United Voice

The Childcare Summit met in Sydney on Friday to assess how far the major political parties' policies have come to addressing Australia's childcare crisis.

"By creating more places, assisting with funding, providing greater staff training and standardising national regulations, Kevin Rudd has shown real national leadership on the vital issue of early childhood care and development in this election," says Louise Tarrant, National Secretary of the LHMU, the children's services union.

The national childcare leaders urge the Coalition to urgently release their promised new childcare policy, noting the Coalition is yet to release policies to address the current skills crisis in childcare or long-overdue improvements of national childcare quality regulations.

The Childcare Summit is encouraged by the childcare quality and workforce initiatives announced by the ALP in the 2007 election campaign, particularly their commitment to:

1. provide all 4 year-olds with 15 hours of education and care from degree-qualified childcare workers
2. introduce a graded quality accreditation system for long day care centres
3. streamline state and territory childcare quality regulations

A major focus of the Childcare Summit was assessing what action has been taken to address the "ratios of neglect" currently existing in Australia's childcare centres according to the Head of Early Childhood Programs at the University of Western Sydney, Associate Professor Christine Woodrow.

"Australian territories have ratios of 1:4 or 1:5 for babies. We need the international benchmark of 1:3 if we're really serious about creating the best developmental experience for young children," says Assoc. Prof. Woodrow.

The Summit calls on both major parties to do more to introduce mandatory minimum qualifications for all childcare workers as well as internationally-accepted minimum staff-to-child ratios.

The Childcare Summit participants include:   

• Lynne Wannan, National Convenor, National Association for Community Based Children's Services
• Jennifer Sumsion, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Charles Sturt University
• Miriam Giugni, and Kathryn Brown, Social Justice in Early Childhood Group
• Fran Press, Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, Charles Sturt University
• Sandra Cheeseman and Marianne Fenech, Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University
• Christine Woodrow, Head, Early Childhood Programs, University of Western Sydney
• Louise Tarrant, National Secretary, LHMU, the children's services union