Globegarden welcomes unannounced inspections

Better comparability of quality across all providers in the city of Zurich.

As Switzerland’s leading provider of childcare facilities, globegarden expressly welcomes the postulate on childcare supervision passed by Zurich’s city council this week. It calls on the city executive to carry out at least one unannounced inspection visit per year in every childcare center in the city of Zurich.

Zurich, 7 January: The postulate on strengthening childcare supervision and the associated increase in resources, referred by the city council of Zurich this week, meets with clear approval at globegarden. “We have been campaigning for years for all childcare centers to be inspected by the same standards. Only then does the quality of individual centers become comparable,” says Christina Mair, Co-Managing Director of globegarden. The responsible center managers and the staff are used to unannounced supervisory visits, and representatives of the authorities are always welcome, she affirms; the organisation has around ten years of experience with them. What has been troubling so far, however, is that a few centers were inspected unannounced very frequently while others were hardly ever inspected. “In recent years almost half of all unannounced inspections took place in our centers, even though we provide only 8 per cent of the childcare places in the city,” says Mair. None of these inspections identified any notable quality problems.

Recognition through independent assessments

A study carried out by KPMG on behalf of the city of Zurich’s social services department, examining the effects of the new childcare regulation in private centers in the city of Zurich with subsidised places, showed the opposite in a benchmark comparison in summer 2021: globegarden clearly stands out in the market as a quality provider. Among other things, globegarden employs far more qualified staff per childcare place offered than the average of all other providers, fewer interns are deployed, and salaries in certain roles are in some cases substantially higher than the average across all facilities examined in the city of Zurich.

Globegarden also has its own facilities audited regularly and voluntarily by external experts. It has undergone a rigorous ISO 9001 certification for years, conducts independent quality audits and was recently recognised as a Great Place to Work. This attests to an above-average level of satisfaction among globegarden staff with workplace and employment conditions compared with other companies in Switzerland.

Fair and clear conditions for everyone

“Independently of this, we believe that additional requirements are needed to achieve generally higher quality across the entire market. This must also be compensated accordingly through the funding model,” Mair emphasises. Globegarden is therefore taking part in a working group of the city of Zurich dealing with the revision of the childcare regulation, which is due to come into force in 2024. Mair adds: “Our goal is very clear: we want to offer children and parents the highest possible level of quality, under fair and clear conditions that apply to all operators.”

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