Costs are a significant challenge in offering extended hours due to penalty rates which are applied outside of ordinary hours.
Parents may also preference ‘home environments’, either in informal care arrangements, family day care or in-home care after ordinary hours. This may mean that demand for extended hours can be a challenge. If there are only a small number of families using the service, or variable demand, extended hours can often be difficult to sustain in the long term.
Case Study: City Community Children’s Centre, South Australia
For many parents, the provision of child care services is crucial to enable them to work, study, have leisure time, job security, and compete in their work career structure. We encourage use of the Centre’s services for a variety of purposes, and to see it as a place that provides high quality, safe child care during all hours. City Community Children’s Centre Philosophy statement
City Community Children’s Centre is a community based long day care centre in the city of Adelaide. The centre is open six days a week and is licensed for 62 places during the day and 40 during the evening. The centre’s director, Debbie Carmen, says the centre is the only community-based long day care centre offering non-standard hours care in Adelaide. She says the extended hours service emerged in the 1980s with many women moving to low paying jobs involving shift work and a lack of flexible care during the evenings.
Currently, shift workers such as nurses are the most common families using the extended hours, particularly where both parents are rostered on at the same time. Debbie says that accommodating constant changes in enrolment of shift workers can be challenge if the centre is fully enrolled. However, the evening session is also used on an ad hoc basis by parents where other informal care arrangements are not available.
The number of parents using the after-hours service varies and currently the extended hours service is not at capacity. Parents often find out about the service by word of mouth in the workplace from other parents. Though Debbie says that many families do not know that the extended hours service is available.
When utilised, the City Community Children’s Centre is open on for extended hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays until the last child is picked up, commonly around 11.30 pm or 12.00 am. The service is open overnight on Friday. Opening hours Monday to Tuesday 6.30 am to 6.00 pm Wednesday to Thursday 6.30 am to 11.00 pm Friday 6.30 am to 12.00 am (Sat.) Saturday 12.00 am to 7.30 am (Sun.)
The sessions that families commonly book are 2.00 pm to 10.30 pm or 12.00 pm to 9.30 pm. There is a differential fee for parents using the extended hours of up to $1.50 per hour, though casual sessions are also available.
The service closely monitors the ongoing cost of delivering evening care, but does not budget for the extended hours separately to the day sessions. Despite running at loss during the evenings, Debbie says that the service is committed to extended hours as part of the centre’s philosophy and that extended hours are part of the whole service the centre offers to the community.
‘You don’t fill like you do with day care and you don’t necessarily have the consistency of the same families or the same number of families all the time, but you’ve still got to have your minimum of two staff on’, Debbie says.
The Centre does find staffing evening and overnight care challenging as many staff are not prepared to work outside of normal hours. However, other staff recognise the benefits of working extended hours and the service is flexible around starting times, particularly for part-time staff who are studying or on parental leave during the day.
City Community Children’s Centre provides experiences for children that are appropriate for the time of the day, and according to the interests of children. This might include quiet games, reading, and involving the children in cooking supper, before going to bed. The Centre often includes these experiences in its observations of children’s learning.
Educators are guided by what parents request in terms of bedtime. Often children have different nap times and, due to the small numbers of children during the evening, there is flexibility to accommodate this in the
space available. Case study continued on next page
Case study continued Tips
Encourage educators to be flexible in terms of the way that they think about the services provided to families.
Think about how flexible services fit into the whole service offering, including the philosophy of the service.
Ask whether extended hours are worth delivering if they are running at a loss. Look at the organisation as a whole, but understand the costs of delivering extended hours care and monitor these closely.
Advertise appropriately to improve utilisation of the extended hours.
Think about appropriate programming for
children in an extended hours care, and how this should differ from children’s experiences during normal hours.