‘Increasingly unsafe’: Australia’s in-home childcare program under threat from rising costs, advocate warns | Childcare Australia
Rebecca Mohr Bell, a cattle breeder and business owner, lives 100km south-west of Katherine in the Northern Territory and has been dependent on in-home childcare since 2018 with her three young children.
The little-known taxpayer-funded program is used by about 800 families with children who cannot access mainstream care because they live in remote areas, have serious illnesses or disabilities, or their parents work unusual hours.
Mohr Bell and her husband have a full-time live-in child care educator, but recent cost increases not covered by the government have left her family in a difficult situation. He said the gap payments he made after receiving the childcare subsidy had skyrocketed in the past two years due to the rising costs of housing and wages.
“It’s just going to mean it becomes unaffordable. I can’t afford to do it or I’m going to have to cut back on my teacher’s hours, which is really not possible,” he said.
“We’re not asking for anything special. We just want to be treated equally and ensure that our children have access to the same quality of child care as children in the metropolitan area.” [areas] to have.”
Almost one in three childcare operators, who provide last resort services for regional and remote families, disabled children and other children with complex needs, said they were at risk of closure and warned that government-funded pay rises for workers in mainstream childcare centers should be extended to home care.
Workers in the program were excluded from the federal government’s program to retain child care workers, which would have phased in wages by more than 15% over two years. This cost is borne by families who reduce their working hours or abandon the system altogether.
A peak body survey of providers found 31% of respondents said they were currently at risk of closure, with more than half saying they were operating “under significant pressure”.
The survey of 23 providers serving 810 families found that some services were concerned that up to 50% of families could opt out of the program after the next fee increase on July 1, putting services “directly on the path to closure.”
The industry says it has already seen a more than 30% reduction in hours and almost three-quarters of providers have seen families reduce or withdraw working hours altogether.
The industry’s peak body, the Australian Home Child Care Association (AHCA), said providers with already thin margins were being forced to pass on fee increases to families, many of whom are “the most vulnerable in the country”.
“The majority of the families we support come from complex medical, child protection and high-risk backgrounds. These are not families who can transition to mainstream care,” said Nicole Morgan, home care provider and president of AHCA.
“Services will close. Families will lose their care. Educators will leave the workforce. Children already identified as vulnerable will be increasingly left in unsafe and unsupported environments.”
Advocates have warned the government that the home care program is expensive, difficult to access and imposes a high administrative burden on families. Only a quarter of the 3,200 slots in the program have been filled; In 2022, 37% of the quotas were filled, and before 2018, 59% of the 3,000 quotas available were used.
A 2024 report by the productivity commission found that the hourly rate cap for home care did not adequately account for operating costs and recommended it be reviewed. Home care is more expensive than center-based care due to higher qualification requirements and lower educator-to-child ratios.
Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May said she had been contacted by families including nurses and doctors working shifts, parents of children with cancer and families at cattle stations “several hours away from the nearest childcare center, all at breaking point”.
“Some have had to cancel their registration for care because they cannot afford to remain in the system. All the bureaucratic processes required to sign up for home care mean that the program is underutilized and even those who participate are priced out,” he said.
“The industry is struggling to survive rather than expanding to provide real options to those in need.”
Childcare minister Jess Walsh did not commit to increasing funding for the scheme and said families using home care were already supported by the childcare subsidy.
“I know home care is important to the nearly 800 families who use it and who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to participate in center-based care.”
