Col when your relative needs a place in a geriatric facility you are not presented with choices. The aged assessment team has assessed the person as being in need of accommodation and you take the next available place, irrespective of whether its church or state run and regardless of your preferences. If your relative is not unappealing you may be able to move them somewhere better if space becomes available but generally not. Many people in these institutions don't have advocates.

My comments on ABC Learning are based on listening to women looking for child care arrangements or working in child care. Where ABC has purpose built a facility the customers may be satisfied but where they have taken over an existing facility the experience is viewed negatively by parents who notice that things are worse like the number of toys is reduced. ABC have distinguished themselves in Victorian law by blaming the individual staff at their Werribee centre for the escaping child. ABC run a very tightly costed and managed operation. Workers prefer not to work for ABC Learning.

The parent can of course choose to place their child in community based child care if a centre exists and has space. There are not enough facilities for families to have real choice which is why ABC Learning should be such a good business model.

Billie, if people aren't happy with ABC's service, a competitor will notice and come and provide a better service, be it another corporate-run center or a community centre. That is the way market economies operate - childcare centres are not unique in any other way I'm afraid.

Roads, hospitals, schools, aged-care, trains, buses, airports, physiotherapy, telecommunications..you name it and it is provided by corporate entities. I fail to see how childcare is any different.

If you feel their service is bad, their staff are unhappy and their customers don't want to go there, then I suggest you set yourself up as a competitor and offer a service that addresses all of your complaints. That is the way the world works.

Countryboy,

the model you speak of is exactly what my wife & I did. Yeh, radical as this sounds, we looked (and continue to look) after our children with a full time parent at home!

I just can't understand how the previous generations managed with government funding of Childcare and...hang on, have I got this stick the right way around?

Childcare is a responsibility not a sub-letting arrangement. Trim the cloth...

Delivering child care is not a simple exercise. The economics & logistics for providing child care services have not been fully explored. The model provided by ABC Learning has gone some way towards providing a practical service delivery solution. In the process a structure now exists that enables governments to develop suitable regulations, guidelines and training requirements.

I don’t see the “McDonaldising” of child care as a problem. There will always be different child care alternatives that are more suitable to different parent’s situation/beliefs. But, I believe, the advert of companies such as ABC Learning has raised the standard of child care across the board and quicken the demise of sub-standard operations.

Government is just not equipped to easily undertake such a role. As the author of this article himself eludes, (In the absence of a stringent regulatory environment ……) if the government is incapable of providing an adequate framework to govern the industry, then it is hopelessly ill-equipped to be trusted in providing the service. There is not a one size fits all solution. The nature of child care requirements will change along with the workplace, the family and society needs. By enlarge parents along with there extended families, social networks, communities, workplaces and then the private sector will be best placed in providing the actual service. Governments provide the regulatory framework and will still have a critical influence by means of funding policies.