The institutional care for children starts at the age of 3 years old in the Czech republic and the lack of institutions providing early child care and education for children at the age above 3 years old is significantly missing (RILSA). Number of private institutions or children's groups insure places for about 15.000 children (at the age of 2 to 3 years old mostly), but these are not available for all children, mostly children from lower sociological backgrounds are excluded because of the financial situation of families. Though a number of findings conclude the benefits of institutional care for children from disadvantaged backgrounds mostly, there are also financial benefits of providing care and support to disadvantaged children (Korbel at Prokop, 2019 ). The care and education is administratively split between two sectors in the Czech republic with various qualification requests for caregivers or teachers for different ages or type of service. Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MoLSA) ensure the care for children at the age 0 - 3 (mostly in Children s group) where caregivers declare their competencies for services supported by the Ministry, a considerable number of private services has no law or no control mechanism or exist as a part of an underground economy with no regulation. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports administrate Kindergartens (about 72 % children attends the Kindergarden from the age of 3, the compulsory education starts at the age of 5), where teachers have to be qualified according to the Act on Education Staff and the quality of Education is ensured by Czech School Inspectorate. The straddle situation described is not unique in Europe and various systems face the lack of numbers in the quality of institutional care in different ways. 

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs proposes an innovative project to start a Home based care for children at the age from 6 months till the beginning of compulsory school education. This project should ensure high quality service for every child (when not excluding children from disadvantaged families of children with special needs and ensuring qualified caregivers) and low threshold for caregivers and parents at the same time. The evaluation of the project looks for the model where caregivers could still have a lower degree of education (ICSED 3) and additional support of  authorities and experts to ensure high quality care and education and provide sufficient monitoring of the development of every child individually. The system of monitoring and evaluation in the innovation project of the home based care is also consulted in the expert group of Technical Support Instrument: Developing a Comprehensive Framework for the Monitoring and Evaluation of Early Childhood Education and Care in the Czech Republic. 

The research question are as following: 

How to set the parameters of the service to deliver a service with high quality standards while maintaining a low entry barrier to make it accessible for the broadest spectrum of children possible. 

What are the needs of caregivers and what kind of support do they need to ensure high quality of service for every child?

How can we set the evaluation of the service so it leads to the continuous learning and improving of the service?

The evaluation of this project is based on the qualitative approach: interviews, focus groups were conducted and the observation and used design will be used in the realization phase. While the emphatic phase (September 2023 till January 2024) aimed to explore needs of participants (parents, caregivers, administration support office worker), the goal in the realization phase is to collect the feedback to the service. The piloting of the service will be realized from February 2024 till September 2024. Caregivers were recruited by the snowball method till the theoretic saturation of the sample (11 caregivers in total). Interviews were also conducted with caregivers who firstly expressed their interest for the piloting but they find the piloting of the service more problematic, so the opposite opinion is also present. Caregivers in the sample represent various categories regarding education, economic situation, gender or experience with children. For the further research we plan to include caregivers with minorities (or Roma population or caregivers coming from Ukraine after the Russian invasion.) Parents for the sample were found to match the criteria sampling to represent all children (parents with SEN, parents with health issues, single parents with lower income). In total 10 parents were interviewed, one child included. Caregivers and parents were chosen from Vysočina region only, so we can possibly match the parents and caregivers for the piloting. Experts were chosen for interviews to cover all various aspects of children care and development, including parents´s organization, NGO s and representatives of various ministries to complete the cross-sectoral approach. Interviews with caregivers and parents were conducted online mostly, interviews with experts were conducted in person or online. All data were anonymised and analyzed in the MAXQDA programme using open coding and the system of the categories for caregivers, parents and experts. As for the realization phase we plan to collect various feedback on the process, setting and quality of care in the home- based care. Standard of the quality of care (MoLSA) will allow self-assessed caregivers. The various criteria of standard of quality will be also observed and discussed or with parents (section of care and the child development) or by administrative office (section of personal development of the caregivers and section of material equipment of the household).

Preliminary finding shows the expectation of caregivers and parents and also recommendation of the panel of experts. The service proposed should insure the highest quality of care for children, respecting individual needs of every childs. According to parents, home based care should insure care for all children, including children without mandatory vaccination, children with SEN, children with health issues or children from families with lower socio economic background. Parents do not require a specific degree of education or certificate (which is in contrast with the proposition in the act and expert panel's recommendation), they prefer longer adaptation time to make sure they child is comfortable with the caregivers (without naming the concrete criteria). The caregivers are in their conclusions very aware of their own limits. Most of the caregivers would not refuse a child that would need a special approach, though they articulated the support needed (e.x. additional training so they can meet the needs of the individual child, supervision, self - helps groups to reflect the experience with children with difficulties or extra stuff, e.g. a teaching assistant). The caregivers also reflected the individual setting of each home- based care group and accented the need of a variability in numbers of children and following financing. The panel of experts accented the fair financing for caregivers so the setting of the nes service does not support the precare position of caregivers on the labor market, the condition should allow the caregivers at least the “dignified” salary. While there is not an agreement of a degree of education or qualification of caregivers, there is a clear stress on the continuous support including additional learning, supervisor program for caregivers, networking with experts and early identification in the case of a different development of a child in the home based care.

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