In the latest in a week-long series on the early-childhood education sector, reporter Simon Collins finds that some childcare operators appear to be putting profits before the needs of children in their care
Two public health officials have launched a scathing attack on "child farming" by some childcare operators who ignore children's needs in their drive to make a profit.
Mike Bedford and Kerry Sutherland have warned in the journal The First Years that young infants are at high risk of infectious diseases in overcrowded childcare centres.
Mr Bedford, who has quit the Wellington Regional Public Health service so he can speak out about conditions in the industry, said the growing trend to place babies in childcare when they are still in nappies was exacerbating the dangers.
"You have children whose immune systems are just developing and one of the biggest risks for infection transfer is children in nappies," he said.
His critique, based on working with childcare centres for 17 years, comes as Children's Commissioner John Angus launches an inquiry into childcare for infants under 2.
Mr Bedford, originally an environmental scientist, established the country's first dedicated early childhood centre team in a public health agency in Wellington in 1996 after tracing gastrointestinal infections in the community back to childcare centres.
He wrote a master's thesis in public health at Otago University in 1999 estimating that infectious diseases attributable to early childhood centres cost New Zealand between $20 million and $50 million a year.
He and Ms Sutherland, who is on maternity leave from the health agency, stressed in their article that not all commercial childcare centres were unsafe.
"But we are saying that within this sector there are businesses that are certainly not focused on children's needs," they wrote.
"In some cases 'child farming' is the only appropriate term for something motivated by nothing more than financial gain."
They said regulations requiring a minimum of 2.5sq m inside and 5sq m outside for every child were 30 to 40 per cent below some Australian states and were "indefensible".
"This ratio roughly equates to 30 children and three to seven adults in a three-bedroom house," they said.
"For children in childcare, smaller areas and volume have been associated with a higher incidence of upper respiratory tract infections, diarrhoea, eye infections, acute tonsilitis and bronchitis."
Mr Bedford said most kindergartens and playcentres had far more than the minimum space and plenty of grass, but most all-day childcare centres were "not much above minimum standards in terms of space".
He said New Zealand regulations also required only one handbasin for every 15 children and set a minimum indoor temperature of 16C, 2C lower than the World Health Organisation minimum, which allowed viruses to linger.
He advocates raising the minimum standards for space, temperature and handbasins, and extending paid parental leave so that parents do not need to put their infants into daycare for at least the first year.
Early Childhood Council president Margie Blackwood said she also had concerns about some childcare centres and urged parents to be vigilant.
"Voting with your feet works. If the Ministry of Education or the Education Review Office believe there is a problem with a centre, they have the power to close it down."
