Is childcare good for children?

Posted: 5 April 2013

N_CHILDCARE-420x0The Australian Federal Government recently announced that it will introduce a package of new measures to provide more flexible and accessible childcare to better meet the needs of what it calls “modern families”. The $11 million trials will include overnight and weekend care for the children of shift workers, extended weekday hours and more out of school hours care to “remove the barriers to workforce participation”. The media release, issued by the Minister for Childcare, was seasoned with references to how the trial responds to the needs of families and helps parents in the “work/family juggle”. The Minister spoke about the way in which the significant growth in women’s workforce participation in recent decades had created extra demand for childcare.

And demand it has created. There are around 6500 childcare centres in Australia offering long day care (from early morning to early evening) and the number of centres is increasing by about 250 centres per year. That of course means the number of clients are on the rise with 1.9 million children in 2011 attending one or more types of childcare, which was just over half of Australian children aged 12 or younger. Read the rest of this entry »