The Parenthood Newsletter June 2021

Dear friends and supporters,

We rank 37th out of 41 countries on access to paid parental leave and 37th on access and affordability of early childhood education and care. No wonder more than half the 1700 families using early education and care told The Front Project that "it's hardly worth working" once the cost of care is taken into account. This is madness!    

According to reports, early education and women's economic security are on the agenda at the next National Cabinet meeting on the 9th of July in Darwin.  

This is welcome and makes sense: leaders cannot credibly talk about improving women’s economic security without also discussing universal access to high-quality early childhood education and care.

The lack of accessible, affordable, well-funded childcare likely represents the single biggest barrier to women’s career progress. 

Robust public funding is imperative for a high-quality early learning system that is accessible to all families. Such a system will not only support women’s economic security, but will ensure our future workforce – today’s babies and young children – arrive at school ready to learn and prepared for future success.Ahead of that meeting our partners from Thrive by Five are asking parents to email our leaders in the National Cabinet and urge them to take five key actions to reform our early learning system.

Please sign the petition and urge our leader to put Australia on the right track and invest in early childhood education!

If politicians want to talk family values, it’s time they start valuing families.Do you want to make a difference to your child’s early learning and development?

Take the 2021 National Quality Framework survey. The National Quality Framework provides a national approach to regulation of the quality of education and care services.

Your child educators use this document when they are planning the programmes for your child and the class group. Taking the survey helps educators to support and nurture young children’s learning from birth to five years of age, and their transition to school.
Make a difference and take the survey here.
We’re planning to launch a new campaign next month, in the lead up to the Federal Election, so we can make free, high quality early education and care and longer paid parental leave for parents a reality!

This campaign needs to be by parents, for parents, which is why we’re asking our core members if they would be interested in sharing their stories on The Parenthood website?

We're launching the campaign in 4 weeks, and it will be really powerful to have stories from parents like you on our website. Our campaign is focused on improving early childhood education and care, outside of hours school care, and paid parental leave - and we want parents to share how any (or all) of these issues have directly affected them and their families.

If you're keen, you can send Maddy, our Campaign Manager, an email and she will get in touch with you! [email protected] The more parent voices we get, the more powerful our campaign will be!

Thank you for your support!

Georgie