The rise of the for-profit child care sector: implications for choosing quality child care in a regional community
Nonie Harris
James Cook University
Contact Email: Nonie.Harris
jcu.edu.au
The Federal Government maintains that the growth of for-profit child care services promotes child care choice - a responsive market driven sector that establishes centres where parents need them and provides quality care at a price parents can afford. The qualitative research results presented in this paper challenge these assumptions. The research aimed to explore the impact of the rapidly expanding for-profit child care sector on women’s opportunities to choose quality child care. This research complements recent quantitative research on the quality implications of for-profit child care provision, and adds to our understanding of current child care policy by focusing on the experiences of women in a regional location. The women in this study associated the expansion of the corporate child care sector with a decline in child care quality and claimed that the ‘market’ approach to child care provision had diminished their child care choices. Corporate, one-size-fits-all child care services, managed in distant capital cities were seen to be unresponsive to the needs of their regional community. These results challenge the Federal Government’s child care choice rhetoric and encourage policy makers to re-examine the child care quality implications of a dominant corporate child care sector.
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