Excerpts
Last year’s childcare sex abuse scandal dropped a bomb on Australia’s for-profit operators, which found themselves at the core of the tragedy, and for good reason. Their high staff turnover and lax standards have been described as fertile ground for predators.
Several months on, the shockwaves haven’t stopped.
The latest financial results from G8 Education, the nation’s largest for-profit childcare provider, show an alarming exodus from its centres so far this year. At the same time, the company is getting hit with soaring regulatory and compliance costs in response to the scandal.
The for-profit operators are on notice to demonstrate that they are not putting dollars before child safety – a claim they deny – while being squeezed by rising competition and falling birth rates, which raise the survival stakes.
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Georgie Dent, head of parent advocacy group The Parenthood, cited research by the Mindaroo Foundation that shows one in 10 families has withdrawn a child from childcare in recent months, while many more reduced their childcare hours. “That reflects anxiety about safety, not a shift away from the need for childcare,” she said.
The numbers destroy any complacency that commercial operators don’t have to worry too much about quality as parents don’t have much of a choice. With their high fixed-cost base, the difference between a child care operator making money and losing it hand over fist can swing dramatically over a few percentage points of occupancy levels.
Add to this the rising capital needed to remedy the massive safety holes that the scandal revealed, including the deployment of security cameras, and the financial pressure becomes real.
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