Page 314 - Week 01 - Thursday, 17 February 2011
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18 years ago or 19 years ago when I was first pregnant and looking around for childcare. At that time there were, again, some real issues around access to childcare.
My first child ended up in two childcare centres. I was going back to work full time and having to go to two different childcare centres on different days, with different routines and so forth, and it was very stressful for a first-time parent to be having to do that. So I do believe that we need to ensure that we are going to be able to meet demand, that we are going to assure quality of these services because parents going back to work need some comfort that their children are being well looked after and that they are going to be getting that quality care that we would all expect.
That is why we also do support this change in standards, this enhancement of standards. It is going to be quite a bit of a transition period. I would urge the minister to be doing whatever she can to ensure that childcare centres can get on board by 2014 because I am a little concerned about the number of exemptions that seem to be floating around at the moment.
We need to get the ratios right, we need to get the skills of the workforce right and we also, as I said, need to acknowledge the important role that childcare workers make. We need to acknowledge that this is a profession and that they should be respected and valued for the wonderful work that they do in our community every day, looking after babies and children and allowing parents to be able to return to and participate in the workforce.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.35): I thank Mr Doszpot for bringing forward this matter today. I am pleased to speak on the topic of childcare in the ACT, which is an issue that has for many years been close to my heart. As a mother of five, I have had children in childcare at various times over the past—
Ms Hunter: Few years.
MRS DUNNE: Large number of years, yes, more than 20. And the impact of finding appropriate childcare has a big impact on families, as too does the cost. In my experience, I was extraordinarily blessed to find people in childcare—and I was an avid user of family day care—to find carers who were an integral part of our family and who are still loved and appreciated by the children that were cared for many years after they had given up family day care. I think that in many ways family day care is often considered the poor relative in public policy terms and the needs and the provision of service by family day care are somewhat undervalued in the debate here, where a lot of what we talk about is long-day care.
When we talk about the provision of childcare, we have to remember that, when the minister quotes the figures that she did, she is only talking about 50 per cent of the children who are actually in care. For every child, roughly speaking, who is in formal, government-approved, long-day care centres or family day care, there is another child out there being looked after more informally by a grandparent, aunt, older sibling, whatever, and there is a whole area that is untouched by government policy in the area of childcare.
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