Surf Coast childcares risk closure

COMMUNITY House childcare centres in Lorne, Anglesea and Winchelsea are struggling to keep their doors open due to a lack of staff and some fear they’re at risk of closure.

Lorne Community House coordinator Katy Kennedy had hoped to have the centre operating for three days a week this year, but that hasn’t been possible.

“We’re averaging one to two days … we are closing the doors due to a lack of staff,” she said.

With an average 14 children using the Lorne service per day, and 20 families in total enrolled there, the two casual educators at the centre are overworked and there’s little help on the horizon.

“We’ve been advertising for casual and permanent part time since January, we’ll take anyone, there just aren’t the qualified staff around here,” Ms Kennedy said.

“If either of these educators leave, that would mean we would have to close the service.”

Winchelsea and Anglesea childcare services are in slightly better positions, each having at least two permanent educators that have mostly managed to keep the centre open five days a week – even during the pandemic – but there’s little backup.

“We have no casual pool, it puts so much pressure on the staff we have because they can’t be sick, there’s no one to cover them,” Anglesea Community House coordinator Julie Martin said.

“We recently had to close for two days when one staff member got COVID, because we just didn’t have the staff to cover.

“We’ve always tried to share casuals with Lorne and Winch, but we just don’t have them to share.”

Winchelsea Community House manager Wendy Greaves tells a similar story.

“We’ve got permanent staff, but when they’re sick, isolating or on holidays we’ve not got much of a casual pool,” she said.

Anglesea is at capacity, meaning the influx of families to the area in recent years are either missing out, or having to travel to towns like Torquay.

“Because we are at capacity we are getting longer wait lists, especially the under 3’s,” Ms Martin said.

“The one part of my job I hate is telling families, sorry, we are at capacity.”

There are several contributing factors as to why the childcare centres are struggling with staffing.

“We used to be able to have five children under the age of three, that’s changed to four … the biggest need is for children under three, and now we’re having less,” Lorne’s Katy Kennedy explained of new child to educator ratios that came into place in January.

The newly introduced funding of three-year-old kinder is similarly affecting the community housing model, parents are opting for bigger centres that stay open longer (Surf Coast community houses operate on five-hour days) and are better resourced.

“The financial impact of that is quite a lot because then we’ll have gaps for children over three, because they’re off at children funded kinder, but then we won’t be able to cover under three because we can only have four, not five … it does make a difference,” Ms Kennedy said.

Winchelsea is in the same position, oversubscribed for under three-year-olds and gaps in over threes that’s hitting the bottom line.

“We’re losing money on our centres, not that we’re out to make a profit but we need to break even, we can’t sustain this in the long term,” Ms Greaves said.

Coupled with burnout from COVID and a nationwide lack of educators more generally, instead of increasing services on par with the region’s booming population, the opposite is happening.

“Childcare is one of the lowest paid industries, and they’ve had to work through COVID, the last two years have really taken their toll, we’re all tired,” Julie Martin said.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but people have to remember, I don’t think the country would work if we didn’t have childcare.”