So recently after 10 months without one, my husband got a job. As I work full time we got my 9 year old daughter into OSHC (which is surprisingly affordable) and my 16 month old son into Childcare.
I never thought of any issues last time we had my son in childcare as I had been on maternity leave and my husband was working, so by the time I was heading back to work I was still on the ass end of being paid from my workplace (my workplace is VERY generous for maternity leave, I was off for eight months).
This time around I forgot that childcare needs you to pay 2 weeks up front, which would not be a problem when my hubby starts to get paid from his new job, but is a problem now. We have hardly any money due to scraping by with a one income household. So when they asked for the two weeks up front, I could afford one, not two (as the Child care rebate has not come through yet I had to pay full price). Luckily they agreed to allow us to pay three weeks next fortnight. This incident got me thinking.
What happens to other families, what if a single parent was offered a job, tried to get the kid into childcare to be advised that the Child care rebate will take two weeks to come through and they have to pay two weeks of full price up front before they can take the kid. What happens to those who enrol in child care centres who are not as forgiving? Will the parent have to decline the job and then get penalised by Centrelink for turning a job down? It seems like a vicious circle, cannot get a job without childcare and cannot pay for childcare without a job. I myself was a single parent 8 years ago, if it wasn’t for my mother at the time, I never would have been able to accept a job.
I think someone needs to change this. I think maybe there should be a system that will pay the first two weeks of childcare for a single parent families or extremely low income families until they are getting paid. After all we have a bonds scheme in which people can apply to get the bonds for private rentals paid for them, why can’t we have this set up for childcare?
Posted by lepumpkinhead, 2nd July 2015
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