By Leslie Warne
The provision of child-care services across Australia is currently under review by the federal Labor government, and services to children in NSW are being reviewed by the state Liberal government. These reviews, which both aim to redistribute existing funding, are sparking particular concern among communities from low-income areas.
It is feared there will be a contraction in the availability of child-care services, and that even more parents won't be able to afford those services that remain.
The Illawarra Children Services Action Group claims that "In low socioeconomic areas, [the changes] will exclude most of the community from using the services, and many community preschools may have to close".
Neither review considers the overall amount of funding that should be available for child-care. Instead of shuffling the presently inadequate amount of child-care dollars, it would be useful if the reviews examined the cost of total child-care need and how these funds could be secured.
Federal review
The federal government's review was announced in November 1991. It has involved public meetings around the country to consult about proposals for redistributing funding, and is due to end with the 1992 federal budget.
The focus is clearly on targeting child-care to working families, and many fear that this could mean a wide range of other child- care needs will be overlooked, such as those of non-employed women.
The proposals under review include the introduction of a two-tier fee relief system. The two-tier system would relate to the employment status of the family.
Work-related child-care (which includes unemployed and seeking work/undergoing training) would receive priority over non-work- related child-care. The higher fee relief would be given first to single parent working families, then to those families in which both parents work. Fee relief, first introduced in 1984, was extended to private sector child-care centres last year.
The other main area of review is operational subsidies. These are currently used to ensure quality of service through the employment of trained staff and to offset the high cost of some types of care, such as babies and children with special needs. Most centres rely heavily on these subsidies to survive. The review could result in a redirection of subsidies away from some types of care, e.g. outside school hours care and occasional care, making them unviable.
The NSW Community Child Care Cooperative has responded that the ne system for the rich and another for the poor". A public meeting held in Wollongong to consider the changes expressed concern that under the two-tier fee relief system, more relief will be directed to richer areas because there are more two-income working families in these areas. It was also claimed that this system will discriminate against unemployed families because two-income families will have priority.
The cooperative is also concerned that the review will give more of the scarce child-care dollar to operators in the private sector and less to the non-profit community-based centres. The public meeting in Wollongong predicted that because of the removal of salary subsidies, there will be an increase in private operators who don't employ qualified staff, leading to a decline in quality of service.
Over the past 12 months, there has been an explosion in the number of commercial child-care services. In NSW there are currently more of commercial than non-profit services. Commercial services establish themselves in areas that are economically viable rather than where child-care may be most needed.
This has led to a total breakdown in planning of child-care places. There is currently no way of knowing whether new commercial services are meeting real needs.
Moreover, the federal government has failed to implement an accreditation system to monitor quality of service.
State plans
The NSW Liberal government has commissioned consultant Russell Ross to produce a report titled "Proposal for Revised Funding Arrangements". According to the NSW Community Child Care Cooperative, the report could result in massive changes to the system of funding child-care.
Preschools, vacation care and occasional care services could end up costing parents significantly more as subsidies are reduced. Long day care centres could lose salary subsidies for trained staff. Special needs funding of $6.8 million, to be distributed across 1200 services instead of the present 760, "will be spread even more thinly across the whole state".
Under the proposal, the two-tier fee relief system will be limited to a certain number of places in each service. This could lead to a decrease to the number of families in any one service receiving fee relief, thereby threatening the viability of the service.
For example, a child-care centre currently has 13 families paying full fees, 10 eligible for the lower level fee relief and 64 eligible for the higher level. If the higher level can be offered only to 10 families, 54 families will withdraw.
Eligibility of services to access the fee relief system will rely on the service charging the statewide average fee of $5 per session, with the extra cost being loaded onto the full-fee- case of the above centre, this would result in the 13 full-fee families experiencing a $31,000 rise in their child-care fees.
The changes mooted in the report are due to be implemented by July, giving little time for services to adapt. Adding to this pressure has been the decision by the state government to freeze funding to child-care services at 1988-89 levels, pending the outcome of the review.
The cooperative claims that the Ross report does not examine real need but merely seeks the redistribution of current funding. It will therefore not result in any meaningful improvement in services. Nor does the report reflect an understanding of the different types of child-care services and their needs.
Because the Greiner government will not increase funding to child-care services, the current review means that "many services will receive less funding because others need more", while "there is no evidence that the 'better off' services will be able to manage with less funding".
Aside from the very survival of services, at risk is the quality and diversity of child-care. The transfer of salary subsidies to operational subsidies removes the incentive to employ trained staff, and the decrease in special needs funding "will mean that no service receives adequate support" to provide specialised services to disadvantaged children.
A petition protesting against the proposed state government changes is being circulated among child-care centres in Wollongong and will be presented to NSW community services minister John Hannaford.