The Childcare Policy Alliance yesterday launched an information platform for babysitters in a bid to highlight those who have a good work ethic, saying that the nation needs a more reliable childcare system to help married or pregnant women re-enter the workforce.
Since December 2014, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has required people caring for children who are not family members to register with local governments.
Applicants who qualify include people who have certificates in childcare; who hold at least a high-school diploma in childcare, nursery studies or home economics; or who have received professional training in childcare as stipulated by Article 8 of the Registration and Management Regulations for Family Childcare Services Agencies (居家式托育服務提供者登記及管理辦法).
However, the registration system fails to manage the quality of babysitters, alliance convener Liu Yu-hsiu (劉毓秀) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
To help with the issue, the alliance is inviting babysitters who have at least two years of childcare experience to sign up on its information platform and share their work history.
Many women choose to quit their jobs to care for their own children, or ask their mothers or neighbors to help them because they distrust other babysitters, Taiwan Labor Front researcher Chang Feng-yi (張烽益) said.
With more transparent information about babysitters, more women can lessen their burden by hiring professional caregivers, Chang added.
The alliance is to run the information platform on a trial basis with babysitters from Taipei’s Zhongshan (中山) and Beitou (北投) districts and expects it to become a governmental platform, Liu said.
As of October 2016, only 10.23 percent of women aged 15 to 49 had babysitters caring for their children under the age of 3, while 47.33 percent looked after them themselves and 39.31 percent asked their parents for help, a survey released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics last year showed.
If the nation can build a more reliable childcare network, more women would be willing to give birth and re-enter the workforce afterward, Liu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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