Robin Barker is one of Australia's most widely read and trusted authors on parenting. She is a registered nurse, midwife and parentcraft nurse with more than thirty years experience working with families and babies.
More than 100,000 copies of her seminal Baby Love have been sold since 1994 and it has become almost required reading for new parents.
by Robin Barker
A child-care crisis is nothing new. Child care has been in crisis ever since institutional non-parental care started in the 1970s. Little has changed since then to bring the group care of babies and toddlers out of crisis.
The phrase "quality care" is commonly used. But what is quality care? On one level it refers to the training and experience of the care-giver, the ratio of the number of babies and toddlers per care-giver and the health and safety characteristics of the environment.
But if we consider the complexity of the development of a young human, quality care is a lot more than a safe, clean environment, nutritious, highly qualified carers and a nice place to sleep, important though these may be.
I was intrigued some years back when Eddy Groves of the child-care centre operator ABC Learning was interviewed about the quality of his centres. At that time his primary indicator of quality care was the amount of hot food thrown out at lunchtime.
As toddlers at home are happy with a sandwich and a banana for lunch, I fail to see why a hot lunch would be at the top of the scale in relation to quality care.
I am sure there are many homes with much-loved, well-cared for babies and toddlers that do not meet the standards required in child-care centres for space, hygiene and safety. And while staff qualifications may be important, think of all the first-time mothers who have never held babies before who do such great jobs.
Quality care is first and foremost about the relationship the baby or toddler has with the care-giver and the likelihood of individual needs and emotions being met and acknowledged rather than swept away in the routine of the day and the relentless demands of group care on the carers.
This increases in importance the longer the baby or toddler is in non-parental care - full-time care means the care-giver is the one who will be taking the parents' place for a great deal of the time.
The official staff-to-child ratio of one care-giver to five babies and toddlers under two, and one care-giver to eight toddlers between two and three is a licence for neglect regardless of hot meals, hygienic standards, space and so on.
Added to the unsatisfactory staff-to-child ratio is the reality that although a care-giver has a certain number to care for, frequently much larger groups of toddlers are being cared for in the same space thumping, biting and grizzling their way through the very long day.
Staff burnout and turnover is high, whether it is home-based or centre care, which makes it difficult for the baby or toddler to form a relationship.
In many group settings the staff-child-ratio is affected by sick leave or the necessity for care-givers to attend to tasks not directly related to being with their charges.
The commitment and emotional involvement expected from the care-givers is way out of proportion to the wages they earn, the recognition they receive (which is scant - frequently even from the parents whose babies and toddlers they are caring for) and the conditions they work under.
Many will, understandably, choose to avoid the emotional side of the business and concentrate on efficiency and routine. Common sense tells us that a care-giver's enthusiasm for a baby or toddler's development cannot match that of the parents' when it is something seen every day as part of the job. Expecting anything else is unrealistic.
Despite surveys showing that 60 to 70 per cent of Australians believe babies and toddlers are better off being cared for by a parent in the home, most people give no thought to the topic before having children. Once they do and their children are over that period, they heave a sigh of relief and move on, glad that it is something they no longer have to worry about.
All governments are aware that there is no sign that the community is prepared to sanction the massive increase that would be required from tax revenue to subsidise the (relatively) high costs of true quality child care or to introduce other schemes to replace group care for at least the first 18 months.
Maxine McKew, the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care, is researching the nuts and bolts of child care and looking at ways to improve the service.
I would like her to give urgent priority to the two main issues of quality care, which are the staff ratios and staff wages. We will never have quality care until these issues are satisfactorily resolved.
All other "improvements" are simply tinkering around the edges.
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