“Diabolical”.
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That’s one word Johanna and Dave Murphy have used to describe the consequences of a lack of childcare places for Deniliquin and district families.
They say the lack of places is not only affecting the development of their children, it’s impacting on their household income, making them rethink plans for an even bigger family and even impacting the wider community.
The Murphys have three children - Harriet, Henry and, welcomed only a few weeks ago, baby Charlie.
They both work full time - or at least they could if enough childcare was available.
Johanna has been unable to return to work since starting her maternity leave.
She can’t even get enough care for Henry, let alone Charlie.
And as a business owner in the health profession - as director and senior physiotherapist at Deniliquin Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Centre - she said not being able to assist her existing clients with their health and pain management needs adds to the mental and emotional toll.
She also feels for the staff at the centres who are dealing with “desperate mums” on a daily basis.
“It's so tricky in a small town because every day I'm getting people asking me ‘when are you back at work?’, and the answer is always ‘when I can get childcare’.
“But I don’t know when that will be - I just don’t know.
“I've only just been offered a second day for Henry, but it’s still not enough.
“I put (Henry and Charlie) down on waiting lists when I was 12 weeks pregnant.
“Even the fact we have to think about it in those very early stages ....
“And thinking about future children; that's just not an option for us because of the childcare situation now.”
Johanna said Harriet thankfully has a secure place with one of the town’s Family Day Care providers.
Henry is soon to turn two, and the Murphys fear that without more days of care soon, he may be starting primary school without access to the desired amount of early education.
Contributing to that concern is that it’s likely that the two new childcare centres proposed for Deniliquin - a government funded centre to be co-located with Deniliquin South School and a private childcare centre proposed for the corner of Hardinge and Wood Sts - will not be built before he reaches Kindergarten.
But even if they were, she said there would be no guarantee of Henry getting extra care because of waiting lists, which in some centres exceed 200.
In our earlier report on the childcare placement crisis (Pastoral Times, December 17), most early childhood providers said the access issue is because they are at capacity for the number of childcare places they are licensed to provide.
Goodstart Early Learning Centre’s issue is that it cannot attract qualified staff to offer full places. But even with a full complement of staff, their wait list exceeds the number of places they are licensed to provide.
And as for Family Day Care services - provided by Intereach and taking place in the educator’s own space - recruitment and retention is also an issue.
Johanna says she’s already heard of some families relocating to other nearby communities so they can continue to work and have access to childcare.
She fears others may follow suit, and that plans to grow Deniliquin’s population and economy will suffer if young families considering relocating to our community cannot access the basic services they need.
“Dave’s family is here, and we moved here so I can provide a service to the community.
“I can't do that now; I can't use my skills.
“I want to be able to help people, and it’s really hard.
“There are a whole range of people that are providing services in our community that can't get work because of something just so simple as childcare, and I think other people, unless you're in that space, don't understand it.
“It is typically women unable to go back to work, and we're trying, as women, to work and to use our skills to support our communities, but we’re hamstrung.
“Some families are actually saying ‘we've got to leave town because my we can't get childcare for the children’.
“It’s pretty sad.”
While there is no-one sure solution, and none of the potential solutions (more centres and more qualified educators) is a quick fix, Johanna and Dave say the decision makers need to start looking at how to ease the problem.
They pondered whether it could be as simple as removing some of the impediments that might be preventing recruitment in the Family Day Care space, making it easier for people to study early education, or even incentivising employment in the industry.
But certainly, long term, they believe there needs to be more investment in childcare centres to accommodate a growing population.
And they said the snowball effect of the current childcare access situation has to be addressed with more investment in primary schools who may be taking on children with little to no early childhood education or in-school environment experiences.
Without intervention soon, Johanna said “I can only see it getting worse”.
Senior journalist