Nursery image ban after the childcare amendment: photos, carer training and the register
The President has signed the amendment to the Act on childcare for children under three. A nursery, children’s club or day-care point may not publish a child’s image publicly, even with a parent’s consent. This article sets out what nursery software should hold: photos, carer training, group limits and register data.
On Thursday 20 August the Chancellery of the President announced that the amendment to the Act on childcare for children under three had been signed. PAP’s account was carried, among others, by Bankier: A shake-up in nurseries. A ban on publishing children’s photos and new meal standards. On Monday 24 August Prawo.pl covered the same statute: Ban on publishing children’s images in a nursery, with the President’s signature. The Act is dated 31 July 2026.
The owner of a private nursery and a municipality that runs its own setting read the same list, only the sign on the door is different. Photographs from the room that today go onto Facebook after a parent’s signature are meant to leave public channels. A childminder (dzienny opiekun) will no longer be a one-person institution — a day-care point is created instead. Carers gain training, an identity card and protection modelled on that of a public official. The kitchen waits for a regulation of the minister of health on meals. The register is to be one register, and electronic.
Nursery software will not replace the Empatia portal or the Nursery Register. It will not file an RKZ declaration for you and it will not sign the care standards that have already applied since 1 January 2026. It should hold what the office does not see in the middle of the day: who took the photo, who was shown it, which carer has valid training, how many children are in the group today, and whether the kitchen has a menu that matches the norm rather than the caterer’s habit.
GESOFT — Paweł Matusiak, Laravel, Vue, Android — will sit such a panel beside whatever you already use for attendance and fees, or write it from scratch when an off-the-shelf product cannot tell a parent gallery from a fan-page post. We do not burn a working parent app if it can be extended. Write to contact: how many places, how many groups, whether you also run a club or a point, what you run today, who uploads photos. A quote comes back in 24 hours. If an update from your current vendor is enough, we will say so.
The Act of 31 July 2026 and the President’s signature
The Sejm adopted the amendment on 17 July. The Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy set out the assumptions that day on gov.pl: Still better nursery care. The Sejm has adopted the MRPiPS Act. On 31 July the Sejm accepted the Senate’s amendments. President Karol Nawrocki signed the Act — the Chancellery said so on Thursday 20 August. Prawo.pl repeated the substance on Monday 24 August, already with the date of the instrument: the Act of 31 July 2026 amending the Act on childcare for children under three and certain other acts.
The President spoke of the safety of the youngest children, of a single electronic register of nurseries and clubs, and of a duty to provide access to a playground. Separately he pointed to a ban on public disclosure of children’s images by settings for marketing purposes. The quotation in Prawo.pl: we protect children against digital threats such as cyber-violence and deepfake material. He also said the Act lacks a systemic mechanism for indexing staff pay. We do not add that mechanism in this text — it is not there.
When the government sent the bill to the Sejm on 2 June, it planned three commencement dates. The main one: 1 January 2028. Part of the carers’ entitlements: 1 January 2027. Meal standards: 1 September 2027. That is what stands on the MRPiPS page when the bill was adopted: A new quality of care for children under three. After publication in the Journal of Laws you will check whether the Senate and the Sejm moved those dates. PAP, after the signature, puts it more loosely: most of the provisions are to come into force by 2028.
For a nursery manager in August 2026, a vacatio until 2028 does not put photos, staffing and limits on ice. You post pictures now. The training file either does not exist or sits in a binder with HR. You count a childminder’s limit on a scrap of paper. If the panel is to start holding these things before the vacatio runs out, the order and the deployment have to start earlier than December 2027.
A private setting with 40 places and a municipal nursery with 120 places read the same Act. The difference is who files the declaration: the Empatia portal or the Nursery Register. That is a separate chapter. One point is enough here: the amendment does not repeal the regulation on care standards that entered into force on 1 January 2026. That already binds you. What the President signed piles further duties on top.
The ban on publishing children’s images
MRPiPS put it in plain words: a complete ban on publishing children’s images by operators of a nursery, a children’s club or a day-care point. It does not matter whether the parent consented. Children’s photographs must not be made available publicly. PAP added exceptions that were not in the first paragraph of the ministry’s Sejm note: an image as a detail of a whole (a gathering, a landscape, a public event), and making images available solely to the parents of children in the care of that setting.
On a weekday morning it looks like this. A carer photographs the breakfast table because parents like to see that the child has eaten. Until now someone in the office posted the frame on the fan page, sometimes with a first name, sometimes with a sticker over the eyes that still left the embroidered name on the jumper. Once the ban applies, the same frame may go to the parent app — to the accounts of people whose children are in that group. On the nursery’s Facebook, on the website, in an admissions advert and in a TikTok reel, it may not.
The GDPR consent you collected with the contract does not open a public channel. That is a change some owners will read twice. For years a parent’s consent was the argument at an inspection and in advertising. The amendment says otherwise: consent does not legalise public publication. A panel that, on upload, only asks “is there consent in the contract?” will send the frame where the Act does not want it.
In nursery and preschool software a photograph should have several fields before it reaches any channel at all. Who took the frame (the carer, not “room 2”). When. Which children are in the picture — a list from the records, not a free-text caption. Whether a face is recognisable. Whether the frame goes to the parent gallery, to an internal file, or nowhere. A public channel as an option on a child’s photo should disappear from the form, not hide under a “marketing” checkbox.
We are not replacing data-protection law. The rules in GDPR in web applications stay: a legal basis, retention, who has access, how a parent asks for deletion. The amendment adds a ban on public publication that does not depend on consent. Two regimes on one frame. The bookkeeper does not have to decide that. The panel should not offer a “share on Facebook” button next to a photo in which a child from your room is visible.
A gallery only for parents, and the “detail of a whole” exception
The PAP exception is narrow, and it is worth writing it into the house rules rather than guessing at every frame. A detail of a whole is a photograph of a room full of guests on an open day, in which a particular child’s face is not the subject of the shot. It is not a close-up of a two-year-old with a spoon, cropped so that two classmates still sit in the frame. A view of the garden with silhouettes in the background can be defended. A portrait captioned “Antek, 18 months, settling in” cannot.
The second exception is simpler in the panel. Making images available solely to the parents of children in the care of that setting. That is a gallery in an app or a panel after login, with an account tied to the contract. A parent of a child in the “Ladybirds” group sees frames from their group, or — if you so decide — from the whole setting, but still behind a login. A person outside the contract does not walk in on a public link. A “forward to granny without an account” link is public disclosure under another name.
In a small nursery of 24 places the manager herself uploads photos in the evening, after the cups are washed. She sees 40 frames from the day, deletes the blurred ones, and puts the rest “for the parents”. If the app has one “photos” folder and three buttons — website, Facebook, WhatsApp group — two of the three are public or half-public. A WhatsApp group of parents to which someone added an aunt and a former nanny is not a channel solely for parents of children at that setting. A panel that ends with “send to the group” leaves you with evidence in a messenger cloud you do not control.
A larger nursery with two sites has a different temptation: a shared fan page for the chain. A frame from the Parkowa site goes onto an account that advertises admissions in another district. The parent at Parkowa did not consent to an admissions advert at Słoneczna, and after the amendment there is nothing to consent to — public publication falls away. A chain that keeps photos in one S3 bucket without a site tag will not reconstruct a year later where the frame came from. A tag for site, group and the list of children in the picture is dull until someone asks for deletion or arrives with a question from the office.
Retention. A settling-in photo from September 2026 does not have to hang in the gallery when the child leaves for preschool in 2028. The contract ends, you close the parent account, a frame with a face should have a deletion date or an internal archive with a different access mode. That is already GDPR, not the amendment, but the amendment means nobody can fall back on “mum ticked the fan-page box”. On the photo record it is worth having: date taken, date published in the gallery, planned deletion date, the person who approved the upload. The carer takes the frame, management approves. Without approval the frame stays on the work phone and does not leave.
Private phones. In some nurseries carers photograph on “their own” camera because there is no work tablet, or it is charging in the office. After the ban that is a hole no notice on the wall will close. Either the frame is born in the app on the room tablet and drops into the gallery with metadata, or it is born on a private iCloud and lives its own life. Software will not take a phone out of a pocket. It can require that an upload come from the carer’s panel account, from a device on a list, and not from an email saying “please post this, it’s sweet”.
The day-care point: 16 children, two carers, cover
The amendment changes the status of the childminder. They will no longer be a one-person care institution — except for a person acting on their own account and in their own name. A day-care point is created: a place, not a person. In a point, a group of no more than 16 children is looked after by at least two carers. One carer may look after eight children. Premises requirements are to be simpler than in a nursery, closer to a home. PAP and MRPiPS describe this in the same way.
Bodies that have employed childminders — and childminders in business whom the amendment moves into a point — become a place with staff. Changing a carer or arranging temporary cover is meant to be possible without excessive formality. For a municipality that for years did not want to create childminders because “if she is ill, there is nobody to cover”, that is the argument. For a firm that employs five childminders in three flats, it is a change of contract, of the address in the register, and of the rota.
The panel must be able to count this morning, not in the annual report. How many children are booked in that premises today. How many carers are on shift. Whether any child is under one, has a disability certificate or needs particular care — because that changes the limit for a childminder on their own account, and in a point you still need to know who is left in the room with whom. If at 7:40 one carer rings to say her own child is ill, nursery software should show whether the second person in the premises can stay with eight, or whether you open cover and whom from the qualified list you call.
Sixteen in one premises is not “up to sixteen in the contract, and eighteen on duty because two from the next group came with mum for an hour”. Attendance and the limit are two views of the same morning. Attendance without a limit lets you take a child “for today” over the cap. A limit without attendance makes you trust the contract rather than who walked through the cloakroom. Software for a preschool and nursery already describes enrolments and fees. Here you add a count of carers on shift and a block on admission when the pair “children / carers” goes beyond 16 and 8.
Cover. A carer’s record should hold authorisation to work in that premises, valid training, and whether the person is on the point’s payroll, on the municipality’s cover list, or in business. A parent who brings a child to “Mrs Kasia” should see in the app that today it is Mrs Magda, by name and with a note “cover, qualifications OK”. You do not have to make a crisis announcement of it. You need somewhere to take the sentence from when the parent asks in the cloakroom and Magda is in the room for the first time.
Premises. A point in a first-floor tenement flat and a nursery in a former clinic are two building regimes. The amendment promises simplification for a point. The panel does not issue an occupancy permit. It can hold a scan of the decision, the floor area, the number of places from the entry, and the date of the fire-extinguisher check beside the rota. When the wójt arrives to inspect the standards that have already applied since January, it is better to have those PDFs under the child and under the premises, not in the mailbox of a former bookkeeper.
A childminder on their own account: limits of 5, 8 and 3
A person acting on their own account remains. They may look after at most five children alone. With a supporting person who has the required qualifications — eight. If the group includes a child under one, a child with a disability, or a child who needs particular care, the limit falls: at most three alone, or five with a supporting person. That is how PAP put it after the signature, in line with earlier government papers.
This is arithmetic that breaks on one new infant. A childminder has four children aged 1–2. In October an infant arrives after parental leave. The limit of 5 becomes a limit of 3, or a supporting person must come in and the limit goes to 5. If contracts with the four parents already hang, and the infant is to “come in because there is a spare place in someone’s head”, the panel should show the conflict at enrolment, not after the first day when the room holds four plus an infant and one adult.
A supporting person is not the neighbour downstairs who “likes children”. Qualifications belong in the record, with a training date and a scope. If the supporting person is only there on Tuesdays, on Wednesday the limit returns to working alone. The supporting person’s rota and the group limit are one screen. Splitting that into an Excel sheet for “children” and one for “the ladies” ends with nobody remembering on Wednesday morning that Magda is off.
Business on one’s own account also means KSeF, social-security contributions and e-Deliveries, which the nursery amendment does not settle. Invoices for care, if they go to a parent’s firm or to a municipality under a subsidy, fall under KSeF in a firm application. Care software does not have to be accounting software. It should hand the bookkeeper: who was billed for September, how many hours, whether there was an absence, whether the municipality tops up. The rest goes to the ledgers. We do not replace the accountancy office.
In a municipality that is only now moving childminders into points, some people will stay in business and some will join a point as staff. For a year you will have both models. A panel that only knows “a nursery with groups” and cannot handle a sole trader will make you keep a second register in a notebook. A notebook will not count the limit of 3 when an infant appears in the group.
Training of 30, 80 and 310 hours in the carer’s record
The amendment tidies qualifications. For candidates with a relevant higher degree: 80 hours of professional practice and 30 hours of training in the care standards. For others — 310 hours of initial training. People with at least three years’ experience have 30 hours of standards training as part of initial qualification. All carers must update their knowledge systematically. The cost falls on the operator of the setting. At bill stage the government also wrote that within two years of the provisions coming into force every carer would complete 30 hours of further training.
A carer’s record that has a “education” field and a start date is not enough. You need: the path (relevant degree / three years’ experience / other), hours of practice, the date and provider of the 30-hour course, the date of the 310-hour course if it applies, the date of the next update, and whether the cost came from the setting’s budget or from an EU project. When the wójt or the voivode asks about staff standards, you answer with a list, not a “training 2019–2025” folder in a cupboard.
Paid time for raising qualifications: 16 hours or 2 days a year. That is an absence on the rota, not a wish. If in September three carers from one room want to go on the same course on the same Friday, someone has to stay with the children. A leave-and-training panel that cannot see the carer limit on the shift will approve all three applications because “16 hours are due”. They are due. Not all at once if, after they leave, one person remains with twelve children.
A carer with 12 years’ service who “has always worked that way” still falls under the duty to update. The amendment does not leave a gate marked “until retirement without a course”. In the staff room that will cause friction. In the record there should be a date and a confirmation, not the manager’s view that Mrs Krysia knows it all anyway. Mrs Krysia may know more than the trainer. The legislator still wants an entry.
Funding sits with the operator. In a private nursery of 18 places, 310 hours for a new person is not a line you “somehow fold into fees from January”. You need to know whom you are hiring onto which path before you sign the contract. A candidate with early-years pedagogy goes onto 80 + 30. A candidate from another field — onto 310. The difference in the calendar for bringing a new person in is months, not a weekend. Recruitment without that information in the job offer ends in a surprise in the first week.
Fields worth having on a carer before anyone asks you about qualifications:
- qualification path: relevant degree, at least 3 years’ service, or 310 hours of training
- date and provider of 80 hours of practice, if it applies
- date, hours and provider of standards training (30 h)
- date of the next knowledge update, and whether the 16 h / 2 days in this year have been taken
- whether the person may be alone with the group, or only as support
- whether protection on the model of a public official, and an identity card, have already been granted (when those provisions commence)
Identity card, 33 per cent concession and protection on the model of a public official
At the end of 2024 about 33,000 carers worked in institutions caring for children under three. Nearly half — in settings run by local-government units. That is MRPiPS’s figure, and PAP repeated it. The amendment answers that group’s demands: legal protection provided for public officials, a digital carer’s identity card (or a physical document where there is no mObywatel), a 33 per cent concession on public collective transport, a system of awards from the minister, the voivode and the wójt, mayor or city president. 4 April is to be Young Child Carer’s Day.
Protection on the model of a public official is not a button in your panel. It is a provision a carer will use when a parent raises their voice or when someone walks onto the floor. The panel can hold a procedure and a number that management rings. It does not replace the police station and it does not issue the identity card — that is mObywatel or a document under the Act. You can have a field “card number / date of issue” so that HR is not hunting for it in a March email.
The 33 per cent concession will apply when the relevant article commences. Papers around the bill mentioned 1 April 2028 for identity cards and concessions. After publication in the Journal of Laws you will check the date. Until then do not promise carers a discount on a ticket that does not yet exist. When it does, a list of those entitled in HR and a copy of the card in the file will serve a carrier better than your dashboard.
Awards and Carer’s Day. On 4 April you can have an entry in the setting’s calendar, as you do for Children’s Day. The awards system sits outside you: minister, voivode, wójt. If the municipality asks for a nomination, a short card will help: length of service, training in the past year, a description of the work. That does not have to be an “awards” module. It is enough that a PDF can be pulled from the record without rewriting it at night.
In a municipal nursery these entitlements will land in the work regulations and with the union. In a private one — in the contract and in a conversation about why fees are not falling, given that “the state gave a bus discount”. The concession is for the carer, not for the fee. It is worth having that sentence ready before someone confuses the two at a parents’ meeting.
Collective meals from 1 September 2027
The amendment introduces statutory requirements for collective meals in nurseries and children’s clubs. Settings are to use foodstuffs that match nutrition standards for the Polish population. In the kitchen that means less processed food. The detail is to be set in a regulation of the minister of health, agreed with the minister of family. At bill stage the government pointed to 1 September 2027 as the date for meal standards. Until then the kitchen works with what you already have: a catering contract, a menu, allergies, parents’ declarations.
There is no regulation yet, so we do not guess the grammes of dairy or a ban on a particular sausage. We know what the ministry wrote: standards for the Polish population, a limit on unhealthy and processed food, an implementing act on the health side. When the regulation appears, someone in the setting must be able to compare the menu with the table. Today that person is often cook and manager in one. The panel can hold a weekly menu, the supplier, the batch, a list of allergens and the child’s card with a note “no cow’s milk”. You will pin the regulation’s norms when they exist.
An allergy and an elimination diet do not wait for 2027. A parent brings a certificate, you agree a substitute meal or a second dish from home, depending on the rules. In the morning someone in the kitchen must see that in the “Bees” group two children do not eat egg, and the supplier has sent scrambled eggs. A note on the fridge works while there is one shift. When the cook is covered, the note vanishes. A field on the child’s card and a “do not serve today” view on the attendance list cost fewer nerves than a phone call at 11:30.
Drinking water. In papers around the bill (Sejm print 2698, the Legalis note) a nursery, club and day-care point are to provide unrestricted access to drinking water. That is a jug, a cup labelled with a name, and a habit, not a line on the caterer’s invoice. A register will not measure it in millilitres. It can have an opening checklist for the room: water put out, cups clean, a child with a fluid restriction — a note. An inspector who asks about water does not want your slide. They want cups on the table.
Outside catering. Many private nurseries do not cook. A firm from another district cooks and brings a thermal box at 10:45. The catering contract should let you require a composition that will match the future standard, not only “soup and a main”. When the regulation appears, an addendum to the contract will be cheaper than changing supplier in August 2027 under pressure. In the panel: supplier, contract number, date of the meal addendum, the person on your side who accepts the week’s menu. An acceptance “I have seen it, it is OK” with a name is better than silent receipt of the boxes.
Not a public point, but a practical one: a photograph of the plate that a carer wants to send to parents returns to the image ban. A plate without the child’s face can be shown. A face over the plate — into the logged-in gallery, not onto the nursery’s Instagram. The kitchen and the image meet at the same meal. Two chapters, one table.
The playground and play outdoors
The Act introduces rules on playgrounds at nurseries and children’s clubs. It requires childminders to give children access to a safe space for play outdoors. At the signature the President listed a duty to provide access to a playground as one of the requirements on operators. At bill stage the government wrote that children’s clubs and day-care points would be obliged to provide a safe space for activities in the fresh air.
A city-centre nursery that since 2014 has used the square around the corner needs to know whether that square counts as “access”, or whether a fenced space at the building is required. We will not settle that from the press notes — you will wait for the wording in the Journal of Laws and any implementing rules. Until then it is worth writing down what you use today: your own garden, a patio, a city agreement for the square, a walk to the municipal playground. Date, address, who is responsible for inspecting equipment. When a definition arrives, you have something to compare.
A point in a flat with no balcony. The amendment wants conditions close to a home and, at the same time, space outdoors. That may be the housing community’s yard, a small garden, an agreement with the neighbouring nursery for an hour on their playground. A log of “where we go today” with the time of leaving and returning is simple and looks better at an inspection than a carer’s memory. It does not replace a swing-inspection report. The swing has an inspection from the maintainer. The panel holds the scan and the next date.
Going outdoors is also a list of children, consents for a walk off site (if you collect them) and a note for the parent that at 10:15 the group is not in the room. A parent app that shows “on the playground” instead of silence cuts the calls of “why is nobody answering the intercom”. Group status: in the room, in the garden, on a walk, coming back. Three words, no decoration.
Equipment. Sandpit, slide, fence. Inspection, defect, date of repair. That is the same pattern as defects in software for a property manager, only on 200 metres of garden. You do not need to buy a CAFM. A list with a date and a photo of a cracked board is enough so that a child is not stood on a board that “someone was supposed to tell the maintainer about”.
The electronic register, Empatia and RKZ applications
At the signature the President spoke of a single electronic register of nurseries and children’s clubs. The bill (print 2698) envisaged a register of care institutions covering nurseries, clubs, day-care points, people employed there and childminders on their own account. GESOFT does not build that register in place of the state. You build yourselves a copy of the data you must hold anyway, so that the official entry does not lie against the room.
Since 1 January 2026 the care standards already apply. Private operators filed a declaration on the Empatia portal: RKZ-8 if the setting was entered before that date (deadline 28 February 2026), RKZ-1 on a new entry. Public operators completed data in the Nursery Register system. The MRPiPS notice of 13 January 2026 is here: Modern and friendly nurseries. New care standards come into force. The new single register in the amendment will sit on what you already complete. Not on a blank sheet.
Data in Empatia and in the Nursery Register are to be current. The ministry wrote that in so many words. In an ordinary year someone clicks “no change” once, and in the meantime the manager, the address of the premises or the number of places changes. Nursery software can hold a list of fields from the official entry and the date of the last check against reality: number of places, address, form (nursery / club / point), the person in charge, date of the standards declaration. When you change something in a parent contract or in the premises, a checklist “does this go to Empatia / the Register” appears on its own. Not after an inspection.
An RKZ-1 application for a new institution. A person who opens a club of 20 places in October must meet the standards before the entry. A panel that starts “from the first child, paperwork later” reverses the order. First the entry, then the children. On the opening project card: date of application, date of entry, date the first child was admitted. If the third is before the second, you have a problem a pretty parent app will not fix.
We do not replace the Empatia portal. Login, signature, the queue of applications — that is their system. Your panel holds scans, application numbers and a reminder that after the entry you have 3 days to complete the information on standards (that is what the January 2026 notice says for new institutions). A reminder in the manager’s calendar is cheaper than a call from the office.
Attendance, fees and KSeF beside the care records
The image ban and carer training do not suspend fees. The parent still pays by the 10th of the month, the municipality still tops up under the programmes, the invoice still has to go out. If you issue B2B invoices — to a parent’s firm, a foundation, another nursery for room hire — you are in KSeF. A consumer-parent on a receipt or a named invoice is a separate path. The detail of the duty is in KSeF 2026 in a firm application. Care software should hand over amounts and NIP numbers, not pretend to be a till.
Attendance. In a nursery it matters who came in, at what time, who collected. A list in the morning and in the afternoon. A person authorised to collect — name, document, date of the authorisation. The amendment does not invent this; parents already know it. After the amendment the same list feeds the limit of 16 and 8. A child taken “for an hour because mum is at the doctor” also enters the count. If you accept such hours, an “hourly attendance” field must add a head to the limit for the time of the stay, not for the whole day in advance and not at all.
Absence and fees. The rules say whether illness reduces the charge, or not. The panel calculates according to the rules, not according to a conversation in the cloakroom. When a parent writes on chat “not coming today, please deduct” and the rules deduct only from the 8th day of a sick note, the system should show the rule, not start a dispute. There will be a dispute anyway. Better that both sides see the same table.
Chat with the parent. After the image ban, chat cannot be a box for photos of “please put Ania’s face up, granny wants it”. Either a gallery in the app, or nothing. Chat for notices: closed tomorrow, please bring slippers, nits in the group next door. A photo of nits — without the child’s face, thank you. That sounds fussy because it is fussy. A detail that lands in a WhatsApp group is public faster than a post on the website.
A preschool in the same building. Some operators run a nursery and a preschool. The amendment concerns care up to the age of 3. The 3–6 group has different education law. A panel that mixes the lists will send preschool frames under the nursery regime or the other way round. Two regimes, two group types, one parent login if the child moves up. A course enrolment system is another sector, but the same lesson: one calendar does not mean one legal basis.
SaaS, bespoke software and questions for the vendor
If you have one site, three groups, fees and a parent gallery, a ready-made SaaS for a nursery will often do. You ask the vendor whether after the amendment it will switch off public publication, whether it will separate the gallery from the fan page, whether it can do the 16/8 limit and a training record of 30/80/310. If the answer is “we will do it in the 2028 backlog”, you ask for a date in writing. If the answer is “GDPR consent is enough”, you look for someone who has read the Act.
Bespoke work (Laravel, Vue, Android, Paweł Matusiak) makes sense when the model does not fit the box: a network of day-care points in three municipalities, a nursery plus a club plus a preschool, billing the municipality and the parent on one child, a carer app in the room without private phones, a bilingual panel for parents from Ukraine. Or when the current system works, but the gallery sits on WordPress with a social plug-in and nobody dares to touch it. We do not burn what collects the fees. We add image and staffing records, or we stitch them on.
Android in the room. A tablet at the door: attendance, collection list, upload to the parent gallery, status “in the garden”. No Facebook in the launcher. A carer’s account, not an account called “room2”. When the carer leaves, the account dies, the frames stay in your database. That is why a private phone drops out. Not aesthetics.
What we do not do. We do not replace Empatia, the Nursery Register, KSeF, the ledgers, PIP, sanitary inspection or the ministry of health. We do not issue a carer’s identity card. We do not certify a menu. We are not the municipality’s registration authority. We are here so that in the morning in the room and in the evening in the office these duties have fields, dates and a person, not a pile of print-outs.
Off-the-shelf versus a commission — at more length in Ready-made software or bespoke software. The short version here: if the SaaS vendor can do the image ban, the group limit and the training, stay. If your day-care point has three premises, cover from a municipal list and catering with an addendum for the coming regulation, write to contact. In 24 hours a quote comes back, or a sentence that the box will do.
Inspection of care standards already in force since January 2026
The amendment the President signed in August sits on a regulation that already works. Since 1 January 2026 the care standards have been mandatory for nurseries, children’s clubs and childminders — public and private. They cover the organisation of care, staff, co-operation with parents and monitoring. Municipalities have inspected compliance from that date. An RKZ-8 declaration or an entry in the Nursery Register was due by 28 February 2026 for settings already operating. If someone did not file it, the new Act does not repair that.
A wójt’s inspection does not look like an ISO audit. An official arrives with an authorisation, asks for the list of children, the list of carers, the standards declaration, the rules, the menu, and sometimes walks onto the floor. They ask who is at work, whether the ratio of children to carers holds, whether a parent has a way to make contact, whether there is a procedure when a child falls ill during the day. The standards in the regulation are “essential” — that is how the instrument named them. A missing declaration, or a declaration that does not match the room, is not a “we will complete it next week” at the door.
A scene from a private nursery of 36 places. Tuesday, 9:20, two cars in the car park because of a shift change. The manager is on a course in town. The deputy opens the cupboard: a “standards 2026” folder, inside a print-out of RKZ-8 from February and rules from 2023 that still contain consent to publish photos on Facebook. The attendance list is in the app. The list of carers’ qualifications is in an Excel sheet with HR, who is working from home. The official wants both. The deputy logs in on the manager’s account because she has no account of her own with HR rights. That is a quarter of an hour you cannot later explain with “we have a system, nobody knows the password”.
A panel that will survive such a visit has three things on one deputy account. A current list of children with groups. A current list of carers with the qualification path and who is in the room today. A PDF of the standards declaration and the date it was filed. The rest — menu, water, garden, collection authorisations — can sit deeper. Those three must be on top. A “management cover” account with read access, without the right to delete frames and without the right to post photos outside.
Co-operation with parents, which the regulation also names, is a notice that the child has not eaten, has a fever, is being collected by someone else, that tomorrow is closed. A parent app does that more quietly than a phone into the room during a nappy change. After the image ban the same app cannot also be a marketing channel. Split it: a service message and a logged-in gallery on one side, admissions and a website without children’s faces on the other. If today you have one fan page for everything, the standards inspection and the image amendment will hit the same profile.
Monitoring of the standards. The regulation requires that data in the register match the facts. Once a quarter someone in the setting compares: number of places in the entry, number of contracts, number of children present at the peak. If the entry says 40, there are 42 contracts, and on Tuesday morning 38 walk in because two are ill, you are still over the entry on contracts. A new enrolment without an amendment to the entry is a separate conversation with the municipality. The panel shows three numbers side by side. It does not interpret the provision. It shows that 42 is larger than 40.
An August 2026 checklist and questions for the integrator
The amendment’s vacatio is long, and photographs go out tomorrow. The list below is not the Act. It is what a setting can do this month, before the Journal of Laws pins down the articles. Some points already follow from the care standards in force since January 2026. Some — from the ban that will come with the amendment, though the habit should come off earlier.
- Write down where a child’s photo leaves today: website, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, parent app, a newsletter in the cloakroom.
- Switch off public posts with a child’s face. Leave a gallery after login, or drop photos until the panel can do a parents-only channel.
- On the carer’s record add the qualification path and training dates, even if 30/80/310 hours come later.
- Count how many children and how many carers are in each premises on a typical Tuesday at 8:15. Compare with 16 and 8 (a point) or 5/8/3 (business).
- Check whether the standards declaration (RKZ-8 / Nursery Register) has been filed and whether Empatia matches the premises.
- Write down where you have outdoor space and who inspects the equipment.
- In the catering contract add that the menu must be capable of being aligned with the health minister’s regulation when it appears.
- Ask your current software vendor the points on the list below. “Does not apply, we have GDPR consent” is an answer.
Questions for the vendor that are worth sending by email, not on a sales chat:
- Can public publication of a child’s photo be switched off, regardless of consent in the contract?
- Does the gallery work only for parent accounts of children at that setting, with no public link and no WhatsApp group?
- Do you record the author, the date, the list of children and the site on a frame?
- Does the system count the 16 children / 2 carers limit in a point and 5–8–3 for a childminder in business, including an infant and a disability certificate?
- Does the carer’s record have fields for 30, 80 and 310 hours and for 16 hours / 2 days of training in the year?
- Is carer cover visible in the parent app the same day?
- Can panel data be set against the Empatia / Nursery Register entry without retyping?
- Who is the controller of the photos under GDPR: you, the vendor, or “somehow both”?
A scene from which to start a deployment. Monday, 7:50, cloakroom. Two parents, one child with a cold, one carer on sick leave. The second person opens the tablet: attendance, limit, cover from the list, a message to the group’s parents “today Magda is with the children”. No photo on the fan page captioned “healthy and happy here”. At 16:10 collection only by people on the authorisation. At 16:40 the manager sees that Mrs Magda’s 30-hour training expires in 40 days and that Empatia still has the old phone number of the setting. You already have that day. Today part of it sits in someone’s head, not in fields.
If after this list it turns out the box will do — stay with it and pin the dates with the vendor. If it turns out a network of points, two municipalities and a gallery nobody controls, write. We do not have to build everything. Often it is enough to bolt image and staffing records onto the attendance you already collect.
In a nursery that for years posted frames to a fan page, there is still an archive to tidy. Posts with faces from 2024 and 2025 do not become lawful because of the amendment. It is worth having a list of URLs and the date you took the frame off the public channel. The panel will not do that for the Facebook administrator. It can hold a checklist: profile X, date of review, who clicked delete, whether a copy went to the parent gallery, or whether it vanished. A parent who in six months asks “where is the birthday photo” will hear a fact, not “marketing wanted to delete it”.
Frequently asked questions
- May a nursery publish a child’s photo if the parent has consented?
- Once the amendment’s ban applies — not on a public channel. MRPiPS wrote that a parent’s consent does not matter for public publication. PAP pointed to exceptions: an image as a detail of a whole, and making images available solely to parents of children at that setting. GDPR consent with the contract does not open Facebook.
- When does the image ban apply?
- The Act of 31 July 2026 has been signed (Chancellery of the President, 20 August 2026). Most of the amendment’s provisions are to come into force by 2028. At bill stage the government planned 1 January 2028 as the main date. You will check the date of the particular article after publication in the Journal of Laws. The habit of public posting is worth dropping earlier.
- How does a day-care point differ from a nursery?
- A point is a new form: a place in which childminders provide care. A maximum of 16 children, at least two carers, one carer — up to eight children. Premises requirements are to be simpler than in a nursery. The nursery remains a separate form with its existing rigour.
- How many children may a childminder in business have?
- Alone, at most five; with a qualified supporting person — eight. When the group includes an infant, a child with a disability or a child who needs particular care: three alone, or five with a supporting person. You count the limit at enrolment, not after the first day.
- What training will carers need?
- A relevant degree: 80 hours of practice and 30 hours of standards training. Others: 310 hours of initial training. People with at least 3 years’ experience: 30 hours of standards training as part of initial qualification. Updating knowledge — funded by the operator. 16 hours or 2 days of paid training time a year.
- Will GESOFT replace the Empatia portal and the Nursery Register?
- No. RKZ-8 / RKZ-1 declarations and public entries stay in the state’s systems. The panel can hold a copy of the data, scans of applications and a reminder to update. It does not log into Empatia for you.
- What about meals until the health minister’s regulation?
- The amendment introduces a duty to match nutrition standards for the Polish population. Detail in an MZ regulation agreed with the minister of family. The government planned meal standards from 1 September 2027. Until then: a menu, allergies, a catering contract ready for an addendum. We do not guess grammes.
- Will a photo in the parent app be lawful?
- PAP pointed to making images available solely to parents of children in the care of that setting as an exception. A gallery after login, with no public link and no WhatsApp group of aunts, fits that description. You will check the final wording in the published text of the Act. A public fan page — no.
- We have a nursery and a preschool in one building. One programme?
- You can have one parent login and two regimes behind it. The amendment concerns care up to the age of 3. The preschool follows education law. Mixing group lists is a mistake. When a child moves up, you close the nursery regime and open the preschool one.
- How long does a GESOFT quote take, and must we replace the system?
- You write the state of the setting to the contact form. A reply in 24 hours. If SaaS can handle the image ban and the limits, you stay with it. Bespoke (Laravel, Vue, Android) — when you have a network of points, several forms of care, or a gallery that cannot be switched off. We do not burn working fee collection.
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