Vacation care provides supervised activities and care for primary school age children. Programs offer a range of age appropriate activities which encourage children to socialise, develop life skills and be challenged by new experiences in a safe environment. It is an important program which supports the participation of parents in the workforce, whilst their children are provided with organised, safe and stimulating social experiences.
Monash Council currently operates three of the 20 vacation care programs offered across the municipality. This represents 15% of all places. Council offers 120 places across three venues (Glendal Primary, Sussex Heights Primary and the Parkhill program at the Jordanville Community Centre) and supports families for nine weeks a year during school holidays. Utilisation at the venues over the last three years has shown some fluctuation but has averaged about 90%.
Other providers of vacation care programs in Monash include: schools, Monash University and organisations such as Camp Australia, Academy for Kids, OSH Club and Youth Leadership Victoria.
To maintain Council’s vacation care program, Council needs to employ two full-time staff to undertake a broad range of tasks related to planning, administration, compliance and achievement of quality programs. However Council only receives income for nine weeks per year from the three sites. In contrast, other providers who specialise in out of school hour care (before, after and vacation care) are able to operate for most weeks of the year across multiple sites.
Because of the inefficiency of Council’s three vacation care programs, the total program costs the community a significant amount to run each year. It is budgeted to cost Council $206,300 in 2013/2014.
Council currently charges $47.00 per child per day and $58.50 for centre based and excursion days respectively (2013 /2014). Eligible families are entitled to some level of Child Care Benefit (CCB) to assist with the fees. Council’s fees are in the middle range of fees charged by providers of vacation care across Monash. A survey undertaken earlier this year found the fees charged for vacation care programs across Monash ranged from $30.00-$63.90 per day for centre based days and from $38.00-$79.90 for excursion days. It is therefore also clearly not viable for Council to significantly increase fees to attempt to run the program on a break-even basis because this would likely cause utilisation of the service to plummet due to other services available at a much lower cost.
Council commenced its vacation care program a number of years ago when there was a need for one due to a lack of other options in our community. However, as can be seen with the 17 other operators today, this is no longer the case.
Vacation care is a good example of a council service which was important to provide when it was first introduced by Council many years ago, but where the need to continue to provide it has since disappeared. Indeed, elsewhere most vacation care programs today are now provided directly by schools and by other providers engaged by schools which can provide care more cost efficiently for providers and families alike. These providers specialise in the provision of out of school hours care so through economies of scale and by operating for most weeks of the year they have a much more efficient model of service delivery.
Given the changes to supply and demand over this period, it is important for Council to critically consider whether this is still a priority service for Council to provide – especially given the substantial operating subsidy required from ratepayers to operate the service.
In my view, if there were a lack of other options available to parents in Monash then this would justify the continuation of this service by Council. However, given the many other local providers, and the opportunity to transfer Council’s vacation care to the host schools, there will not be any loss of service to local families currently serviced by the Council’s three vacation care programs.
This makes the exiting of this service a compelling Council option for Council given that it is costing Council and Monash ratepayers more than $200,000 each year to subsidise the operation of an inefficient service which is readily available elsewhere for the same (or even lower) fees.
Council has undertaken a thorough review of our current vacation care operations, trends within the sector and considered the views of families and staff. Although it is never easy to cease a service, we have concluded that Council should exit direct provision of this service and transition the three programs to the respective school communities. A comprehensive plan has been developed to ensure a smooth transition to alternative vacation care providers for all three programs. This will mean that care will continue to be provided seamlessly for current families accessing Council’s services while ratepayers will cease the current $200,000+ annual ratepayer subsidy of an inefficient service.
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