REMOTE and rural children are at a higher risk of having developmental vulnerabilities due to a lack of childcare programs throughout Australia, raising concerns from the Isolated Children's Parents' Association (ICPA).
ICPA leader of the early childhood and care portfolio, and new vice-president, Julia Broad said the impact of not having early childhood care was "massive" in terms of overall educational development - making the comment at the national ICPA Federal Conference in Perth last week.
"Often the families are trying to do everything, they are not educated as teachers or early childhood professionals, so they feel like their children might be getting left behind, there's no identification of special needs at an early enough point for them to get the help they need to make some good difference there," Ms Broad said.
"Research shows that two in five children living in rural and remote areas, begin compulsory schooling developmentally delayed, and therefore are not fully prepared for optimising their opportunities at school.
"This then translates into poor educational outcomes, possible mental health issues, higher risk of unemployment, social and emotional difficulties, and homelessness."
Remote and rural children are three times more likely to be developmentally vulnerable on two or more domains and have a far greater likelihood of developmental vulnerabilities compared to their city counterparts, according to ICPA New South Wales president Tanya Mitchell.
"The most recent figures show children living in rural and remote areas of Australia are further falling behind with the gap widening for children who are developmentally vulnerable," Ms Mitchell said.
"These developmental vulnerabilities are linked to poor educational outcomes, disability, chronic mental health problems and a higher risk of unemployment, personal relationship difficulties, contact with the criminal justice system and homelessness."
A recent Mitchell Institute report highlights that families in regional rural and remote areas are the most at risk of suffering from poor access to early learning.
Remote and outer remote areas have the highest levels of childcare deserts (a populated area where there are more than three children per childcare place) at 87.5 per cent and 79.9pc.
About 453 remote towns did not have a childcare centre within a 20 minute drive.
ICPA Cunnamulla, Queensland, representative Amy Palmer, who was a teacher for prep and year one students for 10 years, believes play groups and childcare programs are fundamental for a child's development.
"The kids are really little but they still need to do this whole schooling process, and we need to support the start of it just as much as we need to support ongoing," Ms Palmer said.
"Sometimes we have kids, and we are enjoying bringing them up, but we don't always get information that's required about what services are available and what we should be achieving with our kids."
Having accessible childcare for remote children would also help prevent children with disabilities from going through their early schooling career undiagnosed.
"I think it would create a lot of awareness about different childhood issues, whether we need to look into speech pathology or occupational therapy and services that we might not know about as new mums, I think that's a big thing as well," she said.
Minderoo Foundation research and policy lead David Ansell said the importance of a child's first five years for development was incredibly important and often determined how successful a child would be at school.
"When you look at the core data for our children and their developmental level aged five, one in five children, or 20 per cent, are not ready to start school," Mr Ansell said.
"What happens in the first five years of a person's life almost sets the pattern for their later wellbeing.
"It's deeply understood the impact of early childhood on later learning.
"As a school principal I didn't like to tell people that generally children's capacity, or let's just say their rank order, in preprimary or kindergarten was almost identical to their rank order in year 12.
"What they came into school with was generally what they came out with."
Mr Ansell strongly believes that just because people live in the bush, it doesn't mean they don't deserve the same quality and access to services as others.
"We want early childhood services to be universal in quality and access both in rural and remote regions," he said.
"My understanding is that that's not what many of you are experiencing."
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