Productivity Commission
Inquiry into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning
Comments from people who both useandwork in education and care services
Included are only those comments received by 5September 2014,for which the submitted gave their approval for use of their comment by the Commission. Some comments have been edited to remove information which the Commission considered could enable identification of the submitter.
- Very curious to see how a pay raise to child care workers(fair work commission application) will make child care more affordable,will the government pay for the raise?,or centres will be stopped from raising fees?
- what about defence families and child care for them on bases
- The research highlights the value of children participating in a high quality Kindy program before attending Prep. From personal experience I have seen how much easier the transition to school is post a high quality Kindy program. However cost is a significant barrier. As a single income family we receive some support towards Kindy fees. At the end of the year however we are still out of pocket approximately $2300 (this will be greater in 2014). That is a significant financial burden and definitely a barrier for many families. (To add context to this story the Kindy program my children attend is at our local mainstream C and K service). Surely a universal service that has so many proven benefits for children should be financially accessible to all...
- I am currently undertaking a qualification in ECT and have a daughter in long day car and kindergarten. Realising there is (will be) a shortage in ECT I put a great deal of thought into my career change. I believe that the early years are critical to a child's development and have great influence on a child's learning trajectory. I made the change to bring a positive influence on children's learning and development. I have worked extremely hard in the Masters course and have six months until qualified. I am disappointed that someone with only a partial qualification can be considered my equivalent. It is disrespectful to fully qualified ECTs and especially the children who deserve the best education and care. The change in qualification requirements has not suddenly been made. Perhaps if the private sector adequately paid and recognised the importance of ECTs there would not be this shortage. The interim measures are just that - interim. Anything else is a trade off in our children's future's.
- I believe the first five years is the most important of a child's life. Children spend a large proportion of their lives in formalised care settings. People who work in these settings need to understand brain development and children's development so they can offer these children the best start to life. It is not okay to have underqualifed people &babysitting; anybody can do that from home. Early childhood services are so much more then babysitting. Children and families deserve the best and it should be delivered by knowledgeable trained people.
- I strongly stand by the National Quality framework and all of the standards. I believe that we should be ensuring that we maintain high levels of child to adult ratios. I also feel that the EYLF has began to raise the level of professionalism in ECEC.
I also believe that we need to ensure the training being received is of a higher quality as currently a large portion of our industry is under skilled due to badly operated training organisations who deliver the diploma of children's services online and over short periods of time.
All studying ECE MUST be required to do practical placements in services.
I would urge the government to push forward with the NQF rather than take any steps backward.
- It is hard being a parent it is expensive having children in daycare ,but as a business or employee at a daycare centre ,it just isn't enough being paid 19 dollars an hour,the government helps as well. I don't know really what to suggest,maybe children bringing own ,food ,sunscreen,nappies ,drinks what allow the costs to go down,the government could offer assistance for a solar electricity and water tanks for centres.
- What a shambolic state our industry has found itself in. Perhaps more than any other, private operators in the long-day sector have suffered immeasurably throughout the period commencing 24th November 2007 until now. Our industry has been high-jacked by greedy unions, mis-informed academic pin-heads, and dim politicians who would have no-hope of running a school fete cake stall, let alone a national economy. The results from this perfect storm speak for themselves – a total screw up of epic proportions. At the same time our largest industry player, who although far from being perfect - at least gave private industry participants a voice, has fallen from grace only for their prime assets to be broken up and the best 640 centres virtually gifted to the social welfare brigade which will without a doubt end up replicating the Australian Broadcasting Commission funding model.
Unions also weighed in…..never mind that wages in the sector were already spiralling out of control under the ‘Fair Work Act’ arrangements already put in place…..they sent their stooges to storm the lunchroom of our premises and whip staff into a frenzy that the only way they could do better on the wages front was to join the union and press their employers to sign up for the union-designed EBA’s etc. Just imagine what that did for harmony among our 30 employees. Can you believe this nonsense really happens in modern Australia? We were legally powerless to stop this arrogant and un-australian behaviour. It’s no wonder manufacturers such as General Motors can’t run away fast enough from employing people in this country….and who could blame them ? We’ve just got something terribly skewiff in this country. Don’t even start me on things like payroll tax.
Hmmm…..as usual though, as furious as the politicians and unions went about ‘fixing’ the crisis……..but wait, they themselves actually WERE the crisis…….two key stakeholders were never consulted. These were (i) private industry participants such as us, and (ii) users of our service….ie Parents.
If Kevin and Julia really were there to help, they could have done a lot worse than listen to what these groups had to say. You see we actually operate in a market place – if our service stinks the parents tend to vote with their feet and go somewhere they perceive does it better. Only they are not doing that…..they are just choosing to stay away from all day care centres more than they might like to ‘cause its just too bloody dear for them. End of story. Quality or a perceived lack there-of just doesn’t come into it.
The changing of the ratios is just another disastrous reform. If it is needed at all then these should only affect new services and never apply to existing services. That’s just common-sense to everyone except government policymakers who have never had to mortgage their homes and endanger their family’s financial future by investing in a business that attempts to contribute to the national economy as well as perform a service generally appreciated by working families.
The forced imposition of university-qualified preschool teachers into a day-care environment is yet another breathtakingly ridiculous decision. In a private market place with government imposed regulation again this is beyond the limits of affordability for parents at a privately-run centre. The solution is to either have an (entirely appropriate) far more easily-obtained qualification attached to a normal day-care worker so she can be tagged ‘the daycare teacher’ OR have the government foot the entire wages bill for fully qualified teachers as part of the existing education system, and simply “bond” them somehow to private daycare facilities. No other options will work……what we are seeing under the present regime is a bit like a failed organ transplant…… the teachers making themselves available to daycare centres are often ‘below par’ compared to the ones teaching at regular schools, and even if they are good at their job they are simply unaffordable under the day-care pricing structures.
I’d like now to offer a couple of pro-active suggestions to the way in which parent fees are subsidised by the federal government in terms of those payments being received by our business :
1) Have only one ‘subsidy’ that we have to deal with and MAKE IT SIMPLE!…..rather than multiple benefits that are extremely complicated for both employees of our company and parents who are our customers. We are dealing with constantly changing government-determined CCB percentages, rebate entitlements and other social engineering schemes such as JET, AMEP, child innoculations etc. My view is that we (the business operator) should tap into only ONE source of subsidy for each customer, which keeps it simple for us. Think of this like a ‘frequent flyers’ program under another name……we don’t want to know or care how a customer accumulates the benefit points (that should be confidential between the customer and the government anyway) however we are just the business where the customer gets to ‘cash in’ those points. That way all the mindless carry-on that goes on with all the various government programs can be handled just between the parent and the government and we have nothing to do with that awful cocktail. We’re over it.
2) One of the big issues coming up for the Abbott government is the way in which it is going to fund its Paid Parental Leave scheme. Again we have a government (Liberal this time) choosing to impose its view of the world upon taxpayers without first consulting the main industry that will be directly affected by such a broad-brush approach…..iedaycare centres that currently take care of babies and infants, enabling valued female employees to regain their place at work at the most convenient time. To me the broad thrust of this entire scheme is toxic to say the least.
However, assuming this scheme is going to get up in one way shape or form, we MUST at the same time have an option where the employer and the mother concerned can mutually elect that she can return to work much earlier than 26 weeks and package a major part of that $50,000 or $75,000 cap into FBT-FREE childcare payments. It’s a no-brainer! Companies would much rather foot the bill for childcare as an overhead for their star employees, particularly if they weren’t lumbered with an unjust FBT tax bill that relates to their employees personal situation, than pay top dollar (via a 2% levy) NOT to have the benefit of those same employees. Is that not obvious to politicians? If not it should be!
Having childcare provided by an approved child care provider absolutely needs to be exempt from Fringe Benefits Tax in any case. If we want governments to really be family-friendly in a way that actually works, without the need to creation even one bloated public service job – they need go no further than implement this change immediately.
Cut the nanny-state ‘solution’ and let market forces play their part in giving talented women the work / life balance the government thinks they need.
I could go on…..but alert readers will have picked up from the tone of my comments that the biggest challenges faced by private industry participants mainly stem from ludicrous and ill-conceived government policies brought about over the last 6 years. If we could immediately dump everything single change the last government rushed in, then have a calm sit around a table with the new lot to rationally figure out what needs to be done whilst at all times showing polite regard to the sustainable mental welfare of people heavily invested in the industry, then this would be seen by me as a massive, positive step.
At the very least governments must heed the wisdom and input of industry leaders such as Gwynn Bridge in reshaping the childcare industry into a far better direction than where we are heading now, otherwise we might as well get used to thinking that we won’t have an industry worth being in for very much longer. We will go the way of the car-making industry in double-quick time. Unchecked rapid wage escalation in a labour-intensive service industry has a proven history of taken business down in this once-great country.
- Our family have found it difficult to access affordable child care services that cover our specific needs. My husband and I are both teachers: my husband is starting out so he accepts contract and relief work while he awaits a permanent position; I have a permanent full-time position but am striving to maintain time at home with my young children as well as needing to work 1-2 days per week in order to cope financially, thus I have been accepting contract and relief work also. Our difficulty is that child care positions are regular days per week and must be paid for whether you've accessed that day or not. Particularly on relief work, we're not sure if we're going to receive a phone call to work that day or not but we have to pay the full amount to maintain that position for the days that we do get a call. It can be very costly, particularly in the weeks where we don't receive any relief work so dont access the service but still pay child care fees. It must be very difficult for others, such as casual workers, who must be in the same boat as well. Otherwise we're quite happy with everything. Thanks, I hope this feedback helps.
- We currently pay $95 and don't provide anything (unless its formula or breastmilk for bubs). I sent cloth nappies for my son, and the centre was SO happy to use them instead of their disposables. Have never had a problem with cost or quality, especially as someone who works and studies within the same industry.Having seen the scope of centres in a number of cities/towns, there are a number of places I wouldn't send my child/ren, and if that was all that was available I'd rather not work.
There needs to be a complete overview of the early childhood sector to ensure that ALL children are receiving the same level of care. The increase in qualifications for staff, as well as the new ratios and the national implementation of the Early Years Learning Framework is a step in the right direction. However, this leaves centres (and FDC educators) having to pay increased staffing costs (or lose places to ensure staffing remains at the ratio levels)...which in turn leads to an increase for families in terms of their fees.
What we really need is for the Federal Government to step up to the table and provide more funding - whether in assistance with wages (oh, wait, the LABOR government had implemented that only to have it stripped by this new lot...) OR to provide more assistance in terms of the CCB and CCR. Without this, all we are simply doing it robbing Peter (the parents) to pay Paul (the staff). Surely there has to be a better way???
- The Tender process is so difficult and convoluted that smaller quality providers do not have the resources to put in tenders and to secure OSHC programs. The tender process and the 'RENT' back cost are often prohibitive to the extent where the whole business model as a provider becomes unsustainable.
- My two comments for consideration refer to the OSHC sector.