CANBERRA mums who want to return to the workforce next year could be forced to stay home to look after their babies, with child-care operators warning the shortage of places for children under two in the ACT would go from bad to worse on January 1.
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New child-care ratios coming into force in January will lead to a decrease in already critically short child-care places for babies and could substantially push up the cost of care in the ACT, the industry claims.
Industry bodies are warning of a looming crises with fees predicted to increase by $13-$22 a day as a result of the changes.
The Australian Childcare Alliance says the system will struggle to cope as the first wave of mothers who took the Federal Government's maternity leave payments attempt to go back into the workforce.
The alliance, which represents 70per cent of long day child-care operators nationally, said new regulations would come into force next year lowering the mandatory ratios of staff members to babies from the current 1:5 in the ACT to 1:4.
ACT spokeswoman for the alliance Gwynn Bridge said some operators would not be able to put on extra staff, and would instead have to reduce the number of places offered.
''Many child-care centres in the ACT offer 10 baby places on average, but unless they can find another staff member they will have to drop that to eight places offered,'' she said.
Director of the Manuka Occasional Childcare Centre Robby McGarvey said her centre offered 10 baby places and would maintain that next year, but there were 123 families on the waiting list for baby places (under 2 years olds) who would have to miss out.
''There is no scope for us to enlarge our number of 0-2 year olds,'' she said.
ACT Minister for Community Services Joy Burch said just over half of the ACT child-care centres had already implemented the 1:4 ratio and the others should not feel the need to increase fees.
''There is no basis for the Childcare Alliance's claim of cost increases on the scale they are suggesting,'' she said.
''The cost for the National Quality Framework has been modelled by Access Economics on behalf of the Commonwealth and it was revalidated again this year.
''That modelling shows the additional costs for the ACT to be $2.75 per child per week in long day care in 2012, or 55c per day. It also shows an increase of $2.39 a day in 2015.''
Spokeswoman for United Voice, a child-care workers union, Yvette Berry said the changed ratio would ''put pressure on a sector already in crisis'' but would also mean better quality care for children.
''Going from giving care to five babies to four will have a big impact on the standard of care and education,'' she said.
''We need to address the crisis, we need better wages that match their qualifications and the important work they do.''
Ms Bridge said many people who trained in child care never worked in the profession.
''The problem we find in the ACT is staff who do the courses never come into the sector, they just use it as a stepping stone into university,'' she said.
''That's why there's a critical shortage of staff.''
However not every Canberra centre was under stress to accommodate babies, with director of the Bruce Ridge Early Childhood Centre Jessica Berghauser predicting she would be able to accommodate everybody on her waiting list.
''I have four vacancies for babies next year and 30 families left to call on our waiting list,'' she said.
''I find that about two out of three people decline a position because they have other arrangements. People often put their names on multiple lists.''
Ms Burch said the ACT Government was working hard to help parents and expected the number of licensed child-care places to grow by more than 500 due to land releases, construction of new centres and expansion of existing centres.
