Childcare Inquiry not addressing needs of school aged children

WIRE - Women's Information CEO Samiro Douglas says that the Senate's Eduction, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee's Inquiry into the provision of childcare, the hearing for which was held in Melbourne today, has failed to address the needs of working families with school aged children.

‘It is extremely short-sighted to focus solely on the care of children under the age of five,’ Ms Douglas said.

‘In order for women to be able to participate fully in the paid workforce there needs to be a functioning Out of School Hours Care system,’ she said.

‘We are calling for a task force to be set up urgently to investigate this issue and feed their findings into the Inquiry and the Productivity Commission,’ said Ms Douglas.

A national survey of women conducted into Out of School Hours Care in 2008 by WIRE and the other Women’s Information Services around Australia found that it is failing working families in a number of ways:

·         it is often difficult to secure a place

·         it can be expensive, especially with multiple children, particularly over the holidays

·         it is inflexible, especially for casual and shift workers

·         the hours of operation mean that a full time worker with a long commute in the unpredictable traffic of a big city can find it very difficult to make the pick-up time (for which they are financially penalised)

·         the quality of facilities and activities for the children can vary widely, and

·         the system drops out once children get to high school while many parents feel uncomfortable leaving their 12 or 13 year old children unsupervised before and after school and on holidays.

The survey confirmed that women continue to shoulder the majority of these responsibilities, with mothers three times as likely to take children to and from out of school hours care, and when out of school hours care was not available mothers or grandmothers were more than twice as likely to take the children to work or take time off work to care for them.

These deficiencies are not only preventing women from re-entering and remaining in the paid workforce, putting their long-term financial security at risk, they are also putting children’s safety at risk as was demonstrated in a NewsPoll survey commissioned from by National Foundation for Australian Women on behalf of a consortium of women’s groups released on 28 August 2008. Findings included that due to a lack of access to affordable school holiday programs 30% of school age children (5-15 yrs) whose parents work spend the holidays alone.

Contact WIRE’s spokesperson directly:

CEO Samiro Douglas on

9921 0875 or 0428 851 149

Media contact: Jo Argent on 03) 9921 0873 or 0425 791 320 or jargent@wire.org.au