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Early childhood education
A child with a disability or otherwise in need of support may receive early childhood education services in an ordinary daycare centre, family daycare, or a special needs daycare centre. Early childhood education is generally subject to a fee. You can ask an early childhood education service counsellor for more information about daycare centres.
Read more about early childhood education
Read more about how early childhood education fees are determined
Contact information of service guidance for early childhood education and pre-primary education
The child has the right to various forms of support and assistive devices for early childhood education. These include:
- arrangements to enable access and mobility, such as wheelchair ramps and handrails;
- assistive devices related to communication, vision, hearing, movement or other physical needs, such as communication support toys and digital applications.
If necessary, your child can also get an assistant to help them at the daycare centre.
Rehabilitative early childhood education
If your disabled child needs more support, their early childhood education can also be arranged as rehabilitative education. Receiving rehabilitative early childhood education requires a doctor’s recommendation and for a special care programme to have been prepared for the child.
Read more about special care programmes on THL’s website(Link leads to external service)
Rehabilitative early childhood education is free of charge. Having received a decision on rehabilitative early childhood education, your child’s transport is arranged and paid for by the City’s disability services.
Journeys to and from daycare
If your child is offered a place in early childhood education at a location other than the closest daycare centre, you can apply for transport support from the daycare centre. Transport support is usually granted when the offered daycare place is better suited to your child than a place at the nearest daycare centre. Daycare trips are then free of charge to your family.
Transport support is generally not provided for journeys under three kilometres. The early childhood education district manager may consider granting transport support for distances of less than three kilometres under special circumstances, such as if a parent is unable to take their child to early childhood education due to their health condition. Transport can be arranged even for short trips if the child is attending rehabilitative early childhood education.
Caring for a child at home
If your child is looked after at home and does not attend municipal, private or rehabilitative early childhood education, you can apply for home care allowance, private daycare allowance, or flexible care allowance.
Read more about Kela's child care allowances(Link leads to external service)
A parent of a child with a severe illness or disability may also receive special care allowance. Special care allowance is compensation for loss of earnings in a situation where a guardian of a child under the age of 16 is unable to do their regular work because they need to participate in the child's care or rehabilitation.
You cannot get special care allowance while you participate in the care of the child if you are paid a wage or salary or a Kela daily allowance at the same time. Daily allowances paid by Kela include pregnancy allowance and special pregnancy allowance, paternity allowance, parental allowance, and sickness allowance. If you are being paid special care allowance, you cannot be paid an unemployment allowance or a labour market subsidy at the same time.
Special care allowance is not available for children who are in daycare or at school outside the home during the day. An exception is when a parent is absent from work and on call at home while the child attends daycare or school on a trial basis based on an assessment by their attending physician.
Read more about special care allowance on Kela's website(Link leads to external service)