Childcare provider expands in effort to meet Albany demand and calls on more workers to join the industry

The director of an expanding Albany childcare provider is calling on more people to consider working in the industry which is crying out for more staff and more services. Village Childcare Service director Preity Dhaliwal has been operating two new on-site out-of-school-hours care (OSHC) services since the start of the year because of growing demand. VCS now operates out of Flinders Park Primary School and St Joseph’s College in addition to its pre-existing service at Bethel Christian School. Ms Dhaliwal said she had been “swamped” with requests from parents to transfer students to her BCS service following the abrupt closure of Smartplay at Australian Christian College Southlands in August last year. She said there were only three OSHC services in Albany: VCS, PCYC and Albany OSHC. “Albany OSHC has service operating from Orana which has quite a lot of capacity, but still it is not enough,” she said. “My friends were telling me Flinders has a lot of demand because it is out of the way so I came to speak to the principal here then we did a survey to get an expression of interest from families. “It was so overwhelming with parents saying something was needed here because parents don’t like their children being transported unless they really have to be.” VCS was also approached by St Joseph’s late last year to take over the service at its school, and applications to operate out of two other schools are being processed A Victoria University report labelled Albany a “childcare desert” in March last year because there are well over three children vying for every one childcare place. Ms Dhaliwal said her staff were wonderful, dedicated, caring and loving people, but there was always a need for more in order to catch up to demand. She said she had advertised “so many times” but often received little interest. “There are a lot of people who have been burned by the industry and they have the qualifications but just say they are not coming back,” she said. “With what we do, the hours are really odd, but a lot of mums like to work the other hours when their kids are at school. “There are a lot of females in the industry as well, without many male role models as staff. It’s really a struggle, and anyone who shows interest I tell them to come and talk to me because I can make them good offers.” Early childhood education courses are among the suite of TAFE courses the State Government has made free this year. Ms Dhaliwal said the lecturers involved with the course at South Regional TAFE’s Albany campus worked hard to bring more people into the industry. She said she worked in the industry because helping families in the community “fills my cup”. “We call ourselves ‘the village’, because that’s our philosophy,” she said. “To be an extended village for the families we serve, we do believe that it does take a village to raise our children.”