Profession Is Not Child's Play

The Age

Wednesday August 3, 2005

DAVID ADAMS

Sally Christensen is a woman on a mission. For the past decade or so, she has worked around the world as a nanny, confronting issues such as coping with twins and postnatal depression. She has even been a "super nanny" of sorts - a "troubleshooting" child carer who undertakes jobs of up to six months for families with a particularly difficult child or if a previous nanny hasn't performed well.

Now back in Melbourne and 18 months into a two-year diploma course in children's service at the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE in Preston, the 30-year-old is determined to help change the image of a career she says is all too often simply viewed as babysitting.

"It's so much more," says Ms Christensen, who was NMIT's Outstanding Student of the Year for 2005.

"A lot of people forget but I think it's something like 75 per cent of what a child knows is learnt in the first seven years of their life."

Ms Christensen is not alone in recognising the need to improve the status of child-care workers.

Barbara Romeril, executive director of the Community Child Care Association - which represents the non-profit sector of the industry (about a third of all long-day care centres in the state) and government-funded training and advisory service - says there is a "real lack of understanding that modern child care is a crucial professional service to offer babies and toddler developmental programs that maximise their development".

"It's not just keeping kids off the street and stopping them from getting run over, it's actually providing a really important developmental opportunity for children who may not be getting that developmental stimulation at home for a whole variety of reasons."

There are about 12,000 child-care workers employed in long-day child-care centres in Victoria (not including the 3000 or so employed at occasional care centres, for outside school hours services or as nannies or family care workers - the latter tend to be independent contractors rather than employees). The majority are women.

Ms Romeril says the lack of understanding about the role of child-care workers combined with poor conditions and wages (even after a recent wage rise win, qualified child-care workers will only earn $19 an hour) have resulted in a meagre supply of new people in the industry.

"Especially for those who do a degree, the wages that they're offered in child care are insulting really for the level of professional skill that they bring," she says. "And for diploma graduates as well - they can earn more in other jobs."

With only a "trickle" of people entering the industry in Victoria, Ms Romeril says there are concerns about skill levels in the industry. But on a more positive note, she says, jobs are plentiful for qualified people.

"There's intense competition from existing services to employ those qualified people," she says.

Ms Romeril says that along with improving wages and conditions, promoting the important role of child care and improved training and education of child-care workers play a key role in lifting the status of the profession.

One of the ways NMIT is trying to encourage more people into the industry is to highlight more career options, for example an early childhood consultant to child-care centres with a specialisation in an area such as music or literature.

Ms Christensen, meanwhile, is hoping next year to undertake a graduate certificate course in postnatal and prenatal care and is then considering doing a bachelor of Early Childhood degree.

"I'd love to see Australia recognise early child care as a profession ..." she says.

"If we got paid a bit more money and got a bit more respect for what we do, I think you'd have a lot more motivated staff out there." -- DAVID ADAMS