Experts are warning of families falling off a "child care cliff" as day care centers may be forced to close, waitlists grow and parents consider leaving the workforce altogether.
Can I offer my point of view as an Australian and childcare worker? Don’t do that.
Go fully public, not for profit but with subsidies.
Here all the companies raise fees, which the government ends up raising subsidies for, and it just repeats every few years. Parents don’t feel the pinch because they’re still out of pocket roughly the same. But these companies are raising ever growing record profits and none of it is going to the children, their education, or the workers.
I welcome it, but you should know we as a country are almost completely incapable of learning from other countries’ experiences. We might be willing to listen to Australia’s experience in doing it poorly (we like when other countries fail at doing good things), but if so it will definitely be to scrap the idea altogether rather than take the fully public route.
Can I offer my point of view as an Australian and childcare worker? Don’t do that.
Go fully public, not for profit but with subsidies.
Here all the companies raise fees, which the government ends up raising subsidies for, and it just repeats every few years. Parents don’t feel the pinch because they’re still out of pocket roughly the same. But these companies are raising ever growing record profits and none of it is going to the children, their education, or the workers.
I welcome it, but you should know we as a country are almost completely incapable of learning from other countries’ experiences. We might be willing to listen to Australia’s experience in doing it poorly (we like when other countries fail at doing good things), but if so it will definitely be to scrap the idea altogether rather than take the fully public route.