West Australian parents are paying more to send their children to child care than they were at the beginning of the year, despite federal government plans to reduce costs.
A new survey of 500 families across Australia organised by not-for-profit group The Parenthood revealed more than 90 per cent had experienced an increase in fees over the past month, and the majority were now paying $120 or more per child per day.
Child care fees have increased for many, despite federal government plan to help families with rising costs.Credit: iStock
This is despite the federal government announcing its plan for “cheaper childcare” – an increase to subsidy payments for families which earned less than $530,000 – would begin from July 10.
For the average family on $120,000 with a child in care three days a week, the changes were expected to cut costs by $1700 a year.
Aisling O’Leary has two children aged two and four in daycare in Perth’s northern suburbs and was initially relieved to hear about the changes as the cost-of-living crisis pushed other household expenses up.
But since the changes were introduced, her childcare fees have gone up. She is now paying $137 a day for her two-year-old and $132 a day for the four-year-old – $26.50 more per week than before the subsidy changed.
Perth mother of two Aisling O’Leary with her boys, aged two and four.
Her family immigrated to Australia, and she has no other family living nearby to help out, making childcare a necessity.
“The increase doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is the second-biggest expense in our household after our mortgage, which has been rapidly increasing,” she said.
“Our weekly shop is also mind-blowingly more expensive than what it used to be. It was disappointing to believe you might be able to save some money among it all, only to find out that won’t be the case.
“It is yet another increasing bill wearing down families.”
“These fee increases have not resulted in any wage increase for early childhood educators, who continue to be undervalued and underpaid.”
Jessica Rudd, The Parenthood CEO
The Parenthood chief executive Jess Rudd said many families were in a similar position.
She said it was “not fair, nor acceptable, that some providers seek to profit from the government’s investment of $5.4 billion at the expense of parents, taxpayers, and early childhood educators”.
“We have zero tolerance for the sort of opportunism we’re seeing from a number of cynical providers,” she said.
Rudd said the federal government increases to the child care subsidy were implemented to help ensure early childhood education became more affordable, but that was only possible with co-operation from providers.
“Our findings point to an extremely disappointing trend where opportunistic fee hikes are eating up the potential improvements to family household budgets,” she said.
“This is simply unacceptable when Australians already pay some of the highest childcare fees in the world.
“What is even more disappointing is that these fee increases have not resulted in any material wage increase for early childhood educators, who continue to be undervalued and underpaid.”
O’Leary was happy with her daycare centre as she believed the fees were being put towards training educators and upgrading the facility, but she said that was definitely not always the case.
The Parenthood reached out to the 50 biggest early childhood education providers across the country and asked them about fee increases and what they were being put towards.
Only two responded. One stated they “aimed to minimise the impact on our families, however the continued rise of our labour and operational costs has meant we needed to increase our fees by an average of 3.88 per cent from 10 July”.
The other said their fees had increased between 5.9 per cent and 6.3 per cent.
Federal Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly said 1.2 million Australian families were now better off due to the increase to the subsidy, including 111,800 WA families.
“We know fees have been going up for many years – that’s why we’re taking action and have commissioned the ACCC to look at the factors driving costs in the sector,” she said.
“I look forward to receiving the commission’s final report which will set out what more can be done to keep fees in check and out-of-pocket costs down for families.
“We’ve also commissioned the Productivity Commission to undertake an in-depth review of the early childhood education and care sector.
“The review will help us to identify solutions as we chart the course for universal, affordable early childhood education – in the great tradition of universal Medicare and universal superannuation.”
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