According to a recent study, the childcare facilities in Mainz and Frankfurt are exceptionally good.

In a comparison of the 50 largest German cities, Mainz takes second place and Frankfurt fourth.

This is reported by the company sucht.de, which has analyzed the public and private care offerings in the big cities.

Freiburg is in first place when it comes to childcare, followed by Mainz, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Osnabrück, Munich, Berlin, Kiel, Karlsruhe and Hanover.

With 30th place, Wiesbaden occupies a position in the midfield.

At the bottom of this ranking are Hagen, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Hamm, where, according to the authors of the study, there is the greatest potential for improvement in childcare.

Own advertisements evaluated

However, it is questionable how meaningful this study is.

Because to evaluate the private offers, the number of advertisements from babysitters, childminders, nannies and loan grandmas on the company's own portal Pflege.de was included as well as their evaluation.

If you ignore these private offers and only take the available places in day-care centers, the childcare ratio and the number of day-care centers as a benchmark, the order changes: Then Stuttgart takes first place, followed by Munich and Frankfurt.

Mainz is then only in 13th place.

Wiesbaden keeps its old position.

How many day-care places are available differs greatly from municipality to municipality.

The authors of the study found that Frankfurt is particularly convincing when it comes to public offerings.

The high density of day-care centers is particularly noteworthy here, which not only enables parents and children to travel shorter distances.

They would also have a greater choice of facilities in their immediate vicinity.

When it comes to private childcare, however, Frankfurt is only in the middle.

Mainz does better in this category: the private offering in the Rhineland-Palatinate capital is exceptionally good.

Skills shortage excluded

Despite all concerns about the methodology, conclusions can at least be drawn from the study about the inpatient care offered.

The evaluation is based on the space available and the care ratio in day-care centers as well as the school and day-care center density.

The approved places in day-care centers such as day-care centers or after-school care centers for children were set in relation to the total number of children under the age of 14.

The care key is calculated from the number of care places per pedagogical specialist, extrapolated to full-time positions.

The data from the federal and state statistical offices were used as the source.

The evaluation did not take into account whether the positions are actually filled and whether the staff is actually available.

However, there is hardly any reliable data on this either: the state working group of daycare parents in Hesse has been trying for a long time to obtain reliable information on how many caregivers are actually available.

Parents complain that the gap between target and actual capacity in early childhood education and care is getting bigger and bigger.

You have asked the Ministry of Social Affairs for information on how many positions are vacant in Hesse and how great the need for skilled workers is.

But even in individual municipalities it is difficult to obtain reliable figures.

This also has to do with the fact that the educators are not recruited centrally, but directly by the individual providers,

The authors of the study themselves draw attention to the lack of educators: Even if the children have access to day-care or after-school care, there are often gaps in care, especially in the off-peak times, which correspond to the working hours of the parents.

Then the grandparents or babysitters are often asked.