Child care is not as simple as ABC
Australia needs a better child care solution
Over 120,000 children attended ABC Learning child care centres across Australia at the time of its collapse. They were cared for by thousands of hard working professional child care workers, whose services were relied upon by many more thousands of mums and dads. As a result of mismanagement and poor commercial decisions the entire child care sector was thrown into turmoil.
What is clear is that a vital and essential service like child care cannot be left to the volatility of a commercial market. The debate should not be about what child care services are profitable - but should be about access to quality and sustainable child care. Families in our community deserve certainty. They deserve quality service. They deserve good governance and experienced management.
An opportunity for something better
The Australian Services Union (ASU), with over 100 years representing local government workers, including child care workers in that sector, believes local government should play a role. The ASU believes that the collapse of ABC Learning has provided an opportunity for something better, an opportunity to reconnect families into their local community services through a major return of child care services to local governments.
This means connecting them back into the organisations that provide maternal child health services, immunisation programs, mobile libraries, baby capsule hire, health services and so on. Local government simply provides the best child care services within an integrated service to the community.
Who benefits from child care services in local government?
The best solution for child care centres is for them to be owned and run by local councils. That means everyone wins with better quality services and secure jobs as well as local integration with families and other vital local government services.
KIDS: Better local services mean better care for kids.
PARENTS: Better local services mean their children receive a higher standard of care. It means access to an integrated service including maternal health and immunisation.
CHILD CARE STAFF: Better local services mean better rewards for hard working staff. It means broader career opportunities as well as higher levels of training and skills development.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: Better local services mean no need to bailout failed businesses.
The ASU believes that priority must be given to local governments expressing an interest to the ABC Learning administrator in buying and operating centres.
And to ensure that families are not faced with such uncertainty again, a federal body overlooking the sector needs to be created to improve regulation, provide quality measures and use information to track the demographic needs of young families in our communities.
Five ways to better child care
- The Education Revolution starts in child care
Child care is more than child minding. It is an opportunity to assist in the nurturing and growth of the next generation of Australians. It can also set children on a path of good health, nutrition, and lifelong learning.
It is an essential service that needs proper investment and regulation to align the needs of children with the skills of carers.
- Quality - comes before profit
The debate around the collapse of ABC Learning and other private providers has been too focused on questions of profit.
Clear quality benchmarks are needed. Profit should be an added bonus but should never be the primary focus of the provider.
- Proper planning and regulation
A simple lesson can be learnt from the collapse of ABC Learning. Too many child care centres or too few in an area result in disaster.
There is simply not a co-ordinated plan in place. Planning for population changes allows for the right resources to be in the right communities at the right time.
We have seen the demography shift in areas where the services for the elderly are near empty while the child care centres are at bursting point and have one and a half year queues.
The role of a government agency which can monitor and allocate the right resources in demographic cycles is a must. It is often not about spending more - but putting the right resources in the right place at the right time.
- Links to other children's services, eg. maternal child health, primary school
Local government can integrate existing child care services such as maternal health, immunisation along with toy and book libraries.
It can work with primary schools to create a high quality first step in children's education.
Local government is connected to local communities who will have some ownership in making decisions about their children's future.
- Local government is the 'right' place for child care
Simply put, local government is the best long term solution for the future of child care in Australia.
The ASU's submission to the inquiry can be downloaded here ASU Senate submission and a summary can be found in our related news item "Senate told that local government is key to the future of child care following ABC Learning collapse"
For information about the Senate Inquiry into the provision of child care, you can visit the Inquiry website here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/child_care/index.htm
There are links to the terms of reference and submissions received, along with other information.
Many child care centres in Australia operate under the auspices of the local councils, hence the ASU's coverage. Child carers' skills and responsibilities have historically been undervalued.
It is our role to improve the employment conditions and career paths of child carers and afford them the recognition they deserve.
Other issues affecting our child care members include cuts to Commonwealth subsidies to users of children's services, the prevention of intrusive surveillance equipment by employers and eliminating the unfair use of casual/relief labour in this area.
Greg McLean
Assistant National Secretary
The Australian Services Union has significant involvement in the child care industry through the local government sector and community services with a lengthy history of Union members being involved in the care of Australian children.
The local government industry was amongst the first to provide these services to the community through local council community recreation centres and council play and leisure services These date back to the 1920s, particularly in some of the inner city under privileged areas, where councils often provided services where no one else could or would.
As community services continued to develop in the post war period, health became an important issue, along with recreation centres for children of all ages.
Council run kindergartens and playgroups for mothers and children followed. Councils extended care services to communities and children were beneficiaries of the services: children of all ages irrespective of their family income benefited.
Throughout the 50s and 60s councils provided recreation services with the use of their facilities in their communities. Some councils expanded into social work and in some cases, council "Camp and Recreation Facilities".
During the Whitlam years the community sector was expanded with central government taking a role to provide "services to the community". Social workers, family workers and child care services were part of this increase in Australian standards of living making communities and local government key deliverers of these services.
As a Union with membership already working in those councils (through the predecessor Municipal Employees Union or MEU, and the Municipal Officers Association or MOA), the ASU was the natural union for workers to look to for their concerns, issues of community support and, of course, industrial concerns.
From the 1970s into the 1980s, the social change that occurred in Australia, to benefit its children through meeting places and centres, also was to help women and families play a greater role in society and contribute their skills and training, to benefit all. No longer did we want women to retire from the workforce after having children - we wanted these skills to benefit all, nurses to keep nursing, teachers still teaching and much more.
But not all had extended families to help with child care, so we needed some extra help. In other countries child care services were already being provided, so why should Australian families miss out?
When child care services were rolled out across Australia, local government already had a history of providing community and children's services, so its contact with the community made it a 'first choice' for the community based sector, either as the direct provider through council employees or helping the new community based sector get underway. Again the ASU became the union of choice for employees and the union on the spot.
The ASU (MEU/MOA) quickly became a union interested in working with members in the child care sector and today is one of only two unions with national coverage in the child care sector, representing membership working in child care centres, family day care services, after school care and more.
Child care services not only benefit families and women with children. They also make our society more equitable. Not all families have relatives ready to help out by providing in family child care. Children also want to be able to interact with other children and families often need additional Income to make ends meet. Women and all primary carers should have an opportunity to participate in the workforce, where they choose to and this benefits us all by ensuring valuable skills remain in the workforce. Child care is not only a women's issue but a family and community issue.
The ASU once again is very proud of the contribution by our members and our involvement in supporting it. We at the ASU have a proud history of representing the carers of our greatest treasures - "our children".
With a history of representing child care membership back in the 70s when we saw a government interested in child care and further back to the 1920s, we are a union committed to stay with this sector. The ASU is proud to represent children's services employees for another 100 years!
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