Enjoying the valuable input of others on this thread. Stlamc, I...

Enjoying the valuable input of others on this thread.

Stlamc, I notice that G8 is mentioned in all of the parent handbooks, but not easily identifiable as the parent group to the general public. My feeling is, that this is a deliberate strategy by G8 after the fallout created by the ABC debacle. G8 in the early days would have been acutely aware of parent sentiment towards corporate childcare and have chosen more subtle path towards gaining the confidence of parents.

Decentralising budgets to individual centres can be positive, it empowers staff and creates a feeling of ownership of the centre. However those tasks should not be carried out by early childhood educators. The role of an early childhood educator is to ensure that the well being and the individual developmental needs of every child in his/her care are met and no other task should detract from that. Therefore the employment of finance/marketing area managers would create support for the area manager and nominated supervisors of individual centres. The specialised skills of area finance/marketing managers would create more community awareness and involvement in the centre, assist centres in improving their occupancy levels and meeting and maintaining budget expectations.

Staff development, in December 2013 the government redirected funding from the Early Years Quality Fund to the new Long Day Care Professional Development Programme (LDCPDP). This is to provide professional development to paid educators. For each full time paid educator a centre will receive $3750 plus a loading of $2300 for each university trained educator. There also additional loadings for regional and remote services. A medium centre (65 places) would receive $42,950, that is based on a non teaching director and a strict staff to child ratio. The amount of funding through the LDCPDP programme going into corporate childcare is a considerable amount. Their employee development is not costing them a cent! I'm of the opinion that smaller privately owned centres do it better. Privately owned centres seem to target their training more towards the individual needs of staff, children and families within the centre, larger organisation seem to favour seminars where 150 places are offered but the subject matter make be of little relevance to improving development within individual centres. By any standard the corporates are receiving massive amounts of funding for staff development, so although it appears on their P & L is has cost them nothing.

The information on the Care for Kids website and the reviews and parent feedback are approved by individual centres before they are posted on the website. You will never find negative feedback and are unable to verify the authenticity of the reviews. Interestingly, the centre mentioned in stlamc's post has the most reviews out of any of the First Grammar centres. The area of that centre is Hurstville, there are 24 centres in that area, only 5 received reviews and the maximum reviews for any other centre was two. I selected another area, Merrylands again 5 reviews, 29 centres in that area and only 5 receiving reviewing reviews and those reviews 1 or 2 per centre. More interesting is the occupancy levels of those centres. There are 10 centres in the First Grammar Group, 7 of those centres are reporting vacancies everyday. The centre with the least number of vacancies is Hurstville. My conclusion is that First Grammar in Hurstville has a very motivated and proactive director, who has an excellent relationship with both families and staff.

I am interested in comments and opinions of others regarding the effect of the 2-3 yr old ratio changes in 2016 and how centres, both corporate, private and not for profit will maintain profitability levels after the changes.

Some other websites that maybe of interest to those of you who research your investments thoroughly are:
www.mychild.gov.au
www.acecqa.gov.au

IMO - DYOR

Islay