Child-care for the rich

April 29, 1998
Issue 

By Theresa Moore

As PM John Howard railed against the "use" of children on the MUA picket lines, toddlers were in the forefront of demonstrations outside public hearings of the Senate committee of inquiry into the impact of commonwealth government cuts to child-care funding.

The inquiry resulted from intense lobbying by community groups and unions after the government's cuts to child-care funding, which amount to $820 million since 1996. The cuts include the removal of operational subsidies to community-based long-day care and out of school hours care services, forcing fees up as services struggle to maintain viability. Written submissions to the Senate committee closed on March 20 and hearings have taken place in Melbourne, Sydney and Wollongong.

Many working parents, in particular women, confront further changes to child-care funding to begin on April 27. Many must reduce their hours of work (some will leave the work force altogether) and resort to a cocktail of child-care arrangements, including relying on friends and relatives.

A submission by the NSW Children's Services Forum (NSWCSF), which includes peak organisations of the non-profit child-care sector, reported that 40% of callers to a hotline had been forced to change their child-care arrangements because of fee increases. Some left work altogether, some reduced their working hours to reduce the number of hours care they needed, while others increased the time they worked in order to pay increased child-care fees.

This has led to increased vacancies in long-day care centres in many areas, further threatening their financial viability. Of the 1200 community-based centres around Australia, the average operational subsidy lost was $50,000 to $60,000. Forty centres have been forced to close, while others have sacked staff, increased fees or reduced services.

The NSWCSF submission said the cuts were reducing the capacity of women to fully participate in society: "85% of callers noted the impact of child-care fees increases on their budget and the quality of family life. Most families using community based child-care are low- to middle-income earners. For them, even small increases have an impact but the level of the increase (mostly double the normal annual rise, with expectations of further increases) has been a struggle to meet.

"Women felt under pressure to give up or rearrange work, and 54 callers directly linked the increased cost of child-care to their decision not to have more children ... The current changes to child-care payment arrangements has detracted from a capacity to manage work and family issues, has caused tension within families about who works and when, and has forced parents into patterns of work that detract from the quality of family life."

In particular, the cuts impact on single mothers and working class women. The forum noted: "Closures are occurring first in low-income areas, such as East Sydney and Western Sydney, partly because centres can no longer afford to cross-subsidise low-income families and partly because of the 20-hour limit which impacts heavily on centres catering for areas with high unemployment ... Disadvantaged families no longer seem to have a place in the child-care system."

The forum found that "reduced access to child-care assistance does not affect high income families — they are already ineligible. However, it does hit average families, families who are struggling to juggle work, family, the high costs of having children and rising housing costs."

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