Several local parents who have young children have planned and budgeted to return to work by now but have been unable to because they cannot get childcare, with centres in the region unfortunately short staffed or over capacity.
A local single mother, who wishes to have her name withheld, is a teacher who has been unable to return to her profession due to the waiting list of day cares and her being deemed not eligible for childcare subsidy due to the number of hours worked.
“Personally I have not been able to re-enter the workforce yet as I can’t get my kids into day-care until next year,” she said.
“I am a teacher and have two kids.
“There’s always been a day-care shortage. People have had to put their names on wait lists for day-care centres for many years and often not had a choice where to go as they can only go where there is space.
“This is tricky when a particular centre may not be a good fit for the child etc.
“In turn there is quite the roll-on effect for many because of day-care shortages. People can’t go back to work, which has a financial impact (personally my maternity leave pay ran out in early august and I also used my long service leave).
“But it also has an impact on workforce shortages as there are skilled people who are just unable to get back to work.”
It has been a merry go round of an issue as there are a number of people who could be back at work helping to reduce the impacts of workforce shortages but after exploring all childcare options in Yarrawonga (day care, family day care etc), trying to source child care in other towns before driving back to Yarrawonga to work or having tried to find private babysitters, it has become a massive burden for families.
The local mother said there are several aspects the government need to look out to assist the reoccurring issue.
“The local, state or national governments could help to speed up the process of building the new day-care centres by maybe using census data to help plan for the future needs in certain areas,” the concerned mother said.
“Maybe make the process easier to create new day-care centres or make it more appealing.
“I have also been told they’re struggling to get enough qualified staff in day-care centres so maybe making courses more easily accessible, particularly in areas of need. Maybe access to more family day care?
“They also need to look at day-care hours. For example, I was entitled to 36 hours of daycare a fortnight under the Centrelink childcare subsidy, but day-care offers days in 12-hour blocks.
“That ended up being one day a week, as they won’t do one day one week and two days the alternate week.
“I had to be working more hours before I was entitled to more day-care (had to be more than 16 hours), but as a teacher, our days are not considered eight-hour days (despite us working longer than eight hours), and therefore I couldn’t work more without more day-care.
“It was a stalemate.
“I’ve heard some day-care offer a nine hour a day option where you can’t drop your child off until after eight and must pick them up before five.
“This would then at least enable two days a week of care and therefore I could work enough hours to get more day-care.
“So if they either provided incentives for more day-care centres to do this or alternatively looked at the working hours caps for Centrelink so that particularly as a single parent, I can work enough days to get the hours of care needed to work those days.
“As it stands, next year, I may have to pay full fees (not covered by childcare subsidy) or give up my day-care position except one day a week if I am unable to secure a three day a week contract with my back up plan to do relief teaching.
“Hopefully the new day-cares in town start building soon.”
According to The Age, the Australian childcare crisis is leaving 70,000 families stranded with no childcare.
This issue was made widely evident recently when thousands of early learning educators packed Melbourne’s Federation Square to call for better pay and conditions, as the childcare sector struggles to cope with nationwide staff shortages.
More than 1000 childcare centres temporarily shut down across the country with about 20,000 families affected in Victoria and 70,000 nationwide, with union officials saying the action was only the beginning.
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