and ain't i a woman?: Increased costs, reduced quality
The Economic Planning Advisory Committee's (EPAC) report on the future of the child-care industry was released on November 13 to a chorus of dismay from virtually everyone involved with child-care. While somewhat forewarned by the committee's July interim report, its proposals will still have a devastating effect on the already inadequate and often exploitative child-care industry.
The removal of operational subsidies to community-based child-care centres and family day care (FDC) will have the greatest effect — the need to recoup costs through raising fees will make child-care much less affordable, particularly for parents whose children go to community-based centres. Parents at the better heeled end of the spectrum of users will probably move into the private child-care system. While private centres which will be competing on an apparently equal footing with the public centres, price and service constraints may mean that many public centres will close.
As Michelle Gunn notes in the November 16-17 Australian, "Very few private centres, in Victoria and NSW at least, are located in areas of social and economic disadvantage because these areas are not profitable. Private operators have also been reluctant to provide sufficient places for children under two because of the cost of providing the extra staff required to care for them." Gunn points to the prohibitive cost of private child-care in the Ryde area in north-west Sydney — $51 a day for children under two and $45 a day for children under five.
Many parents at the other end will be forced to look for cheaper options than centre-based long day care, the cost of which will rise on average from $140 per week to $165 per week. Many will be forced into the FDC system which relies on carers, almost all women, looking after others' children in their own homes for very little pay and no holidays or paid training entitlements.
The cuts to operational subsidies will mean the loss of FDC units currently responsible for coordinating recruitment, training and monitoring of carers, assisting with resources and matching children to carers. Those who can no longer afford the increased FDC rates (estimated at $20-30 per week for long day care or 50 cents per hour) will be forced into the extremely exploitative and unregulated informal sector — which also relies predominantly on women as carers.
The committee also proposes that all other government child-care payments be rolled into a single means-tested Childcare Benefit paid directly to parents through a swipe "smart card". Furthermore, that benefit can now be used to subsidise child-care fees in the informal sector, providing of course, says the report, that the carer meets the requirements of health, safety and quality. Industry groups know that testing the level of safety and quality in informal care will prove virtually impossible.
The EPAC task force justifies its recommendations on the grounds that the current system is "inequitable". "There are those who are currently inside the system and those who are not", says chairperson, Patricia Faulkner. While this is unfortunately true — the women's movement and the child-care industry have decried the woefully inadequate number of child-care places for years — the task force's solution is moving in exactly the wrong direction.
Throwing child-care to the vagaries of the market, where those who can afford it have access to good quality child-care and those who can't settle for something less won't be good for either parents or children.
The Sydney Morning Herald's Adele Horin reported on October 24 that more than 10% of NSW's long day care centres that applied for accreditation with the National Childcare Accreditations Council before August 31 failed to meet the minimum standards. A further 40% met only basic standards. The criteria for these ratings revealed that the pressures on staff levels, training and qualifications that are likely to accompany the introduction of "competition" in the child-care industry will result in even fewer centres being able to make the grade in the future.
In the face of increasing costs, decreasing quality, and other social and employment pressures, some mothers may opt for John Howard's preferred solution and stay at home to look after their families full time. In most cases, however, this won't be the solution preferred by women.
By Jennifer Thompson