

By KATE ELLIS
A growing population needs community services to grow with it.
It makes sense that if you don’t plan for enough child care centres to meet growing demand from families there will be a shortage of child care places.
That is exactly what has happened in our major cities.
When the Prime Minister and I did a live blog on child care issues with Mamamia readers in June we heard some very clear messages. One mother said:
“I have had my child on wait lists to get into child care centres from before he was born. I am due to go back to work in August and they have all told me I won’t get a placement until next year. I am down on a Family day care list too, and they too have told me not to hold out for that. I can’t afford a nanny’s daily rate, it is more than what I get paid – what …am I going to do come August to pay the rent and feed my child?”
This is a very common cry for help from families’ right around Australia who are struggling to access a child care place.
Although there has been growth in the child care sector, it simply hasn’t kept pace with demand.
I have just released new data based on the recent Census showing that some council areas in Sydney have just one long day care place for every five preschool-aged children. One council has just one place for every 25 children residing in that local government area.
In many of those council areas with the longest waiting lists, you cannot even apply to build a new child care centre if you want more than thirty places in that centre, making it commercially unviable.
This situation isn’t good enough when you consider that child care is no longer used by a small minority of families like it was even 20 years ago.
Top Comments
Addison Lee in the UK lets you bring your baby to the office. You must watch show 'babies in the office'. Brilliant.
Kate child care centres take the burden of care of children away from women and simply place it on other women, child carers. This doesn't challenge men's place in the work force at all. What is your government doing about making employers of fathers more flexible in their acceptance of men as parents by giving them part-time or flexible hours while their kids are young and giving them access to paid paternity leave? Only through women and men sharing the parenting role will the wage disparity problem be resolved, women are still the ones taking the most time out of the workforce when children are small.
The child care issue has become just another 'woman's problem' as it is always stacked up against the woman's income as to whether child care can be justified and it is women's return to work that is affected by child-care waiting lists. In an ideal world, Mum and Dad would take half the baby years off work each, to get through those early years but men just can't get access to part-time work or paid leave like women can. Wby?