Childcare trailblazers

Since its launch in July this year, Cobram Secondary College’s Little Thinkers childcare centre has enabled current staff to combine care for their children and work in one place.

As an in-venue, family childcare centre, Little Thinkers is the first of its kind anywhere in Victoria.

Since July, at least 12 children — the children and grandchildren of current staff — have been enrolled at the centre, which sits on the grounds of the college.

One such staff member, CSC senior health and physical education teacher Hannah Routledge, has sent her two children to Little Thinkers since its launch.

“Something like this facility — that is care-based, based on connection, based on allowing women to come back to work... is really important,” she said.

But it wasn’t always like this for Ms Routledge.

Before the centre opened, she would need to drop her two children, aged five and two years old, at two separate childcare centres in Cobram.

“The mental load of that, as well as getting two children ready before coming to work — sometimes it was just not worth coming to work. It was just too hard,” she said.

“So the opportunity to have both my children here together on-site makes a huge difference to that mental load — and just knowing that they’re safe.”

The idea for the centre was sparked by a conversation Principal Kimberley Tempest had with her own daughter one day.

Mrs Tempest’s daughter had to leave her previous job after being unable to move from full-time to part-time work after the birth of her child.

“She said to me at the time, ‘Mum, I might have stayed in that job if I knew that [my son] was in the next room,” Mrs Tempest said.

“And that got me thinking about what I could do for the staff here [at CSC].”

The project began in earnest in Term 1 last year, when Mrs Tempest sat down to consult her staff on the challenges they faced juggling childcare and work.

Because no other school had done it before, Mrs Tempest admits she was at first unsure how the college would go about getting the project up and running.

“It was really about, ‘How do we make this happen’, and ‘who do we even ask?’” she said.

Soon after the project received the nod of permission from the Department of Education, Mrs Tempest began contacting different childcare providers across the state.

And in July this year, the centre was officially opened.

But as schools across the nation were also experiencing, attracting and retaining staff long-term is a unique challenge facing the sector.

Mrs Tempest said the college had a large proportion of teachers who were young and having families.

“To lose people for up to five years while they’ve got very young children is difficult,” Mrs Tempest said.

She said having the childcare centre on-site also aimed to address issues of equity.

“[Having] access to quality daycare, for your children, for particularly mums, means that [those mums] are able to return to work,” Mrs Tempest said.

“When you can return to work knowing that your child is in a quality centre that is on-site with you, it lowers that level of stress around dropping your kid off, leaving for the day, and coming back.”

Currently, the family childcare centre is open only to staff at the college, although CSC has reached out to surrounding schools.

“The bottom line is we’re here for our students,” Mrs Tempest said.

“But if I don’t look after my staff, then I don’t have people who are looking after our kids.”

The project was funded with assistance from the Department of Education.

Figures from the latest ABS survey have revealed that the out-of-pocket cost of childcare across the nation has increased by 12.1 per cent in the past 12 months.