Gwynn Bridge entered the long day care sector as a licensee 23 years ago. She has experienced immense change in the provision of care over that period – moving from minimal regulations to the complex regulatory framework that long day care services operate under today.
Through her work as an advocate for children and the sector, she has been involved on numerous government and community reference groups and her passion remains for a viable, sustainable high quality sector that provides care and early learning to Australia's children.
Gwynn is the CEO of Childcare Queensland and President of the Australian Childcare Alliance. Gwynn is currently a member of the National Quality Framework Stakeholder Reference Group.
By Gwynn Bridge
President - Australian Childcare Alliance
Winston Churchill.
So often the instigators of change have a vision of the outcome but fail to identify the unintended consequences that can cause hardship and pain to many others during the unfolding of the vision.
We are now confronted with enormous legislative and operational transformation of the Australian child care sector and the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) cannot agree that this is "in the right direction". We see children in their most important early years as the losers in the process of implementing the National Quality Agenda (NQA) throughout Australia.
From 1 July 2010 child care operators and directors are faced with implementing changes that signify the commencement of a considerable paradigm shift in the delivery and operation of child care services in Australia. Unfortunately, through what appears to have been an unintended consequence or at worse denial of the outcomes, the increases in quality determined by the National Quality Agenda will absolutely adversely affect affordability for our families and their children.
Each state and territory faces different challenges when implementing the National Quality Agenda. Some states/territories will need to increase the qualification standard of most of their staff; others will have to increase staff numbers or reduce licensed capacity; some will have no choice but to reduce licensed capacity; all centres with more than 25 children in attendance must employ an early childhood teacher. These changes are to be phased in from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2014.
Statistics show that we have a large number of children from families who may live in low socioeconomic areas or whose family, for some reason or another, are unable to afford or have the ability, to place their children into an early learning program prior to commencement at school. These children live in all of our communities and ACA has called on government to recognise the individuality of the problem and not to provide funding only under Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) and Socio-economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) but to address the individual status of each child.
The COAG National Partnership Agreement states "Early childhood is a critical time in human development. There is now comprehensive research that shows that experiences children have in the early years of life set neurological and biological pathways that can have life-long impacts on health, learning and behaviour. There is also compelling international evidence about the returns on investment in early childhood services for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, including the work of Nobel Laureate James Heckman".
The Australian Childcare Alliance welcomes the Federal Government's recognition of the importance of quality private and community child care and the role it has in the lives of thousands of families and the contribution it makes to the social and economic fabric of our community.
When change is in the right direction for children, they, their families and ultimately the government will be the beneficiaries. Under current funding methods we question whether the proposed changes are too academically driven rather than ensuring maximum benefit for children.
Erosion of subsidies has not been addressed by governments to keep Child Care Benefit payments in line with inflation and the costs of raising a young family. Services are reporting that bracket creep is pushing families over the lower threshold and into a child care benefit percentage reduction. In an identified disadvantaged area (SEIFA 2) a licensee has reported an overall decrease in CCB paid to families of 23.4 per cent over the past seven years. Services around Australia are reporting much lower CCB usage.
With this erosion of subsidies and anticipated increases in costs of the implementation of the National Standards, the government will be forcing the large number of families currently struggling with their child care fees to "fall between the cracks" and remove their children from a formal early learning setting and themselves from the workforce.
The announcement of the decrease of the cap for Child Care Rebate and the indexation freeze for four years in the recent budget is bewildering. The saving to government on this reduction in subsidy is $86.3 million over four years. This means that families of Australia whose child care fees are in excess of $15,000 per annum will be paying $86.3 million in additional fees.
A further anomaly exists with the non work related families who are entitled to access 24 hours of care for their child per week. These families do not receive Child Care Rebate and any erosion in subsidies and increases in fees are met in full by the families. Financial pressure will cause many of these families to rethink their child care options.
ACA has been advocating on behalf of our families to have the Child Care Rebate paid weekly through the Child Care Management System (CCMS). The comments by the Shadow Minister for Child Care, Dr Sharman Stone MP that the Opposition is considering this policy move will give families hope that finally someone is listening to their concerns about how to manage their weekly child care fees. Paying the rebate through the services means the costs to families are immediately halved and more importantly at very little cost to taxpayers.
This policy initiative has the full support too of the Greens and we believe the two Independents Senators, Family First's Stephen Fielding and Nick Xenophon. We believe the Prime Minister; the Hon. Julia Gillard understands the cashflow problems facing struggling families and will make the simple and cost neutral step to making the child care rebate payable weekly to parents through the CCMS.
The National Quality Agenda will impact further on affordability and accessibility for families. ACA does not agree with the yet-to-be completed cost impact analysis that the government is adhering to with fee increases estimated at $0.57 per day for the first year rising to a little over $8 per day in 2014-15.
Some states/territories are already operating at National Standard ratios; others have qualified or studying staff but from ACA's assessment of all states and territories, there will be increases for families regardless of demographics. These fee increases will be well in excess of the government's estimates. We believe parents across Australia face additional costs ranging from $13 to $25 per day per child.
Loss of licensed capacity has not been recognised in the government's figures. In Queensland where room sizes have been operational for some time, the loss of licensed capacity will be substantial. In the Proof Committee Hearing, Senate, Budget Estimates document of 2 June 2010 we find it rather demeaning that an officer of the department states that more staff can be employed (additional cost) and that walls can be removed in an attempt to maintain ratios. Unfortunately with the 3.25 square metres required per child, measurement remains the same whether or not a wall is removed.
Smaller services under 30 places will no doubt reconsider their configuration as any service in excess of 25 children must employ a full time early childhood teacher.
An additional unintended consequence of the National Quality Framework implementation is that a service operating with more than three times a group (1:4 babies: 3 times the group is 12 babies) cannot be classified as a High Quality service. The question remains as to whether services will choose to be high quality and therefore reduce their available baby places from 20 to 12 or continue to operate with capacity for 20 babies and remain at National Quality Standard level.
Extrapolate the impact of ratio change for all of Australia and the loss of licensed capacity would not be manageable for government, industry, families and child care operators. In fact it would be a disaster for the Australian Economy. This loss of places will be scattered so the building of additional centres will not address the demand.
Government has commented that as the vacancy rate in services is high at the present time, loss of licensed capacity will not be of concern. We refute this claim as vacancy rates are not constant in the younger age groups which is where substantial loss will occur. The Australian Childcare Alliance has called on government to double the CCB funding for the 0 – 3 age groups to encourage services with high vacancies to reconfigure their services to meet the demand for baby care.
Recruitment and retention of four year trained Early Childhood Teachers (ECT) into the long day care sector remains a challenge. There is a recognised shortage of educators with these qualifications. Government is assisting by offering additional university places and the HECS-HELP debt reduction by half announced in the 2008 budget. By 1 January 2014 all services with 26 children or more are required to employ an ECT. The concern is that there will still not be the required number of available educators for these positions and service operators may be penalised for not providing appropriate staffing in accordance with the National Agenda.
The most notable and widely analysed of changes is the introduction of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). The EYLF is the curriculum tool which educators will adopt as they plan, programme, interact and reflect on their principles and practices and learning outcomes for children. Recognition of our valuable staff as "educators" is a positive move towards improving the professionalism of the sectors.
The EYLF has been received with mixed reaction. I participated in several EYLF workshops attended by 600 educators and it was comforting to witness that, as understanding of the intent of the EYLF unfolded, there was growing excitement and enthusiasm to embrace the document. Pilot programs for assessment of implementation of the EYLF are currently underway with full implementation effective from 1 January 2012.
Combined with all of the above initiatives, services from 1 July 2010 will begin the transitioning arrangements under the Modern Award. Again these increases in wages will impact on costs for families.
A survey of in excess of 1000 families conducted through the Childcare Queensland website in December 2009 revealed that almost 100 per cent of families said that they regarded access to a high quality, affordable child care service for their child as very important. Overwhelmingly, 79.3 per cent of families nationally said they could not meet the increased costs associated with the implementation of the National Agenda.
The Australian Childcare Alliance has appealed to the Prime Minister and key members of his Cabinet to slow down the unnecessary scramble for legislation on the National Quality Agenda to be passed through Victorian legislation this year. We must be sure that the changes are not going in the wrong direction for children and their families and there must be extensive consultation on the proposed legislation.
We are fearful of the adverse and potentially damaging outcome for parents and their children if this measure is rushed through Federal and state-based legislation without all governments properly considering the access and affordability impact on Australia's families. Importantly, the Australian Government needs to make it very clear how it intends to compensate families for the financial burden it is about to further inflict on them.
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