Families dropping children off earlier than needed, fearing rooms will close on a whim

With many early childhood education and care (ECEC) services struggling with staffing issues in a post pandemic climate, parents are altering their patterns of attendance in the hope of getting around rooms and even whole services being closed at short notice. 

One mother shared with news.com.au that she had been dropping her child off “super early” in a bid to “beat other parents” fearing that the centre would close a room, or the whole service, if they did not have adequate staffing that day – something that had been happening in recent weeks. 

On a previous occasion the family had been caught out when the service had sent a message to all families, asking them to keep their children at home until 9am due to lack of staff. 

“We waited, and aimed to get our child there on the dot at 9am,” she explained, “and as my husband was walking him there, we got a message to say they had reached the cap,” she recalled. At that point the family had no choice but to take the child home and care for him there. 

This story is one of many being told by parents across the country, with many services “struggling with eleventh hour communication” in relation to centres being full. Some services are asking families not to bring children in because of lack of staffing, or are informing parents the night before, or morning of, about strict capacity limits or the closure of rooms. 

Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) Treasurer Kerry Mahony told the news source that the situation was “very much a post-COVID problem,” which was being exacerbated by an oversupply of services. 

“It is making it much more difficult to recruit and find staff to keep numbers up,” he said. 

ACA has called on the government to support a boost in childcare staff through training, traineeships, and reviewing retention factors like wages and salaries.

“It’s a terrible situation for everyone. But especially for the workers just doing their best.”

To read the original coverage of this story please see here.