Australia

Childcare is what people make it out to be. I always ask my staff - "What is the most important part of what we do?" Care of the child comes first, second, third, and always because the job of childcare is helping families to rear children. Rear is a terribly silly word, but it includes things like manners, education, socialization, respect and esteem. Raise is for plant life.

I think multimillion dollar buildings that house children in cold state of the arts facilities are for parents and government officials who think that offering a child buildings is the "way to go." That approach, of course, is typical of business vs home. Children will never admire a building. They will admire a person. In lieu of buying a state of the art building for several million dollars, government and investors need to invest in staff and toys. But they won't because staff and toys are not marketable; you can't sell a failed teacher or a failed toy, but you can sell a failed day care center.

At the same time, the building children play in needs to be safe, bright (200,000 candle watt hours) and filled with things to look at and do.

As for the opposite, like what this article is about is typical of what we get while the palace is being built. It is also typcial of those who think they can make a few bucks on the backs of children. It happens everywhere, and it happens because of what some people think of children. The real question is: What are we doing here? Who are we caring for? What difference does it make?

Judy

Child-care Plan Raises Suspicion
By Matt Wade and Mike Seccombe
October 24, 2005

A Federal Government proposal to increase child-care places by allowing "workplace nannies" to operate in vacant or underused buildings would lead to falling standards of care child, an industry specialist and the Opposition have warned.

Eva Cox, a feminist and academic at the University of Technology, Sydney, said a push by the Minister for Family and Community Services, Kay Patterson, to reduce regulations on day-care centres was a mistake.

"Even though state regulations may be irritating, in many ways they protect the delivery of good services," she said.

"Putting a women in an office with five kids is not the same as somebody operating out of their own home. What are we trying to do? Warehouse children?"

Senator Patterson has called for "more flexible" state government regulations to allow children to be looked after in unused spaces near workplaces. She also wants more family homes to be available for family day care.

Federal Labor's childcare spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, dismissed "backyard and basement" centres as an attempt to "do child care on the cheap".

Ms Plibersek said the proposal was dangerous because Senator Patterson had no idea how an expanded system would be regulated or run, and unworkable because there was a critical shortage of child-care workers.

"To imagine that you could just open up a basement room in an old factory and shove the kids in there is not an appropriate response to a much deeper and broader crisis," she said.

On Friday the Prime Minister, John Howard, appeared to indicate that the Federal Government was considering giving parents who employed carers in the home similar benefits to those with children in long day care.

But a spokesmen said yesterday that Mr Howard's comments did not signal any change in the Federal Government's policy at this stage.