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By Dylan De Jong

A Wimmera research project has identified parents in rural areas are paying twice as much for childcare than people living in urban areas.

Federation University Australia researchers found Wimmera parents were struggling to find childcare services, leading to residents moving to bigger cities or sacrificing their careers to be stay-at-home parents.

The study, across Victoria’s Wimmera-southern Mallee, identified issues including staff and service shortages and lack of economic viability to run childcare, which led to difficulties in attracting new operators to the sector.

Wimmera campus-based researcher Cathy Tischler said the study revealed there were no organisations with an obligation to provide childcare services when market failures occurred.

She said this differed from government-funded kindergarten services. 

“There is a gap in regulatory support because we are relying on the market to deliver these services,” she said. 

“When these services don’t exist, instead of being a community problem, it is left to individual people to find their own solutions.

“This is not an individual problem for people or even an individual problem for councils, but the question should be how can the region actually provide a cohesive response to this?”

The study found a lack of subsidised childcare meant parents were paying double compared with urban areas for childcare because parents were finding their own unregulated solutions.

It identified lack of childcare was also a significant equity issue for both parents, although the study found it was primarily women who put their careers on hold to look after their children in the Wimmera.

Down to cost

Dr Tischler said feedback from the research also indicated providers and potential providers were adamant that starting a childcare service was not cost-effective.

“That sort of view was defeatist in a way, but it was also the view expressed by women looking for childcare services, who would say, ‘Well, I chose to move out here and maybe it’s not up to me to expect a really good service out here’,” she said. 

“There needs to be a push for change. Why can’t we have childcare plugged onto a kindergarten system or an arrangement like that to make it work? 

“There are many things we could do if we changed our mindset and saw this is an economic issue, an equity issue and a community development issue.”

Dr Tischler said there was ‘a lot of talk and a lot of noise’ about the provision of urban childcare, but lobby groups needed to understand the challenges of rural childcare, as the issues were different.

“Research is not just documenting problems and proposing solutions, but working with communities to find a way through many difficult challenges,” she said. 

“The gap between workforce development and community development in urban communities versus rural communities in this space is vast and it is having a significant impact on people’s lives.”

The study was carried out in West Wimmera, Hindmarsh, Yarriambiack and Northern Grampians municipalities.