Putting a Price on Our Children

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hat's regardless of which child-care path parents choose. While the not-for-profit sector treads water, private care has grown rapidly since it became eligible for government subsidies in 1991. About two-thirds of Australia's long-day-care centers are now privately run - 660 of them by Brisbane-based ABC Learning Centres, the world's largest listed child-care provider. Not everyone welcomes the boom. Gordon Cleveland, a child-care economist at the University of Toronto, says Canadian observers are dismayed by Australia's "dependence on the corporate sector - it really frightens us." He argues that child-care providers whose chief aim is satisfying shareholders should not be receiving government help: "When you have subsidies available to large corporations, they will come in and subsidy farm." Critics of private care argue that it puts shareholders' interests before children's - and parents'. Community-based centers, by contrast, encourage parental involvement in everything from choosing meals to setting opening hours. "They felt like businesses, not child care," says Jill, a mother who visited several private centers in search of a place for her children. But Martin Kemp, ABC's ceo for Australia and New Zealand, dismisses the criticisms: "We wouldn't be the success we are if we didn't receive that support from parents." The company will go on expanding, he says, and this year hopes to add 8,000 places in the notoriously scarce under-two category.

Friends tell Sarah Tomasetti that only six or seven years ago they could shop around for quality child care. Now, she says, "if you're offered a place anywhere, you consider it." The risk of too little choice is that substandard care "becomes something you can't afford to see," says Margaret Sims, associate professor in community studies at Edith Cowan University. So how can parents spot it? Look at the developmental programs, activities and menus on offer, she says. And if carers are reluctant to let you watch them interacting with children, leave.

It may seem reassuring that more than 96% of long-day-care centers in Australia are accredited, but Lynne Wannan also urges parents to do their own research. She questions the merits of the national quality assurance scheme, and is horrified that its inspections are pre-arranged. "Without spot checks," she says, "it isn't a quality assurance system at all. I can't see any reason why we don't have (random inspections)." Barbara Romeril, executive director of Victoria's Community Child Care Association, agrees that both private and community child-care centers would benefit from unannounced visits. Some of the stories insiders tell her would make parents shudder, she says: she's heard more than once of centers ferrying in new equipment and better food when an inspection is due.

Of course centers aren't the only option. Family day-care schemes are being promoted as a cheaper alternative to long day care, especially as a career for single mothers being coaxed from welfare to work. For the past 23 years, Mary Hinton has looked after children in her Ipswich, Queensland home; four days a week, she now cares for four children under three, for which she charges $A3.90 an hour per child. She and her retired husband have converted their garage into an activity room, and their grandchildren have grown up playing with the children she looks after. "They become like family," she says. For those who can afford it, nannies are another choice. Long waiting lists for day-care in her Auckland suburb are one reason why Tanya Field plans to have her six-month-old daughter share a nanny with another child when she returns to work this year. Another is the one-on-one relationship: "I like the idea of my child getting to know someone and feeling really secure with them." Helen Clark's Labour-led government recently announced that all child-care workers must be qualified or in training by 2012, and starting next year, New Zealand's three- and four-year-olds will all be entitled to 20 free hours of early-childhood education a week. The next campaign, lobbyists say, will be to extend that to even younger children.