The Australian child care system is coming under increasing fire amid a rising tide of quality and safety issues. Under this model, parents receive the funds rather than child care centers themselves. It has begun to answer the question of whether it can ensure that children are only ever held to the highest standards. The Albanese government has moved closer to universal subsidies but this is accompanied by little serious oversight on how this money is spent. This dual focus on parental choice and government support presents a complex challenge in ensuring that child care services meet necessary quality benchmarks.
Georgie Dent, a leading reform advocate from The Parenthood, has highlighted the dangers of the current arrangement. She makes the case that the current model incentivizes providers to put profit ahead of quality, putting children’s well-being at risk. Dent has continued to call for an independent national regulator with the power to shutter centers that don’t meet basic standards. Mark Considine, a politics professor at the University of Melbourne, laments the current system as an example of a “state of mindless state.” He has made the case that it lets governments off the hook by putting the onus for ensuring quality on parents.
The Current Financial Model
Australia’s child care system is fundamentally based on a model where government assistance goes directly to parents. This strategy provides parents with the power to choose their preferred services. It means that the federal government does not regulate or ensure the quality of those services. This lack of coordination has for decades removed the federal government from holding the child care sector accountable for ensuring all settings meet safety and quality standards.
The Albanese government’s desire to make all subsidies universal is admirable but raises huge problems in terms of instituting any kind of oversight. While this proposal is welcome, many experts are calling for much more robust financial assistance. They are concerned that what is being produced merits subsidy as it meets basic quality standards. This misalignment of value and intent calls into question if we can have parental choice along with the robust regulation that ensures quality.
Georgie Dent pulls no punches in addressing these scandalous facts. She supports a new model of funding that delivers child care directly to children – through public entities, just like public schools do. She is adamant that through this model, no services would be accessible. It will help ensure they provide high quality care.
“The way schools are funded is directly. Parents are not subsidised to send their children to schools.” – Georgie Dent of The Parenthood
The “Choice” Model and Its Implications
Parental choice has been the most powerful idea in Australian child care policy for several decades now. This proposed model is an effort to give families more power to make decisions about the services that would best serve their needs. Experts say that in the process, it’s wildly failed to increase accountability. International expert Mark Considine points out that the choice model allows governments to avoid accountability for quality control.
In practice, this has led to huge inequities between urban and rural areas. Other areas, known as child care “deserts,” have little to no access to providers, forcing families to make hard choices with few good options available. The lack of oversight means that parents often have to navigate these complicated choices without sufficient information about the quality of care available.
Dent cautions that many of these providers have very little staff and little qualification. Children’s health and development are put at great risk as a result. She points out that compromising public safety by slashing budgets and hiring unqualified personnel poses a deadly danger. This approach does require creating an environment rife with danger.
“When we’ve got services that have almost got a business model around employing the fewest number of staff with the lowest number of qualifications, that creates extraordinary risk.” – Georgie Dent of The Parenthood
The Need for Strong Oversight
National advocacy led to Australian government action last year to strengthen child care legislation. To fill the gaps in today’s system, their bill created a new “rights-based” framework. Yet its implementation has repeatedly been delayed, casting further doubt on the state of oversight within the sector. Experts agree that providing families with choice must not come at the expense of robust regulatory mechanisms that ensure quality.
For that, Dent looks to lessons learned in other sectors. He recommends that establishing an independent regulatory body could significantly improve standards. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission was created in 2019 to monitor adherence to quality standards. A similar national organization could be developed to shine a spotlight on non-compliant centers and help hold them accountable.
Let’s develop a star rating system for child care services. This new system, as used in aged care, will give parents the tools to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, reports indicate that this system has experienced acute growing pains. A chief example is how some aged care homes were rated five stars when they hadn’t met the standards they were supposed to. This history makes clear the value of creating a robust oversight process before implementing public rating systems in child care.
