Child-care is big problem: Women’s Employment Trust

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 16

Child-care is big problem: Women’s Employment Trust

The Canterbury Women’s Employment Trust believes child-care is one of the major problems for women and parents in the workforce, or those women who wish to return to the work force and who have children. It considers that “women need good quality child-care for children from ages one to 13. Good quality professional child-care is only available now in the preschool area, and it is expensive and limited. “This means that

women have to resort to placing children in informal child-care or relying on an extended family. Although this form of child-care is usually of a very high standard, it places stress on the mother because of its insecurity. It only takes the relative or the informal child-carer to become sick for the arrangements to break down. “This then places stress on the family, which extends out into the community and

causes further breakdowns in the mental health of our society. The trust sees an urgent need for good quality, subsidised child-care to bq made available for both working parents and the general community. “We also see a need to raise the status of the work of child-caring. Our society places a lot of. importance on the quality of life within . the home for the child. Little of that importance is reflected in the wages that are paid to child-carers in the community.”