I find myself reading a lot about the state of Australia's child care services each week. Not by choice, but because I work for a training organisation that sells child care courses, and it pays to know what's happening in the industry.
I'm generally bemused by what I see. It seems every day there is a new hullabaloo about the cost of using child care services. On the other end of the spectrum, child care workers seem to get paid peanuts and are also raising hell (justifiably). So where is all that money going?
Normally I'd chalk it up to the general lack of understanding of normal inflation over time (after all, if child care costs go up 3% but your salary increases 5%, your real income has increased). However, with prices increasing up to 7x faster than inflation, there have to be some serious factors contributing to price hikes.
One possible contributing factor I've heard of is the new requirement to have 100% staffing levels over lunch (where previously centres could run as low as 60%). This sounds entirely plausible (after all, wage costs in Australia are very high).
Of course, if wage costs are driving the price rises then the next few years look rough. With educator to child ratios decreasing (ie each child care worker will look after less children) staff costs will be shooting through the roof. Add in the requirement for an early childhood teacher to be in the centre working with children for at least 15 hours a week, suddenly you're looking at an explosion of cost pressures on the supply side of the equation.
With parents already paying a fortune for childcare (I've heard of $42k+ bills per year to have 3 children in care 4 days a week) I think families will be reconsidering having two working parents; or have to look into alternating work schedules so that one parent can always be with the children. Single parents... I hope you have a great support network.
While providing better child care services to families is essential, it's quickly reaching the point where few people can actually afford them. The solution, as told by most stakeholder's, is more Government subsidisation. The Government already subsidises families (through a rebate) and now child care workers (so they're no longer minimum wage workers - if barely) at what point do we decide that child care is an essential public service and just make the whole shebang publicly owned?
