Moving with a child

Family life in Finland from kindergartens, child education, language schooling and everyday life. Share information and experiences. Network with other families.
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Aimee
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 2:16 pm

Moving with a child

Post by Aimee » Thu May 23, 2019 1:41 am

I'm a single parent and moving with a 3 year old. How do I start applying for creche? Should I apply for ECEC and what's the difference with full time day care and pre-school?

I read somewhere that full time per month could be E310 In aMunicipal creche, could I get some assistance as I won't have a job at first and will rely on a very limited study grant?

Please help!



Moving with a child

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vla
Posts: 262
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2018 12:23 am

Re: Moving with a child

Post by vla » Thu May 23, 2019 9:34 am

Aimee wrote:
Thu May 23, 2019 1:41 am
I'm a single parent and moving with a 3 year old. How do I start applying for creche? Should I apply for ECEC and what's the difference with full time day care and pre-school?

I read somewhere that full time per month could be E310 In aMunicipal creche, could I get some assistance as I won't have a job at first and will rely on a very limited study grant?

Please help!
In Finland kids start school at age of 7. At 6 they go to pre-school. All of that is mandatory. Before that, they can go to day care center, which is not mandatory. So your kid can't go to pre-school yet, but you can apply for a place in day care center.

Do you already have an address in Finland? Because once you have the address, you can apply, because you need to be registered in the population records in order to apply. Application should be done four (yes, four!) months before the need of day care. In our case, I applied in january for a place in may, and they called me in the middle of march saying that there's no place anywhere in my area until august (when the "school" year begins), so I had to wait until that time. In april they confirmed we got a place starting on august 1st.

The application is done in the website of the municipality if you have strong identification activated with your bank, if not, you have to print a form an take to a service point of your municipality.

Day care centers are not free of charge (but compulsory education is), you can check the fees according to your income, there is a calculator on the website of the city you are going to live, so you can check there how much you will have to pay. I'm not sure if there is free day care center, you need to check that according to your own scenario.

You can get a small allowance for your kid, it's around €90 and it's call somewhat like "child support". There is also other benefits but only until the kid becomes 3, so probably that won't apply to your kid. Anyway, check the Kela website and your municipality website, you can find plenty of information there.

Aimee
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 2:16 pm

Re: Moving with a child

Post by Aimee » Fri Aug 30, 2019 8:53 am

Thank you for your reply! I've looked through the website and called the international number. I moved in early July and started the paperwork but still haven't heard back from them. The day care centre that I applied to deleted my application (?) and when I hadn't heard back I hounded them until they realised I wasn't on the system. But thankfully they understood it was an error on their part and I got the place. They also explained the fees thing to me.
Thank you for your response!


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