Cost of tender loving care

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

In the early 1970s when Glennie Oborn opened her first childcare centre in her mother's house, families with two parents working fulltime were a rarity and the childcare industry was in its infancy.

How times have changed. Census figures show that by 2001 both parents in almost 29,000 families with a preschool child were working full-time, as were the parents in more than 62,000 families where the youngest child was between 5 and 14.

In the past decade, the number of registered childcare centres has exploded and Oborn's Kindercare Learning Centres is now just one brand in a well-provisioned market.

In 1991, the country had 53 home-based care networks and 741 licensed daycare centres for preschool children. By 2002 there were 194 home-based care networks and 1609 licensed daycare centres, many in purpose-built premises.

Parents can choose from a variety of philosophies and styles, suggesting life has never been easier for the working parent. But just how easy is it? The answer, it seems, depends on who you talk to.

Steve and Deidre Campbell began using childcare seven years ago when their oldest son, Hamish, was 4 months old.

Steve, a trust manager, and Deidre, an accountant, had just returned from an extended OE and bought a house when they discovered Deidre was pregnant. There was, she says, no question of giving up work, because of the mortgage and the need to re-establish her career in New Zealand.

So they did what many parents do - asked friends to recommend childcare centres. When they checked them out, they found something they liked fairly easily.

The centre they chose "seemed to have a good balance between caring and loving and stimulating", says Deidre. And it was close to her work.

That was a major consideration. The family lived in West Harbour with Deidre working in the central city. She wanted something close to work "because although you're sitting in the car, you have that extra time with the kids, reading traffic signs, singing songs ... "

Location is important for another reason: while there may be an abundance of providers, their hours are inflexible, meaning parents have to pick their children up promptly after work. Most centres operate between 7.30am and 5.30pm and "if you can find somewhere open before 7am or after 6pm, you would be very, very lucky", says Sue Thorne, chief executive of the Early Childhood Council.

One of the reasons for this is the way the Government has funded centres (children are subsidised, with Thorne estimating the parents pay about 60 per cent of the true cost).

Each child is funded for up to six hours a day and 30 hours a week - yet centres charge a uniform hourly rate. It is unlikely they could stay open longer at a price that parents could afford, Thorne says.

This week's Budget announced an extra $55 million in funding over four years for early childhood education. Of that, $39 million is to go on staffing and operational costs and $4.5 million will go on a new funding framework.

But staff availability also limits hours. There is, says Oborn, an international shortage of qualified early childhood teachers.

"These people go to where the hours suit them. One of the strategies to keep our staff is to consider their needs and interests."

But that inflexibility severely limits the options for parents such as Vanessa and Chris Jarman.

The Jarmans live in Helensville. Vanessa, an export administrator, works in Penrose and begins work at 7am to get hold of overseas contacts. Chris, who works on track maintenance, starts at 7.30am. They get 18-month-old Kyla out of bed around 5.30am and sometimes need to drop her off at 6am.

The Jarmans began looking for childcare when Vanessa was pregnant and soon realised no daycare centre had suitable hours. With flexibility being one of their criteria for choosing a carer, they opted for Barnardo's home-based service.

It helps, says Vanessa, that the carer they liked lives just two minutes' drive from home.

Had they not found someone who could accommodate their hours "I guess I would have had to change my working hours", says Vanessa. And that would have made her less efficient.

Flexibility is not only an issue for carers - employers also need to cut working parents some slack. And many do so.

Digital media account manager Dean Baker put in long hours before 2-year-old Jordan started attending daycare more than a year ago. Now Dean and wife Cindy, an insurance broker, work normal office hours so they can drop Jordan off and pick him up together.

As a result, Dean is putting in fewer hours but working more effectively during them. Nobody has commented on the change.

"Nowadays, particularly in our business, it's numbers on the board," he says. "So long as you are doing a good job and performing they [employers] are happy."

Deidre Campbell relates how flexible employers helped her and Steve juggle family and work life.

Once when both Hamish and his younger brother Fraser, 4, were in daycare, one of the boys was sick.

"I looked after him during the morning and afternoon then swapped with Steve. I went [in to work] in the afternoon and worked until later at night."

That willingness to help employees balance work and family life is increasingly important for companies that want to attract and retain skilled workers, says Peter Merry, Fletcher Building's general manager of human resources.

Fletcher Building is a rarity among New Zealand firms - it runs Kimba Corner, a childcare centre specifically for employees, just a couple of minutes down the road from its Mt Wellington premises. It also runs a holiday programme for employees' school-age children, regularly attracting 40 to 50 participants.

Kimba Corner was established 13 years ago on a company-owned site. It doesn't have to make a profit and benefits from what Merry terms "benevolent accounting".

At $177 a child a week, it's no cheaper than a commercially run centre, but Merry and centre manager Sarah Harford say it can offer a higher standard of care without charging higher prices.

But facilities such as Kimba Corner are not the only way companies can help their working parents - nor says Merry, should they be. Fletcher Building, for instance, has more than 300 sites in New Zealand alone and can't run a registered daycare centre at each one of them.

Instead employers should be looking broadly at how they can help employees balance the demands of work and family.

Some steps employers can take are relatively straightforward, says Equal Employment Opportunities Trust executive director Trudie McNaughton. For example, Auckland University of Technology and Bay of Plenty Polytechnic have aligned their teaching semesters with primary school terms, making it easier for parents to take time off when their children are at home.

But even though she agrees employers have become more flexible (many of them are trying to balance work and family themselves), there still are areas of difficulty.

Shift workers, or those with unpredictable hours, face extremely limited choices and even with Work and Income subsidies, daycare is simply too expensive for many low-income earners.

Even for comfortably middle-class families such as the Campbells, there can come a time when the juggling gets too difficult and too expensive.

In seven weeks Deidre will return to work after taking maternity leave to have her third child, Phoebe, 3 months. Steve's fixed-term contract will come to an end and he will stay home to look after Fraser and Phoebe, and Hamish after school.

Steve had been considering a part-time job but when he added up the costs of daycare for two and after-school care for one he realised it simply wasn't financially worthwhile.

Then there's the logistics - the younger two would be provided with lunch at daycare but Hamish (and Fraser, when he starts) needs to take lunch to school. School and daycare keep different hours.

"It does get a bit stressful having to race home to pick up the kids, or if they are sick," says Deidre. "And with school you drop them off at 8.30am at the earliest. The logistics of organising all that can get a bit tiresome."

But Steve and Deidre also know that, in his 40s, Steve can't be out of the workforce for too long and they need to be flexible. "When Fraser goes to school," says Deidre, "there will be another re-evaluation."

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