Private Operators & Child Care Funding - Is it a level playing field?

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Permalink Reply by erica dodd on September 13, 2009 at 16:21

I stumbled upon this article reasearching for child care grants for private centers. The center I work at is fantastic and staff do their absolute best to provide the highest quality of care possible; however we sometimes find this incredibly difficult given our lack of resources and funding! I am absolutely disgusted by the Governments apparent lack of interest in providing equil care to all children across the country. I have spent the last 2 hours searching through page after page of grants looking for one that a private center might be elligble for and have found nothing.
Can anyone give me an idea of where to start looking for some answers...? What do I need to do to try and change this?

Extreemly frustrated and disheartened

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Permalink Reply by Vatche on October 27, 2009 at 11:22

Hi Erica,

I did the same research to no avail. Looks like we are on our own.

The government is requiring for operators to meet all of the requirements, which I'm not against them being implemented, but has no support to keep them viable for any small business.

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Permalink Reply by Rebekah Paraskevas on February 22, 2010 at 13:02

Unfortuantely, I don't think there is any funding or grants etc that private operators can access. I have actually began to think that transforming my centres into not-for-profit operations will be the best option to ensure that we can continue to provide for children at an affordable rate, whilst allowing us access to grant funding that others can access. With the changing of our operating regulations to meet the COAG agenda for employment of degree qualified professionals and maintaining very low child:staff ratios, I feel parents are going to be the ones that are hardest hit from private operators as fees will have to increase to cover these additional costs.
By being able to access grant funding, it will ensure that things like training, resources and building maintenance can be maintained at a high level whilst the additional staff are payed for out of operating profit.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Corkery on April 17, 2010 at 8:04

I have for past few months carried out further investigation on the impact on private childcare centres in Queensland, ever since the Queensland Govt made pre-school free in State schools and with the COAG changes I see most private sector centres will be lucky to survive unless they reconfiger their virtually empty preschool room to a 2 room configeration for babies and infants. This will cost about $500,000, additonal staff parking spaces, the centre will also have to totally comply to the current building regulations. The COAG changes will also require additional staff. The Access Economics report on the COAG changes is not accurate and ill informed

The Federal Govt will not be funding the private sector only the Not for Profit centres & as an example during the past 18 months the NFP centres have received over $1billion from Federal & State Govts and private sector zero!!

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