Action would slash fees

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 3

Action would slash fees

Childcare fees could be reduced dramatically if the report on early childhood education was implemented, says the Childcare Association.

The association’s national president, Mrs Pam Croxford, said the report’s recommendations that childcare centres be funded on a similar level as kindergartens would enable centres to become more affordable and increase staff salaries at the same time.

At the moment only kindergartens received a 100 per cent subsidy on staff salaries and a percentage based on the amount of children.

“It would not go the whole way towards solving salary costs but it would be a big boost to childcare services,” said Mrs Croxford. Half-day care centres would benefit the most from the increased funding, but full-day centres would also be better off. The exact fee figures would be

worked out by the association during work on its submission in Wellington this week. The special childcare allowance allocated through the Social Welfare Department would also still be available. That would help close the previous unaffordable gap between the allowance and the childcare fee, said Mrs Croxford. The association also supported the recommendation that parents be more involved in running centres. Already parents were involved in the management of more than 60 per cent of childcare centres, she said. Private operators are not so happy with the report because it would require all childcare centres to set up trust boards before they would become eligible for Government funding. The chairwoman of the Licensed Child Care Centres Federation, Mrs Helen Andrews, said the report had made no provision for private childcare centres.

Some centres might find it “too much hassle” to set up trust boards of parents and so the community might lose many of those centres, she said. The federation could also see a problem in the quality and consistency of boards with a “constant stream of parents,” since the length of time that pre-school childcare was required was relatively short. Private operators had tended to provide full-day care “in response to what the community has wanted,” said Mrs Andrews. Up to a third of the 61 Christchurch centres and up to 80 per cent of the ones in Auckland were privately owned. The report’s recommendations on home-based care were vague, but it seemed that care-givers who belonged to an established organisation such as Barnardo’s would receive subsidies, said Mrs Croxford.

Submissions on the report are due by October 20.