Childcare deserts: 700,000 Australians with no childcare access

There's not much Heather Sherrill doesn’t love about country life. Over the past four years, her partner, Nathan, a farmhand born and raised in Beulah, and their two children have called the small Mallee town home.  

The impressive Yarriambiack Creek is within easy reach, the community garden is never short on volunteers, and the pub at the local footy club regularly draws a tight-knit crowd of locals.  

Until recently it was the life Heather pictured for her young family; Arlo (two years) and Zetta (three months), but when the doors closed on the town’s only childcare centre in April, so did their chance to confidently plan for the future. 

It is an uncomfortable truth: access to childcare has little to do with need and everything to do with socioeconomic status. Right now, 700,000 Australians live in areas with virtually no access to childcare. 

International childcare report: Mapping the deserts, led by Associate Professor Peter Hurley is a world-first study looking at childcare access for around 10 million children, across nine nations, including Australia. 

In 2022, Associate Professor Hurley, Director of Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute, one of Australia’s leading education policy research think tanks, released Deserts and oases: How accessible is childcare in Australia?

The debut report revealed Australia’s childcare centres were concentrated in the wealthiest suburbs of the country, in stark contrast with regional locations and outer suburbs. 

In this follow-up study International childcare report: Mapping the deserts, Associate Professor Hurley re-examines new data, revealing which states have improved, stagnated or declined.  

The international section of the report, including specific data and lead table on the United Kingdom, Scotland, France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden will be released in full on September 12, 2024. 

“There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence around the lack of childcare in Australia, but there wasn’t an analysis about the why or the how,” Associate Professor Hurley said.

We have examined a huge amount of publicly available official datasets and provided a clear picture about access, or the lack of, to childcare. We hope the report gets people thinking about the entire childcare structure, and how we can make it better.

An updated leader table from one to nine has ACT (9%), Victoria (15%) and Queensland (13%) in the top three positions, showing the biggest improvement in terms of access, while parts of NSW, Western Australia and Tasmania take out the bottom three spots.  

The new figures confirm that access to childcare remains disproportionately in favour of metropolitan pockets and major regional areas, while remote areas continue to struggle. 

The number of childcare places in Australia has increased by about 70,000 between 2020 and 2024, however rural Australia still lags behind and the gap between rural and metropolitan Australia continues to grow.

It is a sobering statistic that might surprise many Australians, but not the families living in Beulah. While parts of Victoria have seen an increase, Heather and Nathan are currently living in one of the many childcare deserts found around the state.  

“Right now, I could drive four hours a day to access childcare for one day a week. I chose to have children later in life, and up until 2020 we were living in Melbourne, where there were lots of options. When we moved to the country, we enrolled Arlo in the local centre - but due to staffing issues, the centre closed, so that was that. I don’t have extended family here, so it’s been really hard on us all,” Heather said. 

The local council owns the building and is currently considering re-opening the centre or running it as a ‘homecare’ facility, which would mean one educator and a maximum of four children.  

Either way, the roughly twenty families affected aren’t holding their breath. 

“From a financial standpoint, we need to decide if I’m going to try and go back to work or if my partner’s going to stop work and we divide childcare care between us. From an emotional standpoint, I'm exhausted. From a mental health perspective, I’m fine, but ask any mother about the benefits of having even a single hour where you’re not mentally coordinating their children – you become a better parent.” 

Heather says grappling with the issue is frustrating. “I’d like to see the government encourage more people to live in regional Victoria, or offer childcare workers a paid placement, or maybe get first year postgraduate students to spend a year working in rural areas. Where’s the enticement?” Heather asked. 

A considerable proportion of a child’s brain development occurs in the first five years of life. Without regular childcare and living rurally means there is only a finite number of playdates that can be arranged. “Arlo’s a happy, well-adjusted toddler, but he won’t have access to a wide range of learning experiences until he’s eligible for three-year-old kindergarten in January next year. Unless something changes, Zetta will miss accessing the same level of social stimulation.”  

Not having access to reliable childcare services has impacted every part of Heather and Nathan’s life, adding layers of trepidation and anguish about the future.  

“The kids are amazing, and I wouldn’t give up being their Mum for anything, but from a maternal mental health perspective, it takes a toll. For us, the worst-case scenario is we throw away everything we’ve built for the last four years, in terms of owning our home and being part of a great community and move back to the city or interstate.” 

Associate Professor Peter Hurley hopes the new research will not only encourage government and policy makers to collaborate on a unified approach but also draw attention to some of the significant impacts the lack of childcare access creates. 

“Creating equitable access to childcare benefits workforce participation for women, and ensuring young children have every opportunity to thrive are not niche concerns, they are issues everyone in the community should be working together to address,” he said. 

Case study supplied by The Parenthood.