Is a New “Super Centre” coming to your area?  by Gwynn Bridge President Childcare Queensland In the time prior to the December federal election, an initiative was announced by the Labor Party to establish up to 260 additional Early Learning and Care Centres across Australia by June 2014. Preference for the location of these centres will be schools, TAFE, university and other community land to “avoid double drop off". It is important to note that the federal initiative does not include the purchase of the land. The private sector can submit a proposal for an existing vacant site. The federal government will provide a total of $114.5 million for the first 32 centres. This includes capital and other child related expenditure such as Child Care Benefit and Child Care Tax Rebate payments and operational support payments where applicable. This initiative will certainly benefit many communities in rural and remote areas where it is difficult to service a widespread population with irregular child care attendance patterns due to distance and work commitments.  However should these centres begin to appear in areas where services are experiencing low occupancy rates, it is a concern that we will see market failure of existing services. Already some state/territory governments are building early learning services next door to or in close proximity to existing services. For many years service operators have been concerned about developers building without first ensuring that there is a high need for additional places, we did not contemplate that governments, our partners in the provision of early learning services, would become our competitors. (Information on these centres is available on www.oececc.gov.au) Childcare Queensland has met with our state government and also with the Hon. Maxine McKew for discussions on this subject. We cannot comprehend that there are 260 areas of high need in Australia. We have put forward our case that many services are experiencing low occupancy rates due to oversupply of child care places. We have also questioned whether these proposed services will be Integrated Services as first mentioned, designed to provide all levels of community support to families and the community. Our understanding is that this is not in the proposal and that the main, priority is to address the areas of high need. For many years Child Care peak bodies have been informing governments of the greater need to invest in human resources in community health so desperately needed to service children in their early years. Early intervention programs to assess children, who have been observed as showing signs of speech, hearing, sight or other difficulties, are sadly lacking in our communities. Families may have to wait many months before their child is professionally assessed and then wait more months for appointments to actually begin assisting the child. An additional concern to the impact of oversupply is the drain that 260 new services will have on the ability for services to provide correct staffing ratios. We are all aware that a service can only provide a high quality service with dedicated, qualified and experienced staff. A survey of child care positions advertised on the internet and in newspapers reveals that the shortage of child care workers is critical in all areas. In some areas we have been advised that services have been unable to open or have reduced licensed numbers because of their inability to attract the required staff. To ensure a strong early years sector into the future, governments must assess the total provision of education and care and not be influenced by the views of academics on what they consider to be the greater need of families e.g. “avoiding double drop off” of children to schools and child care. Child care centres are already providing an immeasurable community service; child care professionals go over and above the call of duty to ensure the wellbeing of children and their families. Taxpayer money would be much better allocated by providing health professionals to the communities that are already serviced by adequate quality early learning and care centres, than to spend money on building additional services. If you would like to comment on this topic go to CareforKids.com.au Social and start a discussion here

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