Results - 7th Annual Child Care Survey

7th Annual Survey Results
2012 Child Care & Workforce Participation Survey

• Parents sick of paying through the nose for child care

• A quarter of working mums are losing money

• Parents want child care to be tax deductible and a nanny rebate

The CareforKids.com.au 7th annual Child Care And Workforce Participation Survey has revealed that parents are paying more for child care than ever before and almost a quarter of working mums are actually losing money.

Almost all parents (93 per cent) believe child care should be tax deductible 84 per cent of parents think registered nannies deserve the same rebate status as approved child care.

1773 working parents¹ (98 per cent mums) completed the survey and a majority of respondents have pre-school children currently in care.

More Time in Care
Almost half of working parents (46 per cent) with pre-school children have children in child care for more than eight hours per day a further 38 per cent between seven-eight hours per day.

Almost a quarter of parents (24 per cent) have children in care five days per week and 43 per cent have children in care three days (the most popular number of days to have a child in care). 44 per cent of parents start their children in care when they are seven-12 months old.

Type of Care
The vast majority of parents (78 per cent) have their children in a child care centre, 10 per cent use a nanny or au pair, eight per cent have kids in pre-school, 18 per cent rely on grandparents or other family members (up three per cent from last year) and 11 per cent use family day care.

Finding Child Care
Parents still find it hard to source and secure child care with 36 per cent describing the experience as "difficult" and 20.5 per cent finding it "extremely difficult and frustrating".

35 per cent of parents said it took one-two months to find child care, 31 per cent said it took at least six months, 16 per cent said they were searching for over 12 months and 19 per cent said they were unable to secure a spot in their preferred child care service.

Rising Costs
Almost half of parents (47 per cent) pay more than $300 per week for child care (before rebate/child care benefit), an increase of seven per cent from last year. A quarter of parents (24 per cent) pay $200-300 per week.

Although 78 per cent of mums returned to work out of financial necessity, 24 per cent say being back at work actually isn't financially viable and 30 per cent say that financial juggling was one of the hardest things about returning to work.

24 per cent of parents believe child care should be not-for-profit, but 60 per cent don't mind either way as long as it's high quality.

Parents acknowledge that the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate make a huge difference with 83 per cent saying the CCB and CCR significantly improve the affordability of care. In addition, 93 per cent of parents think that all child care should be tax deductible.

Financial Necessity is the Top Reason for Return to Work
76 per cent of working mums said financial necessity was the main reason they returned to work. However 31 per cent work for independence, 28 per cent for career progression and 16 per cent to relieve boredom of being at home!

Working mums say the hardest thing about returning to work is ‘Mother Guilt' with 55 per cent of women feeling bad about leaving their babies, this guilt is followed by the difficulty of daily logistics (53 per cent), finding child care (37 per cent) and juggling finances/tax implications of returning to work (31 per cent).

Quality of Care
Two thirds (68 per cent) of parents think the standard of care in their service is excellent, with great carers and facilities, however, almost a third (31 per cent) rated their child care service as average.

Parental awareness of the new National Quality Framework is low: 42 per cent don't know what the NQF is. Of those who do know about it, 25 per cent think it will lead to a much better standard of care, 29 per cent agree with the new ratios of staff to children and 34 per cent agree with the need for more qualified staff. That said, 30 per cent of mums are worried that NQF will mean even higher costs.

For the most part, parents are happy to pay late fees and believe these to be fair (70 per cent), but paying for public holidays is a real sore point with 76 per cent of parents believing this practice to be very unfair.

Employers are Improving
Employers are trying to help working families, but still have a way to go. Our survey revealed that 9 per cent of parents feel their employers are completely inflexible to working parents, 48 per cent are flexible to a point and 42 per cent are very flexible and supportive of working parents.

However while 39 per cent are "Pretty flexible and treat Dads and Mums the same in terms of their child care issues" 41 of parents said their employer was less flexible with dads than mums.

The survey also showed that 26 per cent of working mums feel less valued at work than they did before having babies and 29 per cent feel stigmatised by employers and colleagues for not taking working responsibilities seriously enough.

About the survey respondents
¹Sample 1,773. Australia wide (98% women). 85% use child care due to work commitments. 79% have children currently in some form of child care. 14% are looking for child care or intend to have their child in care in the near future.

View results from previous years: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006