Coronavirus: ‘Expand JobKeeper or see childcare centres shut’

The $1500-a-fortnight JobKeeper payment should be made available for all childcare workers, the government has been warned.

Education Minister Dan Tehan. Picture: AAP

The $1500-a-fortnight JobKeeper payment should be made available for all childcare workers regardless of the centre’s financial position, or risk facilities going under, the government has been warned.

A day after welcoming the government’s announcement of free childcare for almost a million families, Early Childhood Australia has written to Education Minister Dan Tehan warning him the $3bn relief scheme “has created great anxiety”.

“While the relief package will assist services that were in danger of imminent closure due to collapsing enrolments, it strips significant income (via childcare subsidy and parent fees) from services that were still doing well,” the letter says. “(And while) your ­intention is for the relief package to be ‘calibrated’ to the JobKeeper scheme, and that JobKeeper is therefore integral to the effectiveness of the relief package, unfortunately many early education and care services are not currently ­eligible for JobKeeper.

“We therefore request that the government deems all approved providers of early education and care services eligible for the JobKeeper scheme. This change should take effect next week, to provide certainty to services, particularly those that will experience a large income drop when the ­relief package commences on 6 April.”

Mr Tehan on Thursday outlined an emergency overhaul of childcare over the next six months during which the government will pay half the fee revenue of a provider, and suggested operators would receive further financial ­relief through the JobKeeper program as the government supported the wages of the care workers.

The program was designed to keep the nation’s 13,000 childcare centres operating to ensure ­essential workers can continue in their employment and vulnerable children are looked after.

Following the announcement, which received initial plaudits, the sector started to raise questions across social media platforms about how the scheme would work in practice and which operators might not be eligible for the wage relief. The JobKeeper package ­requires most operators to have suffered a 30 per cent drop in turnover due to coronavirus and larger ones (with over $1bn in annual turnover) to have experienced a 50 per cent fall.

“I’ve had a lot of calls in the last 24 hours from providers quite distraught, worried they aren’t ­eligible for JobKeeper, or even if they are that they don’t have the cash reserves to keep operating until the payments start coming in,” Early Childhood Australia chief executive Samantha Page said.

“Some organisations provide childcare as one part of a broader range of services, but understand that to be eligible for JobKeeper they need to show the whole ­organisation has a reduced turnover of 30 per cent or more, not just the childcare component.”

Lara Rose owns Penrith Early Learning Centre in outer Sydney, which has ­capacity for 44 children. She has worked hard to keep the business viable, but the uncertainty surrounding funding has forced her to move to a skeleton staff from Monday, caring only for the children of health and emergency workers. “The new rules have resulted in a 75 per cent ­reduction of our income,” Ms Rose said. “I believe we will eventually qualify for JobKeeper, but in the meantime I have had to stand down 11 staff and there only four staff left. It was heartbreaking.

“We can only care for a small number of children based on the educator-to-child ratios with the staff we have left. Our parents are being so supportive and understand the spaces left now are only for children of parents who work in absolutely essential services.”