ECA disappointed in Child Care Finder website: missed opportunity

Advocacy body Early Childhood Australia (ECA) has expressed its disappointment with the Department of Education and Training website Child Care Finder, which was released this week to replace the previous offering “My Child” which supported families to view available childcare options and vacancies in their local area.

In a post on their Facebook page, ECA said it was “disappointed that the Department of Education did not use the language of ‘early learning’ in preference to ‘childcare’ on [the] new website”.

ECA also said that, perhaps more importantly, the quality rating and assessment of any given service is not at the top of the information available to parents, as it is the case on the ACECQA Starting Blocks website.

ECA pointed out that the Starting Blocks website serves a similar purpose to Child Care Finder, but also includes community-based preschool and kindergarten services. Some community-based preschool and kindergarten services have expressed concern about being omitted from the Child Care Finder website, sharing their thoughts with The Sector via social media.

The Kindergarten Union who were founded in 1895, opened Australia’s first preschool aimed at providing education to the communities most disadvantaged children,were contacted for comment but were unable to respond prior to publishing.

ECA said that “In future it would be good to see the Department using technology that allows families to search for services using more sophisticated inputs such as service philosophy and quality as well as their own transport routes between home and work (long day care/family day care) and/or services attached to a particular school (especially for outside school hours care).

See the Child Care Finder website here.