Sophie Conlon
After recently forming the, Beachport Childcare Working Group has met with Wattle Range Council staff to share their ideas to help bring childcare to the town.
Working group chairperson Chelsea Betheras said the meeting with council was positive.
“Council said they had already had discussions within [the organisation] about the need to increase child care anyway, so it was already on their radar,” she said.
Wattle Range Council chief executive officer Ben Gower said council had been working to increase childcare services in the region and a potential new centre on council’s Long Term Strategic Plan.
Ms Betheras said the working group proposed the preschool room at the Beachport Primary School could be used for care up to three days per week.
“COWS [Childcare on Wheels] operate out of there one day a week and obviously the facilities are already set up for childcare purposes,” she said.
“So we presented that maybe we could look at aligning with Glady’s Smith and maybe we can have a offshoot three days a week at Beachport run by council.”
The CEO said while the potential project had not been heard in the chamber yet, discussions would continue.
“We completely understand that demand, and are going to continue to explore options to see if we can meet that demand at least in some way,” he said.
Having care available in Beachport would take pressure off Gladys Smith Early Learning Centre in Millicent and allow more parents to return to the workforce, or have a well deserved day off.
“There are multiple women, some of them in pretty good careers like nursing, that can’t actually work because they cannot get any childcare and I feel like- for our region especially- professionals like nurses and doctors- are a little bit harder to come by, so if we can’t even get the ones that we’ve got in the area back to work we’re really going to be suffering,” Ms Betheras said.
For herself, Ms Betheras said having a local centre would reduce stress and travel time.
“At the moment we’re having to juggle taking two kids to the primary school and then one gets dropped off in Millicent and then I’ve got to pick the kids up and go back to Millicent,” she said.
“It is a logistics nightmare.
“Having something local would open options up for everyone in the town, there is lot’s of families at the moment who can’t access any childcare.”
Ms Betheras said next steps included more research for the working group.
“We just need to do a bit more research into how we could staff it, how it would be managed before they could give us an answer, but they liked the idea,” she said.
“They [council] are keen to support it because obviously childcare is a pretty vital issue at the moment.”
