Child-care gains to bring fee-rise pain

AUSTRALIA'S biggest child- care operator, ABC Learning Centres, will raise fees by up to $20 a day.

AUSTRALIA'S biggest child- care operator, ABC Learning Centres, will increase fees by up to $20 a day next year, firing up a war of words with Child Care Minister Kate Ellis.

GoodStart Childcare, a consortium of charities that bought 674 ABC Learning centres in May, including 154 in NSW, blamed the price hike on the federal Government's new tougher standards, coming into effect in January.

But Ms Ellis said centres lifting fees next year were being opportunistic, claiming the new standards cost only 57c more a day - a figure disputed by the private child- care sector.

"Our figures show a family on $80,000 will pay an additional out-of-pocket expense of 57c a week in 2010-2011 and $8.67 by 2012 for one child in full-time care," Ms Ellis said.

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But GoodStart chief executive Matthew Horton said: "It will definitely cost more than (an extra) 57c a week."

The new national standards require better staff qualifications and greater staff-to-child ratios - one carer to four babies instead of one to five, and one carer to five toddlers aged over two, in place of one to eight.

Lyn Connolly from the Australian Childcare Alliance, which represents more than 3000 long day care centres, said: "How do we raise quality without raising costs? How do we do that on 57c a week?"

Ms Ellis said the child-care rebate, which refunds parents 50 per cent of the costs, would absorb any fee rises.

GoodStart has already raised fees by an average of nearly $2 a day since buying ABC Learning Centres and next year's new fees will be rolled out across NSW first.

"Our early findings indicate we will raise fees from $2 a day up to $20 a day in NSW centres," Mr Horton said.

The private sector, which operates 75 per cent of the nation's long day care centres, has previously flagged fee rises of $13 to $22 a day to accommodate the new reforms.

Mother-of-two Tanya Collette, 39, is due to return to work this week, but is struggling to find a place for her five-month-old son, Lennon, except for a centre in Sydney's CBD, near her work - at $105 a day.Given the extra parking she would have to pay for and the expected rise in child-care fees, she says it is hardly worth going back to work.

"It's an absolute nightmare," she said. "You need to earn an absolute fortune.

"We clear $80,000 a year, my husband and I, and after rent and child care, there's nothing left."

A survey of 170 NSW centres, supplying 12,873 child-care places, found that fees for children under two would rise 30 per cent, or $20.56 a day.

The survey, by Guild Accountancy for Childcare NSW, also found a third of centres would reduce child-care places to minimise the cost impact.

A further study of more than 1800 parents with children in long day care, conducted on behalf of the Australian Childcare Alliance, found 74 per cent of parents surveyed would have difficulty managing child-care costs if fees rose.

"Everyone will increase their fees, across the board ... and the government needs to recognise it," Vicky Skoulogenis from Childcare NSW said.

ACA's Ms Connolly said: "We're not against the changes, we're against pushing kids into backyard operators - the lady down the street - because parents can't afford it."