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Long day care providers going beyond 9 to 5 to help working families
A new report on flexibility in early childhood centres has found that most long-day care providers are operating outside traditional working hours, responding to the demands of families working traditional hours.
The survey, conducted by Early Childhood Australia (ECA), included more than 400 long day care providers around Australia and showed that 68 per cent of long day care services opened between 6:30am and 7:30am and 49 per cent closed at 6:00pm.
ECA CEO Samantha Page said the fact most services aren't open beyond 6:00pm could be a barrier for shift workers.
'Less than 1% of services are telling us they close after 7:00pm, so shift workers and parents working longer hours may require other formal care options, like family day care or in-home care.
'Providing flexible hours for families can be a challenge if there isn't the demand from families to pay for the extra staff costs.
'Services also have to manage the work life balance for their staff, and making sure that the best interests of children are provided for at all times- so it's about getting the balance right.'
Ms Page said that the survey showed that long day care services were also providing flexibility to families in other ways.
'Flexible sessions such as half days or short sessions are being offered in one in every five long day care services, as well as flexible enrolment and family support services.'
Ms Page said it was surprising that so few services were located in flexible locations such as the workplace or schools to help families avoid the 'double drop off'. Only 11.5 per cent of services were co-located with a school, and just 3.9 per cent were in a workplace environment.
'There are some significant barriers to co-locating a service on school grounds or in a workplace setting. However, there are benefits to families if these options are available, and it would be worth looking at ways to encourage better planning around services in these locations,' said Ms Page.
The Report showed that most long day care services did not consider themselves to be 'flexible', suggesting that services can do better to meet the needs of families.
'This report will be useful for long day care services to think about the flexibility they offer and what more can done to help working families.'
The ECA has conducted further surveys on other service models, including family day care, outside school hours care, pre-schools and in-home care with results due to be published later in the year.
The Long Day Care Flexibility Survey Report is available to download from the ECA Website.
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