Poll Results - Child Care Summit - CareforKids.com.au®

Poll Results - Child Care Summit
Top three issues you identified

In last month's Mini Poll on the Government's recent Child Care Summit we asked your opinion on the best ways to maintain affordability for parents, pay workers a fair wage and ensure child care services remain financially viable.

The top three ways to address these issues as identified by you were:

1. Simplify Child Care Rebate and Child Care Benefit systems

2. Pay benefits directly to child care providers

3. Roll the early learning sector into the public education system

In response to our open ended question on the best ways to tackle the on-going issues facing child care providers while still maintaining a high quality learning environment for Australia's kids we received some great answers.

We have highlighted a select few below:

"The government needs to classify child care as an essential education service and have to come under the state education umbrella. The government needs to fund professional wages of $1.4billion to ensure quality care for our children."

"Increase the CCB hourly amount and income thresholds, increase the yearly cap for CCR particularly for families who have more than one child in care. Review qualifications requirements under the NQF - eg 2 ECT required in services over 60 places means wages costs are skyrocketing under these qualification expectations. Government funded traineeships for Cert III and Diplomas - specific funding targeted and a streamlined process for accessing it for operators."

"Maybe they should make all child care centres and family daycare schemes government run and not for profit… So the dollars aren't lining rich people's pockets and it's all about the kids."

"The Government needs to make the CCMS quicker for services so that educators are not left waiting for payments that can be from 3-4 weeks past and upgrade the CCMS to not crash when large amounts of payments are being processed. Paying directly to educators would also eliminate the administration to almost half keeping admin levies lower for families."

"Include preschools in the rebate system so that parents accessing preschools can get reduced fees as well by paying the rebates directly to the centres. Make it fair for all service particularly considering that preschools must now comply with the same set of rating standards as LDC services."

"I work in family day care and I know that I speak for a lot of carers out there that are fed up. We have parents who receive the CCB and CCR who are not paying their accounts. With these parents receiving the CCR they are receiving 50 per cent out of pocket expenses, or should I say 50 per cent of the bill they have not paid. There is no system in place to notify Centrelink that they have outstanding accounts and they are ripping the system off...why? Because they can. Centrelink told me it's up to me to chase the money."

"If parents want quality care then the educators need to be paid quality wages. If you don't pay quality wages then some very good people will leave or not join the sector because they cannot survive on $18 per hour /$600 per week."

"Dedicated staff are leaving the industry also at an alarming rate but contrary to what the unions would love us to believe it is not all about the money. Quite simply, the paperwork and ridiculous amount of self-evaluation and reflective practice are driving many away. (A challenge may be to demand the same onerous asks of Primary and Secondary Educators! It wouldn't last a month!) Child care has always had the downside of longer hours but coupled with the massive paperwork and responsibility that goes with it, for many it is just too much."

"All centres experience families who go from centre to centre, leaving debts. This has a direct effect on the centre budgets. Do you spend money pursuing the debt or write it off? What would be a great idea is a Government department to report these families to (Centrelink?) who would have the ability to investigate and reimburse the centre from the family's income."

"I am a Family Day Care Educator. I don't know how to solve the issues. But I do know that the system cannot expect the increased responsibility/paperwork/workload without increased remuneration to encourage workers to stay in the industry and feel valued!!"