Echo Issue Outline: copyright Echo Education Services
First published in The Echo news digest and newspaper sources index.
Issue outline by J M McInerney
Are Australian child care provisions adequate?
During the last week of August, 1995, the Prime Minister, Mr Keating, announced the establishment the Economic Planning Advisory Commission's task force into child care.
The task force will investigate prospective demand for child care, what should be the quality of such care, and look at what links exist between the provision of child care and other children's and family services. (The task force is to produce its final report in July of 1996.)
Some days later, on September 5, 1995, the Commonwealth announced its intention to have a larger say in the manner in which the monies it directed to the states for child care were spent.
On September 20, 1995, the independent Institute of Australian Health and Welfare, released a report claiming that many of the carers within Australia's child care industry were not properly trained.
These developments have prompted significant debate about the nature and quality of child care within Australia.
Background
Within Victoria 127,000 children attend child care centres.
Nationally the figure is 262,500.
Again, within Victoria, there are 2870 centres, including 1300 pre-schools or kindergartens which supply an educational and socialisation program, not full or part-time care.
About on third of all centres are privately owned.
Another 14,000 pre-school children are in family day care, in groups of four or fewer in private homes and about 28,000 children are in after school care.
Long day care and kindergarten style centres are required to have one staff member for every five children aged under three, and one for every 15 children aged over three.
Centres must have at least one qualified staff member for every unqualified member. Such requirements do not currently apply to family day care providers.
Qualified staff are most likely to be found in employer-run child care centres operated on a not-for-profit basis (55.3 per cent), followed by community-based long day care centres (50.8 per cent) and private, for profit centres (50.1 per cent).
Daily charges at long day care centres average between $25 and $50, with fee subsidies based on parents' income.
Child care centres are subsidised by Commonwealth funds.
The National Childcare Accreditation Council, has calculated that children can spend up to 12,500 hours in child care before they start school.
This is only slightly less than the time they will spend in both primary and secondary classes.
Arguments criticising the child care provisions available in Australia
There are three types of criticism directed at Australia's child care provisions.
Firstly, it is claimed that there is insufficient professional child care available to met the needs of those parents who wish to access it. Secondly it is claimed that much of what is available is not of an appropriate quality. Finally, it is argued that for many parents, and perhaps children, private or Commonwealth funded child care is not the appropriate option at all, yet it is not possible for such families to care for their children at home.
Those who claim there are insufficient child care places point to the fact that currently there are 262,500 Commonwealth-funded child care places available. It is claimed that the inadequacy of this figure is in part suggested by the Commonwealth Government's plans to increase the number to 300,000 by 1996-1997.
There has also been concern expressed about the number of places available within kindergartens. It has been claimed that the problem is particularly acute in Victoria, where it has been suggested, the impact of recent reforms to the kindergarten system has been to deny many children access to that system so that instead they are forced out of state-supported kindergarten programs and into the Commonwealth-funded child care system. (There has even been the suggestion that this development has been deliberately engineered by the Victorian Government as a cost cutting device.)
The claim has been made that such a shift will place undue strains on the child care system and may not be in the best interests of all children who make this move.
It is also claimed that child care is not simply an issue that revolves around provision for pre-school children.
In 1994 71 per cent of married women aged between 25 and 44 were in the workforce. As a consequence of this, it is claimed, many school-aged children leave from or come home to empty houses and there is a marked need for adequate before and after school care for these children.
On the question of the quality of care provided children within child care, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released a report which claims that 43 per cent of Australia's child care centre staff have between one and four years experience, while more than 25 per cent of such staff have less than one year's experience.
The report suggests that such figures point to a significant lack of experience among carers.
The report also claims that not only are many carers relatively inexperienced, they are also under-qualified.
It states that only 40 per cent of those caring for children in child care arrangements were qualified to do so.
The report claims, `In most services, less than half the workers have relevant qualifications (teaching, nursing or child care specialisations)'.
The report further claims that the problem is `particularly acute' in family day care.
Family day care is a service co-ordinated by many councils in which approved people look after up to four children in the carer's home.
According to the report less than 20 per cent of those providing family day care have relevant qualifications.
Those who stress the importance of properly qualified staff point to research which they claim indicates that children cared for by qualified people are more socially competent, less apathetic and show superior intellectual development when compared to those cared for by unqualified staff.
It has also been claimed that inadequate penalties are frequently applied to those child carers who are found to have been negligent.
According to this line of argument child care centre managers or proprietors who are found to be responsible for centres where children are inadequately supervised or where improper procedures are followed or inadequate records kept should not merely be fined and then allowed to continue.
Finally, there are those who claim that for many children child care may not be the most desirable option and that their intellectual, social and emotional development would be better promoted by allowing them to remain at home with one of their parents during the pre-school years.
Those who hold this view frequently maintain that the home carer's allowance should be significantly increased from the current $60-a-fortnight. Some suggest it should be at least doubled to $120.
This is the position adopted by the Australian Democrats who maintain that if the home carer's allowance were thus increased it would allow many families to make the decision about whether their child should be placed in child care based on the child's perceived best interests, not the economic situation of the family.
Arguments supporting the child care provisions available in Australia
Those who defend the child care provisions available in Australia tend to maintain three positions. Firstly, it is claimed that there is not a demand crisis in Australian child care and that most of those parents who want to avail themselves of this option are able to do so. Secondly, it is claimed that Australian child care is of a high standard and that steps are being taken to improve it further. Finally, it is claimed that child care does not harm the children placed within it and may in fact be of advantage to them.
Regarding claims that there is an inadequate number of child care places available within Australia, there are those who counter that the extent of demand for child acre has been exaggerated.
According to this line of argument, only 14.9 per cent of mothers with children younger than four work full-time (with 27.6 per cent working part-time.)
Regarding the claim that many mothers who are currently not working would do so if they could find adequate care for their children it has been suggested that this claim is also an exaggeration.
In 1993, the parents of about 34,700 children younger than one said they wanted either some child care or more formal child care then they currently had. However, at least 60 per cent of these only wanted occasional care.
Occasional care is defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as care available `for short periods of time to allow parents to shop, attend appointments, or to take brief breaks from parenting.'
Of the 69,900 mothers of two-year-olds who, in 1993, wanted some or more formal care for their children, over half only wanted occasional care.
Finally, on the question of demand, it has been noted that the proportion of all parents wanting more child care for their children has actually declined between 1990 and 1993.
Those who claim that Australian child care is of a high standard tend to stress the improvements that have been made in recent times.
The Age, in its editorial of September 25, noted, `The proportion of child-care workers with qualifications has increased, from 33 per cent in 1989 to 40 per cent in 1992, and that in a child care centre each untrained worker must be matched by one with qualifications.'
The Age editorial also claimed, `In family day care, where 82 per cent of workers lack the relevant teaching, nursing or child-care qualifications, an increasing proportion - up to two-thirds in 1992 - are undertaking short courses of in-service training.'
The Age Editorial also notes that in Victoria, at least, the situation is likely to improve further as the Victorian Government intends to introduce, in the current session of Parliament, legislation improving requirements for first-aid training and staff qualifications in child-care centres and extending regulations to cover family day care.
The same editorial also notes that qualifications alone do not necessarily guarantee a good child carer and that we must be sure to guard against caring, capable carers, especially in the family day care setting, being forced out by the requirement that they be trained.
The editorial states, `To avoid diminishing the availability of child care places and driving the many excellent family day carers out of business, a generous phasing-in period of perhaps two years should be allowed and part-time courses should be provided and subsidised to suit the convenience of these carers, many of whom must be among the busiest of working mothers.'
Finally it has been claimed by supporters of Australia's current child care provisions that such care not only does not harm those children within it, but is of positive advantage to many.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) produced a report called `Today's Childcare, Tomorrow's Children!' which was released in July of 1994.
The authors of the AIFS report interviewed 728 mothers with children in child care and found that most were `satisfied with the childcare they had chosen'.
It has also been claimed that with recent improvements being made within child care, particularly the moves toward integrating child-care and kindergarten services so that many child care centres now also employ trained kindergarten teachers to run kindergarten programs, child care now has the sort of intellectual and social benefit for many children which it has long been claimed kindergarten provides.
Further implications
The Economic Planning Advisory Commission's task force into child care is to deliver its interim report in March, 1996. Its final report is due after the next federal election, in July, 1996.
It has been suggested that this is a deliberate attempt to avoid making child care a political issue. It remains to be seen whether child care becomes an issue within the federal political arena.
If the report makes recommendations that are going to require a significant increase in Commonwealth Government funding, then the issue is likely to spark some political debate.
What is even more likely is that child care may well become a states' rights issue. The Commonwealth claims that its funding for child acre and education has risen by 400 per cent in the last five years.
The Commonwealth Government further claims that much of this money has not been equitably distributed and that the states are reducing their expenditure on child care and other services and allowing the Commonwealth to make up the difference.
According to the Commonwealth Government such developments should give it a greater entitlement to influence how federal money granted for education and child care is spent by the states.
Such moves may well be resisted by the states as an attack on states' rights.
Sources
The Age
2/9/95 page 6 news item by Joanne Painter, `Child carers win respect, says Kelty'
2/9/95 page 10 analysis by Sally Heath, `Child acre changes ahead'
5/9/95 page 5 news item by Gareth Boreham, `Govt seeks child care, education control deal'
12/9/95 page 17 analysis by David Saunders, `Child care shifts'
17/9/95 page 5 news item by Deborah Stone, `Child care babies left alone'
21/9/95 page 1 news item by Alicia Larriera, `Child cares untrained: study'
25/9/95 page 11 editorial, `Caring for children'
6/10/95 page 15 comment by Pamela Bone, `What price motherhood?'
The Australian
2/9/95 page 3 news item by Ebru Yaman, `Time for child care wages to grow up'
The Independent Monthly
October, 1995 pages 36 to 42, comment and analysis by Michael Duffy, `Is childcare bad for kids?'
What they said ...
`In Australia we think about what we should do with a child whose parents are working; rather we should ask what is best for a child if its parents work. are ill or are going on holiday. This would have a huge impact on the quality of care we give children'
Dr Manjula Wanianayake, lecturer in early childhood at the Department of Early Childhood Studies at Melbourne University.
`Most parents using child care will hardly need to be told that their children suffer no long-term emotional, social or intellectual detriment from such care'
Sydney Morning Herald editorial quoted in The Independent Monthly