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Australian Childcare Alliance 42 recommendations

Child Care Reform
42 recommendations put forward by the Australian Childcare Alliance

The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) has submitted a list of 42 recommendations to the Minister for Early Childhood and Child Care Kate Ellis and the opposition minister Sussan Ley claiming that reforms introduced under the National Quality Agenda have made it harder for parents.

While the Alliance says it is widely supportive of the government's commitment to improve early childhood education and care, they say they are concerned about the 'pace and integrity' of the implementation process.

The report titled Meeting the Expectations of Australian Families in Long Day Care claims that reforms required under the government's NQF have caused families financial hardship and requests a cash boost to cover the increased cost to parents.

"Without an immediate injection of funds to cover the cost of these reforms, parents will either be forced to reduce hours of care, work, use backyard operators or a combination of all three," claims the submission.

The Alliance is also concerned about the worsening skills shortage in child care and says changes mandated by the NQF mean an additional 3000 tertiary qualified carers will need to be hired by 2014.

"Assuming these graduates are half way through university now, the sector fears they will not choose child care over pre or primary school. And if they did, the higher wages demanded would again put upward pressure on the fees for parents," says the report.

The ACA is also calling for an increase in the CCB and the CCR and is arguing against fee caps for child care fees which is one measure being considered by the government.

The Alliance's submission includes 42 recommendations in total which cover Universal Access, Affordability for Families, Early Intervention for Disadvantaged Families, Children with Additional Needs, Geographically Disadvantaged Families, Service Delivery Planning, Increased Flexibility and Qualified Workforce.

The Alliance claims it can work with the government to improve child care but only if the changes are "properly funded by government."

"If our proposed recommendations are adopted, we believe this will go a long way to ensuring our children and their parents will be able to access high quality, flexible, affordable and nurturing early learning programs," says the report.

Minister Ellis has welcomed the opportunity to review the Alliance's recommendations and said the government was looking forward to collaborating with the Alliance and other stakeholders to work out the next steps in the reform process.