Childcare centres, long day care, family daycare, nannies, au pair… the options for care before the schooling years begin is seemingly endless. When navigating this minefield I researched as much as I could and spoke to as many people who were willing to share their experiences. In the end, I settled on family daycare. I was putting my eighteen month old into care before I had wanted to and I thought having a home-like environment would be an easier transition for her (and relieve the mum-guilt I was feeling for needing to return to work earlier for more days than intended).
At first, our experience was great. We found a great family daycare educator in our area, met with her and found her home to be a very calm environment with a great little outdoor area for the children. I had anticipated that a slow start would have been recommended with shorter days gradually increasing in length of time. However, the educator suggested jumping straight into full days so that my daughter would understand that she would be there all day. Our first day wasn’t great with the educator receiving an unannounced compliance check and my daughter going on a hunger strike, not eating or drinking for the first two hours. I picked her up and we tried again for her second day. Despite being a little clingy, in all, the second day and first few weeks went well with me receiving positive messages from the educator. We quickly settled into a routine of two days at daycare, two days with her dad and the rest of the time with me.
The educator then started to report that my daughter was very clingy. My daughter was teething at the time so this was unsurprising. I apologised each time she mentioned this at pick up time. I had started having discussions with my daughter’s father whom I am separated from about changing her days with him as she is with him two days per week and at family day care for the other two. I was considering talking to my boss about my work schedule as I felt a change was needed. However, when I picked my daughter up from family daycare one Friday afternoon, the educator informed me that as my daughter was too clingy, she had almost not been able to attend to one of the two children with additional needs in her care and that they could have been injured. For the reason of her being too clingy and not settling into care (despite earlier positive reports), she was terminating care effective immediately.
I was in absolute shock. I knew that my daughter had been having some issues but the idea of terminating care had not even been mentioned by the educator. In that moment, my income halved. As my husband and I had separated towards the end of last year, we were in the process of selling our house with the cooling off period of a contract of sale ending that very day. Would I be able to successfully apply for a rental only working two days per week? We had moved to the area only a couple of years before to be closer to my husband’s family. Most of my immediate family live an hour and a half away. Could I move back in with my parents and ask them to care for my daughter on the days she isn’t with her dad and I commute for up to four hours per day in peak hour traffic? The educator had said that she felt it was too much for my daughter with her being with me some days, other days with her and a couple of days per week with her dad. Had my separation from my husband reuined my daughter? Having this information come through on Friday afternoon meant I had no time to contact daycare centres. I had a very stressful weekend contacting everyone I knew who had children at daycare, reading reviews of centres in my area and booking tours of centres that has this function on their website.
I have been very lucky with finding a place at a local daycare centre. This only came about however because another family is moving away. The staff are lovely and we started orientation visit this week. Despite being optimistic, I have a niggling fear that this care and my ability to earn a living could all be taken away as it has been so quickly and easily done before.
I have contacted the NSW Department of Education, Quality Assurance and Regulatory Services, Early Childhood Education. Here is part of their response:
“ We regulate the operation of early childhood education and care services for children from birth through to and including school age in NSW. These services are regulated under the National Quality Framework, consisting of the National Law and National Regulations.
National Regulation 168(k) requires services to have their own policies and procedures in relation to enrolment and orientation which includes how the service operates and what it can provide.
As the regulatory authority we are unable to direct to a service whether a child’s attendance days can be reduced. This is a matter for the approved provider to determine.
Services should have policies and procedures in place to reflect any decisions the service has in place that may impact a family’s ability to access the service.
…
The National Law is such that even if the Department considers a service’s actions to be not in the best interest of the child, not based on evidence or for any other reason unreasonable, there is limited grounds the regulatory authority could establish in relation to the National Law and to enrolment of a child or children. Depending on the circumstances it may be established that the approved provider failed to comply with their policies and procedures.”
Interestingly, the provider did not cover this in their termination of care policy, they only address when a parent/carer wants to terminate care.
I’d be interested to know the experiences of others.
