Childcare choices: What parents want

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Childcare choices: What parents want

The NSW Productivity Commission has just completed a major survey of parents and carers, asking them what exactly they want  in relation to Early Childhood Education and Care Services. 

 

Parents and carers are telling us, while price and cost is important, it's not the only or main thing.

There's also issues in relation to choice, flexibility and availability. Often there's not the availability of services at the time when they need them. For example, in relation to a tradesperson or shift worker who's due to start work at 6:30 in the morning, often there's no availability at that time. 

 

In NSW, less than 20% of centres are able to offer a range of hours outside the standard period. Contrast this with other states such as Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, where over 50 per cent of centres are able to offer this flexibility.

 

In relation to choice, there is a range of services available, long day care centres, preschools, family home care. What we're hearing from parents and carers is that one size doesn't fit all, that they want a greater availability of certain types of those services in certain areas.

 

We're hearing from both regional and city-based parents and carers that there's just not enough places available of the sort that they are after, at the time they are  after, at the place they are after. 

 

Some of the regulations are slowing down the  ability of people to build and open a new centre. Some of the regulations are preventing existing  operators from offering a range of hours which parents and carers need. Because the regulations in NSW are different to the other states in relation to the staffing ratios, this in itself is reducing the number of spots available. 

 

There's an old adage which says: ‘if the supply remains constant, then giving extra money to buyers is not necessarily going  to solve the problem in the long run, all it does is often just increases the price of those services.’ The same is true in relation to the Early Childhood Education and Care Services sector. If there's only a certain number of places and that's not increased, then giving  parents more money is not necessarily going to solve the problem. In the long term, it's  not necessarily the best cost-effective way of addressing the issue. We need to look at a whole suite of options.

 

If you'd like more information, our full report is available on our  website, and I'd encourage you to read it.

The Commission surveyed a representative sample of more than 2,000 parents and carers in NSW to find out what policy options they value most, and the relative importance of various barriers to early childhood education and care (ECEC) usage.

We found what NSW families value most is choice, flexibility, and access – more than lower cost in most cases. In NSW, less than 20% of childcare centres offer flexible hours (before 7:00am, after 6:30pm, on weekends, or overnight) compared to more than 50% of centres in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia.

To support parents who want to access childcare at times that work for them, government could address planning and regulatory barriers to improve supply and support more flexible service offerings rather than expanding broad-based subsidies. Expanding online tools may help to reduce the uncertainty regarding the out-of-pocket costs of ECEC by providing parents and carers with simple, accurate, and timely information.

Key findings

• Cost is not necessarily the only or main reason preventing increased use of ECEC services amongst non-users and low users. Three other factors are often more important to parents:
  • a lack of choice
  • inflexible care arrangements
  • poor access (that is, problems securing a place at their preferred provider).
• The difficulties parents face in accessing up-to-date and accurate information, and uncertainty about out-of-pocket costs, can be as big a barrier as cost.
• Specific caring needs, parental preferences and judgements on education and care also drive parents’ decisions to use ECEC services little or not at all.
• Preferences and barriers differ in Sydney and regional NSW. The greater difficulty that regional families tend to face in accessing services partly reflects smaller, more dispersed population bases. It also reflects a greater need from parents in regional areas for flexible care arrangements, as they are more likely to be employed in shift work.
• Many families that are not using ECEC do so out of personal preference rather than reflecting ECEC cost or availability considerations.
• The perceived quality of ECEC services is not a large barrier to usage.