Families across Victoria are paying the price of State and Federal government funding cuts to occasional childcare (OCC) according to research from the Association of Neighbourhood Houses and Learning Centres (ANHLC).
The Take a Break OCC program was axed by the State Government following the withdrawal of Federal funding toward the program in 2010. Funding for the program ceased in December 2011.
ANHLC Policy and Research Officer, David Perry, said early indications from an annual membership survey show that less childcare is available this year and it will cost more.
‘While the data is only preliminary at this stage there are clear trends already emerging,’ Mr Perry said.
According to the ANHLC, around 60% of respondents to date who lost Take a Break funding have increased the cost of the childcare they offer in an effort to maintain services. The increases range from 4% to 40% with the average increase in excess of 15%.
These findings are significant as Neighbourhood Houses deliver the majority of OCC services in Victoria.
‘We have also seen a decrease in the availability of OCC,’ Mr Perry said.
‘Almost 20% of respondents have cut the number of childcare places or the number of days their service is available. In one rural community, the OCC service has been cut from 5 to only 2 days per week’.
Mr Perry also said that a number of OCC services had closed completely.
‘The exact number of services that have closed altogether is still unknown although early indications are that rural services are more likely to close.
‘While closures are significant they are not the only measure of the impact of these funding cuts.
‘We are already seeing people unable to afford the higher fees our members have been forced to charge. Obviously this impacts disproportionately on the most financially vulnerable families but it also threatens the viability of the service if they can’t attract sufficient numbers able to afford the fees’.
Mr Perry said that while the early figures show an overall loss of affordable OCC the full impact of the funding cuts will not be known for some time.
‘There is still a lot of uncertainty for many of our OCC providers who have elected to cover the loss of funding from other sources as a temporary measure until there is more clarity about the future from both levels of government.
‘We will need to see how and where the new federally funded OCC places announced last year are rolled out and we are still waiting to hear from Minister Lovell as to whether the State Government will honour its commitment to reinstate its share of the Take a Break funding now that the Federal Government has reinvested in OCC in Victoria,’ he said
For comment / further information:
David Perry, ANHLC, ph. 0400 329 597
