Regional childcare summit to help fix rural workforce woes

Yet, even in teacher-blessed Armidale, like most of regional Australia, locals are struggling with a shortage of childcare and early childhood education services.

So much so that one of the regional city's three long-established boarding schools is looking at options to open its own childcare facilities to help plug the gap and guarantee childcare support for the families of teachers it hires.

"If we had a building available we'd do it tomorrow," said principal of The Armidale School, Dr Rachel Horton.

"There are long wait lists to get children into the existing childcare facilities in the area.

"That puts us in quite a difficult position when employing teachers who look at moving to a sizeable centre like Armidale fully expecting those services to be available."

The school had nearly missed several chances to hire good teaching staff because of the childcare problem.

In Echuca, population 15,000, on the Victoria-NSW border, Rural Doctors Association of Australia president, Megan Belot, also understands the issue on a personal and professional level.

Dr Belot, who recently had her second child, said limited childcare was most certainly a contributing factor to the regional healthcare worker shortage.

"We're definitely lacking in rural and remote Australia, to the detriment of the whole community," she said.

"If you could fix childcare, it would not just benefit doctors and nurses, but everyone in the community.

"It's a no-brainer."

More broadly, in small and large rural communities, workforce reliability problems caused by a lack of childcare rank as one of the top three concerns for farmer members of advocacy body, GrainGrowers.

The industry group has highlighted how staff shortages on farms and in the farm services sector have been magnified by the dearth of childcare support for communities, particularly young parents whose skills are needed, but who are subsequently discouraged from raising their young families in the bush.

In October GrainGrowers will host a day-long strategy planning meeting in Canberra with delegates from childcare industry organisations and providers, the Isolated Childrens' Parents Association, National Farmers Federation, farm sector stakeholders and others.

In response to earlier talks with federal Early Childhood Education and Youth Minister, Dr Anne Aly, GrainGrowers wants the action meeting to prepare a blueprint for government and the early education sector, offering potential strategies to enhance childcare services and workforce stability in the bush.

GrainGrowers' major projects general manager, Kaitlin Leonard, said invited participants were now being surveyed to help draw up a basic plan for "what good could look like".

She said the regional childcare shortage was more than a problem for parents with ag industry qualifications and young children, whose careers and farm sector productivity contributions were being shackled.

"In many cases children in rural and remote areas arrive at primary school developmentally delayed compared to kids elsewhere, because they haven't had the benefit of two, three or more years of early learning opportunities to complement their family life," Ms Leonard said.

A depleted cohort of childcare workers in the bush was also struggling to cope with limited support and professional development opportunities and even adequate accommodation options in some places.

"This isn't just a big issue for small communities like Lake Grace or Wickepin in WA, or in western Queensland, it impacts rural life in large centres like Griffith or even Armidale."

While the number of places in childcare centres was strictly capped, Echuca's Dr Belot said there should be some wiggle room allowed to encourage skilled workers and their children to the regions.

"If we knew a doctor was coming to town with one or two kids, there should be flexibility in the system to accommodate that," she said.

Dr Belot recalled a time when hospitals had on-site childcare, so children could be dropped off at the start of a shift.

"It would be a really good solution to our rural workforce issue, if we could offer some childcare as part of the work package," she said.

"It would give us an immediate boost because people [already in the workforce] could increase their hours and it would help us attract other health professionals."

In Armidale, home to the University of New England, multiple state and independent schools, a conservatorium of music and other training institutions, Dr Horton said a TAS childcare facility was still a concept to be properly considered by the school's board.

If it went ahead she expected to see it actively servicing the currently underrepresented "pre-school" needs of the whole community.

However, if adopted it may also be two or more years away, given TAS was currently committing its building efforts to a new girls' boarding house, due to be completed late next year.

The one-time boys-only boarding school, which has more than 680 students from Kindergarten to Year 12 and about 3.6 per cent annual growth, began enrolling girl boarders eight years ago.

Girls now make up about 42pc of total enrolments.