Staffing Issues Jon Webb > Everton Park Child Care
The last two years has been a very difficult time for many industries as the world attempts to navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic that is still devastating so many communities. We have seen countless industries struggling to survive through lockdowns, closures and economical impacts. We have been introduced to new classification of our professions, some deemed ‘nonessential’ and closed indefinitely while other ‘essential’ business were forced to remain operating at full capacity despite the uncertainty and genuine concern of staff left to operate these. The Early Education sector has been in a very volatile position since the beginning of the pandemic and this pressure is not getting easier. In fact, I believe that it is actually compounding, and the situation is only getting more dire! I am lucky to work for an extremely high-quality centre that has been very fortunate to be in an area where we have not had as many large-scale outbreaks as others around the country. We have remained operational throughout the pandemic and have not been forced to reduce our staffing numbers. I do also work providing consulting with and training other Early Childhood Educators who have not been as fortunate as those in my service. Although our situations dealing with the pandemic have been vastly different, the resulting problem we are all facing now is the same and that is staffing! We have all seen reports through the media and many ECEC bodies report that there is a significant staffing shortage across the country and there is a push to have more people sign up to reskill or re-join our sector. There are some issues with this though. Currently I have contact with many centres who are in desperate need of multiple qualified staff immediately (my centre included) just to meet legislated ratios and yet after running many job ads and conducting some interviews
these roles still cannot be filled. Often centres are then forced to call on agency staff or seek an exemption for the day, costing the business huge amounts of money and reducing the quality of care and education provided. Centres that do manage to find a new staff member (either qualified or working towards their qualification) are forced to invest time, money and resources to upskill these staff members to suit the centre. As we all know this is not something that happens overnight and requires ongoing commitment and dedication from all parties involved in what is already a very busy and stressful day. This is causing another problem entirely… staff burn out. Amazing high quality early educators who have been working tirelessly throughout this pandemic despite their own stress are now being asked once again to push through and work even harder to deal with these staff shortages, increased workload and extra obligations as they help train new staff, all while working in a drastically underpaid and underappreciated career. I have now started to hear scary reports of many of these educators deciding that they have had enough and leaving the sector altogether. This makes me wonder what the future of our sector looks like! The early education sector has grown and changed as science has shown the importance of this in childhood development and the demands on educators has increased, the regulations, NQF and EYLF have also developed to ensure children are being afforded the best possible start to their education journey. However, with all these issues with finding high quality, dedicated and professional educators I am concerned we may be heading away from Early Education and back towards Day Care!
EARLY EDITION > AUTUMN 2022
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