Major shortage in NSW childcare educators sees kids turned away from centres

Parents will be faced with a difficult decision as significant shortages of childcare educators bites the state’s centres.

Thousands of NSW parents face having to stay home from work to look after their children amid a serious shortage of childcare workers, which experts warn will only get worse when the Covid baby boom hits.

Shortages of up to 17,000 early childhood educators are expected in NSW alone, according to the Australian Childcare Alliance NSW, forcing some centres to turn away children.

Previous estimates had capped the shortage at about 13,000 workers.

Chiang Lim, chief executive officer of the alliance, said many families would find it increasingly difficult to secure a childcare spot, especially for children under three as carer-to-child ratios were higher.

“It is not fun to tell parents, ‘I’m sorry you can’t bring your child in today because we don’t have the staff to look after your child’,” Mr Lim said.

“It’s happening too often.”

G8 Education area manager Kristel Smylie with Ariana Avdullahi and Liyana Akkari. Picture: Richard Dobson

While many families are holding out for the federal government’s childcare subsidies to come into force in July, some childcare providers are warning parents may not feel the benefits.

Subsidy rates are due to increase by up to 90 per cent for eligible families earning less than $530,000.

G8 Education area manager Kristel Smylie manages 12 early childhood centres in southwest Sydney. Ms Smylie is worried the subsidies will do little to make childcare more accessible as centres had to raise fees to attract more educators.

“With the changes coming in July, we expect families will be wanting more care,” she said. “We are struggling at the moment to even accommodate families we have at the beginning of 2023 … we might not have the team to support this growth.”

Ms Smylie said some of G8’s centres were turning away families or having to close centres when staff were sick.

She said while the average wait for a childcare spot in south-west Sydney had blown out from four to six weeks to six months.

“It’s a massive change and it’s because we don’t have the teams to accommodate,” she said. “At times we’ve had to close down centres for a day and let families know we can’t look after their children. In 2022 I would say that happened on a weekly basis.”

Mr Lim warns turning children away will happen more in the next few years if the situation is not addressed, saying the small increase in births during the Covid lockdowns would also add pressure on the struggling system.

“In the next one to two years, two and three-year-olds will be the most at risk,” he said.

“It’s easier to redeploy one staff member to look after more (older) children … than to have them look after fewer younger children.”

Mr Lim said childcare workers were also at risk of burnout. “It is detrimental to the educational outcomes of the children,” he said.