Every few months, Emma Douglas would have to scour Broome’s Facebook groups for a new babysitter.
The babysitter wasn’t for her school-age children, but for her then-toddler Lulu, for whom she couldn’t access a childcare place.
“[I’d] be posting on the Broome babysitting Facebook pages, begging, begging for a babysitter that could fit in with the days that I needed,” she told 7.30.
Ms Douglas and her family moved to Broome in early 2022, not realising the challenge they would face in accessing this essential service.
“My employer held the job for me for six months. In the end … I had to just forfeit the job so that they can actually find someone else to put in that position,” she said.
“I just gave up on working until I got a daycare spot.”
It proved financially impossible, and eventually, Ms Douglas returned to work while pursuing informal babysitting options, often with backpackers.
“For a lot of people in Broome, and in a lot of regional areas, we don’t have family around to support us either. So we don’t really have anyone to lean on when you can’t get child care,” she said.
Ms Douglas had her daughter on the waitlist at all four of Broome’s childcare centres.
“I was ringing the centres regularly. And I would drop in on occasion just to try and get some information about where I was, what number I was on the list or how long the wait might be,” she said.
After more than two years on waitlists and just as the family considered leaving Broome, her daughter finally got a spot in child care.
“I don’t know what the solution is, but for sure the system … doesn’t feel fair,” she said.
“I know of several families that have actually been scammed by a lady promising that she will recruit au pairs for them, and they pay a $1,000 fee and then just got completely ghosted by her.
“People are so desperate for care that they’re really being taken advantage of.”
Is Finland the model for change?
The Minderoo Foundation is a philanthropic organisation that aims to change entrenched social problems, and former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill is now chairing its initiative calling for an overhaul of the childcare system.
“There are just too many families that have to engage in ridiculous struggles to try and find a place for their children. And some of them just give up because it’s too expensive or too hard,” he said.
Mr Weatherill argued that early childhood education should be integrated into the public education system.
“This is too important to just leave to the market. We need a strong public-managed system. And we need the government to step up and provide that.”
On the other side of the world, Finland’s childcare service is mostly run by local government, and provides a strong contrast to Australia’s market-based system, where families are left to solve problems of availability and supply on their own.
Heidi Harji-Luukkainen, professor of education at the University of Jyvaskyla, said that access to a childcare spot is guaranteed from nine months of age.
“So in Finland, we have a subjective right for children to get early childhood education, which means that the parents are guaranteed a placement for the child in early childhood education whenever there is a need,” Ms Harji-Luukkainen said.
Monthly fees depend on a family’s income, with the wealthiest paying around $500, and the lowest-income families paying less than $50.
Mother of two Riikka Pirinen is in the not-unusual position of having her children’s childcare centre just 700 metres from her home.
“I had very high expectations because I knew how the daycare system in Finland works and it works very well – I was pretty sure to have my children at a daycare that is very near to us and that everything would go smoothly,” Ms Pirinen told 7.30.
“You would say that there’s like one daycare centre in every corner!”
Professor Harji-Luukkainen said Finland wasn’t immune from global workforce challenges that made early education a difficult field to staff.
“We do have the same challenges, but it’s on the smaller scale, I would say. So we do have a problem, like with [enough] early childhood education teachers in Finland, just like you have in Australia,” she said.
Outer suburban metro also struggles with access
Living in one of Sydney’s fastest-growing outer metropolitan suburbs, single mum Jenna Northey’s commute to the city was already long – and finding a childcare spot added a 25-minute drive to her already hectic schedule.
“We are in the Hills District. So, it’s a very up-and-coming area. Lots of new developments, lots of houses that are being built, apartments being built,” she said.
Despite new childcare centres opening in her suburb and having her name down on numerous existing waiting lists in the area, the centre 25 minutes away from home was the most convenient she could find with availability.
“On the way to my son’s child care, I would pass 10-15 childcare centres, and they’re all full. I’ve been on the waiting list for all of them for two years,” Ms Northey said.
The biggest impact is on her son; he is up early and rushed out the door, and by the time they get home, it’s dark.
“If he wants to ride his scooter around after he gets home from daycare, it’s too late – it’s time for dinner and bed,” she said.
Ms Northey is now in the process of moving house to access child care closer to home.
“We have a right to send our kids to primary school and high school in an area that’s close to home. And I don’t see why child care should be any different,” Ms Northey said.
In early 2023, Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers tasked the Productivity Commission with setting out a path to achieving universal early childhood education and care.
The report is due to be released in the middle of 2024.
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