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MEDIA RELEASE
Baby places will decrease across Queensland
Working families will suffer due to federal childcare changes
17 June 2010
Increases in the cost of childcare due to federal changes that are to be rushed through this year will put many
Queensland working families at risk of leaving the workforce and push children out of an early learning
environment.
The Queensland childcare industry has concerns that many parents will not be able to afford the increased fees to
cover the government imposed forced changes to ratios and staff numbers.
Childcare Queensland, with nearly 1000 members and representing the interests of over 110,000 families, says that
many members with smaller centres are facing closure due to the their buildings being structured around current
room sizes.
“We are asking that the Federal Government hold off on its National Agenda rollout, to allow for wide consultation
and to ensure that the proposed changes are not going to impact on parent’s hip pockets and centres availability of
places,” Childcare Queensland President Gwynn Bridge said.
“Parents with babies are going to be the worst off once the changes are implemented,” Ms Bridge said.
“Many smaller centres will not be able to maintain the ten toddler places they have and will be forced to drop down
to four places for under 2 year olds. Older age groupings will also be affected through loss of places.
“This will have a major impact on working families.”
Childcare Queensland believes there are a number of things that the Federal government could do to ease the
pressure on parents and assist centres to remain viable.
These include paying Child Care Rebate every week rather than quarterly, increasing funding to parents with
children less than 3 years old and meeting with industry to implement a change process that considers the hip
pocket of families.
The industry national body, Australian Childcare Alliance, has requested a meeting with Premier Bligh and Prime
Minister Rudd.
Childcare Queensland is Australia’s largest state child care organisation with a membership of nearly 1000 long day
care centres, caring for 115,000 children, communicating with over 210,000 parents and representing 15,000 staff.
ENDS
NEWS 
