The nation's child-care centres are being swallowed up by big business, who are reaping the benefit of billions of taxpayers' dollars. But has the drive for profits gone too far? By Jason Dowling and William Birnbauer.
Child-care centres could face spot checks and have their performance graded as part of a tougher approach to regulating Australia's increasingly corporate child-care industry.
Family and Community Services Minister Kay Patterson has pledged to give parents more detail about the performance of their child's centre and has urged state ministers to adopt uniform standards on safety and quality at child-care centres.
Senator Patterson told ministers at a meeting she was concerned that some states did not regulate after-school care or family day centres, and that there were different staff-to-children ratios. She urged greater consistency.
The move comes amid growing concern among educators, parents, unions and community child-care operators at the rapid growth of aggressive for-profit companies like publicly listed ABC Learning, which is expected soon to control 20 per cent of Australia's 4400 child-care centres.
ABC Learning, which will be worth about $1.2 billion following a merger with the Peppercorn group, plans to capture up to 25 per cent of the market.
In an investigation by The Sunday Age, child-care centre owners and staff accuse corporate owners of cutting staff and cleaning services, axing programs and slashing food bills in half in the quest for profits.
The investigation also found:
- About 180 child-care centres in Australia are operating without accreditation.
- ABC Learning has taken a small, independent owner to court to stop it from opening 700 metres from its own centre.
- ABC Learning has sued a union for defamation.
- A number of centres have been, or are being, prosecuted and one in Victoria has been shut down by authorities.
Senator Patterson told The Sunday Age that the response from some state ministers was "agitated".
"Some of the states had been through quite extensive reviews and some of them weren't receptive about heading towards a national set of standards," she said.
Victorian regulations cover health and safety, staffing and space requirements at child-care centres, but there are no state regulations for after-school and family day care.
State Community Services Minister Sherryl Garbutt said the Government was considering recommendations about regulating family and after-school care, and accused Senator Patterson of ducking the real issue - the severe shortage of child-care places.
Senator Patterson said spot checks in aged care homes had been effective in improving the quality of care and she would pursue the idea with the National Childcare Accreditation Council.
Community child-care staff and education experts are highly critical of the fact that child-care centres are visited only every two-and-a-half years by inspectors from the Federal Government's National Childcare Accreditation Council and that centres get warnings of visits.
Parents can access full accreditation reports only by asking for them at child-care centres. Senator Patterson said she would consider introducing spot checks and establishing benchmarks or standards grading each centre so parents could have more information when deciding which child-care centre to send their children to.
In Victoria, the Department of Human Services has laid charges against three child-care centres in the past 12 months and has issued 15 formal cautions in the past two years.
- Samantha's Child Care Centre in Camberwell was fined $500, and Trackside Sporting Centre in Frankston was fined $5000. Both pleaded guilty to charges relating to children leaving the centres without supervision.
- A Mornington child-care centre, owned by ABC Learning, faces the Frankston Magistrates Court in February after a 14-month-old boy was left asleep in a cot when the centre closed for the night. ABC Learning has pleaded not guilty to charges of inadequate supervision of children and failing to accurately maintain attendance records.
Eddy Groves, the managing director of ABC who has amassed a personal fortune from child care, said he would "fight the charges until the cows come home" and blamed the incident on the centre's staff, two of whom were sacked.
"Sometimes you can have all the policies and procedures in the world but you cannot prevent people doing, as I would like to call it, brain-dead things," he said.
Senator Patterson said: "I was at a couple of child-care centres and they said they live in fear and trembling of that sort of thing happening... you can't regulate for every contingency."
Earlier this year, DHS closed the Mildura Child Minding Centre after finding it lacked qualified staff, breached child-staff ratios, provided inadequate supervision of children, had poor health, hygiene and maintenance standards and a poor quality educational program.
Child care has recently been promoted to the Howard Government's cabinet for the first time and Senator Patterson said it would be a priority for the fourth-term Government.
"The Prime Minister wants to focus on child-care policy in much more detail... we want to assist parents to balance work and family and if they choose to go back to work then we want to assist them in doing that," she said. "If you increase the number of people in the workforce by 2 per cent it has a 9 per cent impact on GDP, or about a $68 billion impact on the budget."
Ms Garbutt estimated there was a shortage of 8000 long-day child-care places and up to 5000 out-of-school hours places in Victoria. "People can't find child care, and when they do, it costs a fortune," she said. "I think Kay Patterson's arguments are just a diversion from the real issues."
She said the Federal Government's market-driven approach meant that private owners established centres in locations where they could make a profit, while whole suburbs and regional centres did not have enough places.
Ms Garbutt said the Premier's children's advisory committee had recently completed a report on early childhood services and the Government was examining its recommendations. It would release the report soon. She also warned that the push for uniform regulations could lead to higher costs.
Child-care centres are regulated by state governments and accredited by the Federal Government's National Childcare Accreditation Council. Critics say the system is a farce because if a centre fails accreditation, it can still operate and parents can continue to receive the Federal Government's child-care benefit.
The council's chairman, John Tainton, said if a centre failed accreditation on three consecutive inspections it was "more than likely" the benefit payment would be removed. He refused to disclose how many times that had occurred. Mr Tainton said 4.1 per cent of centres were not accredited.
Senator Patterson also called on state governments to be "more creative" in deciding where to locate new child-care centres. She highlighted moves in Sydney to require child-care centres in large redevelopments. She said she had recently heard about difficulties in establishing child-care centres in Melbourne Ports because of the shortage of space and the high price of property.
Senator Patterson said standards requiring a certain amount of open air at child-care centres could be revisited and planning laws for new developments, such as Docklands, could be amended to require child-care facilities.
She had also been monitoring the growth of corporate child-care providers in Australia but said she was more concerned with the quality of care than who provided it.
A merger between ABC Learning and its biggest competitor, the Peppercorn group, is being investigated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which refused to comment.
But ABC's owner, Mr Groves, said the ACCC had pointed to seven locations where there could be a lessening of competition. He said ABC was addressing those issues and may not take on some centres.
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