By Renee Wood
Allowing women to rejoin the workforce and providing life-changing early education are key points of discussion at the national Jobs and Skill Summit as childcare dominates the debate.
Premier Daniel Andrews spoke at the summit and highlighted how investing in childcare is the nation’s greatest economic opportunity, saying it’s “the biggest contribution that we can make to economic prosperity.”
“There are 26,600 Women who are completely locked out of the workforce… that costs us $1.5 billion each and every year, that’s just in our state,” Mr Andrews said.
Reforms to early childhood education, dealing with childcare deserts and making childcare work for more working families are areas Mr Andrews wants bolstered.
“There’s probably no greater economic opportunity for us as a nation when getting this right.”
It’s an area that’s currently suffering with staff shortages, long waiting lists for children and childcare deserts with no local care in sight.
The Casey electorate was listed as the top Victorian childcare desert by Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute this year and centres in the region are also struggling to fill roles.
Recruitment agency Expect A Star has been enlisted to assist in finding an early childhood educator for the Woori Yallock area.
Recruitment Consultant Julienne Balcos said the role has been open for a year.
“It’s really hard…we are also struggling to put candidates or teachers in front of our clients,” she said.
Ms Balcos said the Yarra Ranges can be a hard spot to recruit for due to the area not being classified as regional which would allow for government relocation packages.
“What we do to alleviate them is we look into other ways on how we can help or support the centres.”
It’s a field that’s certainly been shaken by the pandemic due to vaccine mandates and teacher burn outs, however, a lack of reforms and investment has been brewing for some time.
“I think it’s unsustainable, the workload pressure, particularly, because they’ve been dealing with children, they’ve been dealing with paperwork and the expected amount of time that they spend doing school things outside of direct teaching,” Ms Balcos said.
The Victorian government has committed to changing the system with $9 billion over the next decade for the Best Start, Best Life reforms which will establish new centres, provide 15 hours of free three-year-old kinder and 30 hours of four-year-old kinder and further changes to the industry.
A new report by Deloitte has shown the reforms will boost Victoria’s workforce by up to 24,800 full time employees and boost the state’s economy by between $1.9 billion and $2.8 billion in 2032-33.
But it’s yet to be made clear where more workers will be found to fill the roles and the demand for free childcare.
Until then, agencies are looking at ways they can boost the workforce now.
Expect a star is looking into traineeship programs with senior students or recent school leavers.
“It’ll be really good because in a couple years time, hopefully, there wouldn’t be so much pressure into teachers or staff shortages,” Ms Balcos said.
The Albanese government’s first budget will be delivered by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on October 25 and it’s expected to reveal the outcomes of the summit.
