Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is hard for parents who have a child with special needs or a disability to find child care for that child and it is indeed a difficult thing for carers to take on a child with special needs. It amazes me that this government is making it harder for parents to find care for children with special needs and harder for carers who take on a child with special needs.

On 1 July 2006 the inclusion support subsidy was introduced, replacing the special needs subsidy scheme and the disabled supplementary services payment. Draft guidelines have been drawn up by the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and full implementation will occur by January 2007.

What this new inclusion support subsidy means is that family day carers will only receive subsidies to look after a child with a disability if they give up another childcare place. That means if they are able to have five children in their care and they decide to have a child with special needs and receive a subsidy for that child, they will only be able to care for four children. What that means, in effect, is a drop in income for a large number of family day care providers who take on a child with special needs.

It is phenomenally difficult now to find child care for a child with special needs. To ask family day carers to take a drop in their already small income to care for such children means that it will be even more difficult to find family day carers able and willing to take such children. That means that parents of children with special needs will find it harder still to find child care for their children.

Under the old system, if a carer looked after a child with a disability they received a subsidy to help with the extra training and resources they needed to look after that child effectively, but they were not automatically required to reduce the number of children in their care. Where a carer made an assessment that they did need to reduce the number of children in their care because of the seriousness of the disability or the needs of the child, they received a subsidy to compensate for the loss of income of having to give up another place in their care.

This means that family day carers, who provide care for over 3,000 children with additional needs and who care for 40 per cent of all children with disabilities who use formal child care, will under the new system actually have to, in many cases, give up income to continue to look after children already in their care who have special needs, or to take other children with special needs into their care. Labor does not believe that family day carers or any child carer who is doing the very difficult and demanding work of child care, and in addition to that taking on a child with special needs, for whom it is difficult to find child care in the first instance, should expect to lose income when they make this decision. It is simply not fair.

I have been contacted by a number of family day carers who described their situations, including Nancey from Clearview in South Australia. She talks about a number of children in her care, including one boy who has a difficult family situation, is often suspended from school and has few friends. Nancey writes: ‘He is not easy to care for and will lose his DSUPS payment.’ Her own daughter, who is five years old, also uses family day care once a week because she has a recognised developmental delay. She is in the care of a woman who has three children in her care as well as her own child. She will not receive the subsidy unless she drops one of those children from her care. Which child should she ask to leave her care?

Julie, a nurse, can deal with children with tracheotomies. She has learnt Auslan to deal with the deaf children in her care. For four years she studied Auslan so that she can care for children more effectively. She will lose $750 a fortnight in income because of this change. She has made it her specialty to care for children with extreme extra needs and she is expected to take a $750 a fortnight pay cut because she wants to care for children with disabilities. It is unjust and it is unfair—it is unfair for kids, for parents and for carers.