Family day care shrinks as parents opt for centre-based care

Family day care shrinks as Deakin University research shows a sector in crisis Debbie Macleod's job encroaches on her home. A section of her neat brick house on Melbourne's western fringe is lined with organised learning material, blocks and colourful toys. A play kitchen intersects her dining room and there is a small library of picture books near the dining table. Outside, her courtyard has been made child safe and is home to climbing frames, scooters and seesaws. "I'm really proud to be able to say that a child comes into my care, I learn their personalities and their interests, provide program planning, experiences, and activities to promote their learning journey," she said. "It's very rewarding." A family day care educator for 37 years, she says her job has become increasingly difficult and bureaucratic, which has left her feeling undervalued. "I'm all for qualifications and I'm all for providing learning but I'd like to put the family back in family day care,"she said. "We're actually qualified and we do a lot of paperwork, administration, program planning, observations, reflections and we have to journal everything and have evidence for government bodies to prove that we are doing our job." She said she made less money than a worker in a childcare centre, partly because of the long hours of admin that is part of running the business herself. Services like Ms Macleod's need to meet the same national regulatory requirements that large childcare centres do. "We get lobbed in with centre-based care and that's a whole different business model to family day care," she said. "We've got a uniqueness." Family day care educators work in their own homes with groups of no more than four children under school age, at any one time. Educators can either be employed by, or contracted to, an approved provider. In Ms Macleod's case, she contracts to Wyndham Early Learning Family Day Care which conducts regular visits to monitor children's development and provides support. 'Not just babysitters' A national Deakin University study of 200 family day care educators found many feel professionally isolated and unrecognised. All of the respondents in the study were women who were generally older than centre-based educators and had more years of experience. But they reported being perceived by outsiders as "just babysitters" or a lower-quality option to centre-based educators. "We're just not babysitters,"Ms Macleod said. "It's very frustrating to be labelled that when we achieve so much more and I feel I'm worth more." Lead researcher Professor Andrea Nolan said workers in the sector felt misunderstood. "It's anything but babysitting. These educators are sole traders, so they're doing everything," Professor Nolan said. "Their work doesn't finish when the children leave, which could be as late as six o'clock, and then their family comes home. "They're the ones that are doing the administration, the relationship building and the planning." That heavy workload is having an impact on the workforce. Figures from the industry regulator, the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority, show the number of approved family day care services declined from 7 per cent in 2016 to 2 per cent this year. "I am worried that family day care might disappear in Australia," Professor Nolan said. "And that is a concern because it is a viable option for many families and children." Professor Nolan said the fact it was a feminised profession meant the work was devalued. "It is just assumed that this is women's work and this is what women naturally do. They're nurturers, this comes naturally to them," she said. She said there was a misconception that preschoolers were just playing at family day care and that there was a "total ignorance to what is really going on". Making the effort for family day care Erica Jardine loves family day care. Her three-year-old son Zayne was previously enrolled at a childcare centre but she has committed to driving her son one hour each way from their Geelong home to Ms MacLeod's service. "He kept getting quite sick from being in child care and he didn't really have really any relationships with the educator," she said. "So, I decided to get him into family day care and it's been great." Initially she had questions about how safe the environment would be, but said she was now happy this was the right option for Zayne. "I feel much safer sending my child to someone I know and someone I can trust," she said. "As a mum, I feel much happier with my child being in this kind of environment, a home environment." The childcare industry has been under renewed pressure after cases of abuse in childcare centres were uncovered in July last year. A Victorian government review found delays to revocations of Working with Children Checks, poor cross-agency information sharing, and underfunded regulatory oversight. In response, education ministers agreed to a National Early Childhood Worker Register and mandatory national child-safety training which started in February. Ms Macleod said she was all for protecting kids but the system was unfair to small operators. "When they make a rule or regulation, they're making it with a centre in mind where there's more than one person," she said. "If I have to program plan or attend meetings, a lot of the time that's in my own time and I'm not paid. "The government doesn't give us the same amount of funding." In June the federal government agreed to extend funding for a 15 per cent pay rise for childcare workers for an extra 18 months. The pay rise affects about 200,000 workers and will cost $3.6 billion, but family day care workers who are contractors miss out. A regional trial The Australian government began a "capability trial" of family day care in 860 regional areas in 2024 to provide support and resources to educators. The trial, run by Family Day Care Australia, will inform any changes to the family day care model and is due to finish at the end of this year. Family Day Care Australia chief executive Andrew Paterson said the industry had come a long way. "The sector started as a cottage industry 40 to 50 years ago and is now a sector that's made up of early education professionals," he said. Mr Patterson said family day care can be the only viable option in some communities. "Family day care plays an incredibly important part in the entire early childhood education and care landscape, but particularly in a lot of areas across regional, rural and remote Australia," he said. "The sector does lag in its funding from commonwealth and states and territories, and I think that puts viability strain on the sector as well." The federal government's "capability trial" aims to improve access to flexible child care and education in regional areas of need. Ms Macleod said she would like to see family day care recognised as a different business model to centre-based care. "I would like the government to provide more funding which would make our work-life balance better, because at the end of the day, we all just want what's best for the children," she said.