UK Child Care Concerns - CareforKids.com.au®

UK Child Care Concerns
A new report shows Australian and UK child care providers face similar concerns

Australian parents are increasingly concerned about the cost of child care fees and rising costs have become even more of an issue in the wake of staff ratio changes required under the NQF.

A new Government report on child care provider finances in the United Kingdom suggests that child care providers and parents face the same issues over there.

The Childcare Provider Finances Survey for the Department for Education (UK) shows that 20 per cent of child care providers are worried that parents can't afford to pay their fees and almost 25 per cent of providers report that they are making a loss despite fees in England being among the highest in the world.

The report also showed that:

Many providers had frozen their fees to parents over the past two years (since January 2010). Child minders were the most likely to have implemented a fee‐freeze, with more than half having done so (60 per cent). Fees for full day care provision were the least likely to have been frozen, though a third of settings offering full day care had kept their fees unchanged over the period in question (34 per cent).
Fees for after school care had risen by the greatest amount over the past two years, with an average increase of 10 per cent.
Average increases in the fees for other types of care ranged from 8 per cent (for sessional care) to 3 per cent (amongst child minders) over the past two years.
11 per cent of child care providers are just breaking even.
Amongst child minders, insufficient demand for places (22 per cent) and parents being unable to afford fees (21 per cent) were the most frequently mentioned concerns.
Amongst group‐based providers, the most common financial concern was insufficient demand for places (25 per cent), followed by the cost of employing staff (18 per cent) and parents being unable to afford fees(17 per cent).

Researchers carried out more than 1,200 interviews with nursery managers and child minders to get a representative sample of private and voluntary child care providers across England.

To read the full report click here… and if you haven't already share your views on which of the proposed options put forward at the child care summit will help the Australian child care system.