conducted by INSTAT, the low access to childcare is identified as an obstacle for women to access to the labor market.

The National Agency for Employment and Skills (NAES) also identifies the lack of early childcare services as one of the first barriers to women employment. That is why the NAES proposed to include, in its national strategy under the Employment Promotion Law, the delivery of flat rate vouchers for childcare to women registered in the national employment services database.

At the national level, childcare policies are under the competence of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, while  the care provision competences are delegated to local governments (“municipalities”) regarding employment of professionals working in creches, infrastructure, etc. The municipalities are thus in charge to develop childcare services on their territory to meet the population needs but they are directed by no national standards of quality to do so.

In Albania the legislative regulatory framework to cover the varieties of settings which influence, directly or not, in the wide range of activities from education to child care, to nutrition,  to parent education that involve ECCD (Early childhood Care and developpemnt), to regulate nationally the variety of settings (homes, crèches, kindergartens, schools, health facilities) where ECCD takes place, or, to regulate through an overarching regulatory policy document the public, private, and non-governmental agencies which offer services in ECCD, cannot be considered overarching. There are several legislative documents that focus on children’s rights, and for the first time in the National Agenda for Children’s rights 2017 - 2020, which is a systematic multidisciplinary framework aimed to be integrated into all national and local child-related documents, plans and other national or local activities relevant to UNCRC Convention for Children's rights, there is Objective 5, which puts into one issue the standards for crèches and kindergartens, parenting quality and inclusion of children with special needs since they are 5 years old .

Childhood institutional care in Albania has two distinctive structures, that follow different legislative norms: crèches (çerdhe), offering mainly care and support for children from 6 months – 3 years; and preschool (kopsht), supporting the holistic development of children 3-6 years old. This document will follow this distinction in order to better explore the lacunas in the legislative framework organizing both institutions.

Objectives

•   Foster the official adoption of national standards to be implemented for the delivery of early childcare services for children 0-3 and the development of a system to monitor compliance (on the basis of the work done by Save the Children and UNICEF and, the experience of Tirana’s municipality and also Elbasan and Korca) through workshops/national roundtable gathering Albanian main stakeholders and French specialists.
• Expose Albanian partners at local and central level, public and private to other models of child care services inspired by French/ European examples.

International expert specific tasks (35 working days):

-          Draft a consultancy work plan that includes a methodology, a timeline and the coordination process with the national expert and agree on the division of tasks (in English) 

-          Assess the regulatory framework, practices of early childcare services in Albania, more specifically in Tirana, Korce, Elbasan and Lushnje in close cooperation with the national expert 

-          Elaborate a presentation of French experience and practices in terms of early childcare services offer (reflecting the diversity of the individual and collective childcare services), to be presented to and discussed with partner municipalities 

-          Assess the ground for public-private practices of early childcare services in Albania, more specifically in Tirana, Korce, Elbasan and Lushnje through meetings with the municipalities and selected companies from the private sector 

-          Draft a short report of finding and recommendations setting the basis framework for public-private partnership with companies (in Tirana and 3 municipalities) to deliver new childcare service

-        Draft a report on Standards of Care for early Child Care Facilities: that would serve as ‘blueprint” for applying those minimum standards and thus ensuring the best interests of the child in care facilities (example of possible content in Annex 1) 

-          Present and discuss the Report of Standards and Recommendations in a final event

All task developed from the international expert will be coordinated with the national expert and are subject of approval from EF team leader and project manager. In delivering the task the international expert will work closely with the national expert. The assignment is odorising 2 missions of 4/5 days to Albania.