There are fewer daycare centers where there is more demand (and 37 babies/year are born per daycare center)

Quase 500 families made 1,221 vacancy requests in daycare centers through the creches platform. App created in May by Joaquim Cabral, a first-time father who came across the difficulty in getting his son school when he was still in his wife's belly, Marta.

Now, with the most consolidated platform, Joaquim spoke to the News to Minutes to reveal some data you managed to collect between July 24th and November 3rd. During this period, the records of the day-care centres of the Creches. app – a free map of day care centers in Portugal – were opened 22.522 times.

But the data are even more revealing, when compared “with the daycare centers of each county – counted on the Creches map. app – and with the births of the National Institute of Statistics (INE)”.

According to Joaquim, in Continental Portugal there are 2,116 daycare centers that accept children under 3 years of age, and “ 37 babies are born per year for each daycare center”.

The distribution is, however, “very uneven”: in Sintra, for example, 65 babies are born for each daycare center, more than twice as much as Lisbon, where 28 are born. This is, by the way, “the county with more families asking for vacancies.

Vila Nova de Gaia (69), Gondomar (60), Amadora (61), Odivelas (60) and Seixal (60) are also among the municipalities most sought after by families and far above the national average.

High demand, low supply© Creches. app  

60% of the answers from the most requested daycare centers are “no vacancies”

Also according to the 28-year-old airplane pilot “10 municipalities with more babies per day care center have 21% of the continent’s babies and only 12% of day care centers”, but “that’s where 24% of the visits and 33% of the families that asked for vacancy on the platform”.

And there, 60% of the responses from daycare centers were “we have no vacancies” (44% in the rest of the country)

You ask for an early opening. Too soon

In 62% of requests made with the help of Creches. app, the child was less than a year old when the parents asked for room at day care. 10% hadn't even been born yet.

The median age on the day of application was 8.8 months. Each family asked for an average of 2.4 day care centers, and 28% contacted three or more daycare centers.

“ Families aren't asking for a late shift. One in 10 asks before the baby is born. What fails is what comes next: most people do not know if the request has reached someone ", highlights the founder of the platform.

Weak spot? “The answer”

For Joaquim Cabral, one of the major problems in the search for day care centers is the lack of answers. Whatever they are.

“ Of the requests with at least 10 days, 16% had a registered answer from the daycare center – half said there was no vacancy”. However, of the 337 families who responded to a survey conducted by Creches.app seven days later, 77% said they had not responded.” Neither yes nor no.

In daycare centers that already manage their page on the platform created by the engineer, the answer rises to 38% (sample of 34 requests).

Joaquim stresses, however, that these “numbers do not point to the lack of will of daycare centers”.“Many have no vacancy, manage the lists by phone or in person, and these answers are not recorded. They point to an access problem – asking for vacancy by email almost doesn’t work – and when the daycare center already knows who writes it, the answer more than doubles”, states.

On the page that announces the data, Joaquim also explains how he arrived at this data. The explanation can be read here