City child care in jeopardy

BY ALEX BEECH
Two ABC Learning centres in the city have been declared unviable and face an uncertain future in the New Year.
ABC Sydney Central and ABC Ultimo will receive government support for the next three months. The government then hopes they will be sold to new owners.
However, the Opposition says this is little comfort to families with children in the centres.
‘The news leaves many parents facing uncertainty into the New Year ‘ it is not the news they needed heading into Christmas,’ said the Coalition’s federal childcare spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella.
‘[There] is not doubt these centres will suffer a mass exodus of families in the coming weeks ‘ putting their viability at even further risk.’
The Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the government will provide up to $34 million of additional funds, but could not guarantee the future of ABC centres after March.
‘We are providing that support to keep them up and running until 31 March next year, and in that time period, we will be clarifying the long-term future of those centres,’ Ms Gillard said.
Under a plan outlined by ABC receiver McGrathNicol last Wednesday, 720 ABC Learning centres will continue as normal. Of those remaining, 55 will close and 241, including Sydney Central and Ultimo, will receive government funding to keep them running until March.
Ms Gillard said expressions of interest had already been made about the unviable centres.
‘The receiver has got many expressions of interest from not-for-profit groups, from local government, from people who think that they could play a role in providing care from those centres.’
However, those in the industry have said if nothing more is done to fix problems within the industry the problem will only get worse.
‘There’ll be more chaos. But the chaos has been caused by the Federal Government,’ said the president of Child Care NSW Lyn Connolly.
‘Two things have caused this problem: Federal Governments since 1991 refusing to put a planning model in place except for the Howard government’ the other thing is, they need to immediately increase the funding for babies, probably 100 per cent,’ Ms Connolly said.
Yet Mr Honey said the situation is better than they had originally expected.
‘I appreciate this solution is not perfect’ however we have sought to minimise the impact on families and consider it the best outcome in the circumstances,’ he said.