Meet some people who work in child care looking after children who are too young to go to school, or looking after them before and after school.


BARBARA ROMERIL: (COMMUNITY CHILD CARE ASSOCIATION) There is a crisis in staffing all child care services at the moment. Across the board, every type of child care service is really struggling to attract and retain skilled and qualified staff, and it's largely down to the appallingly low wages and poor conditions.

JANE FARRELL: (MISCELLANEOUS WORKERS UNION) The pay is appalling. It's fallen below the poverty line for a long, long time, which means many child care workers have had to choose other industries to work in because they just can't make ends meet.

FREYA MICHIE: (REPORTER) Childcare worker Sharyn Veale loves her work. She's headed this out-of-school-hours care centre for the past eight years. But she's not in it for the money.

SHARYN VEALE: (CHILDCARE WORKER) It's not valued as far as the amount of children and the amount of responsibility that we have. It's very poorly paid because of that. Being a single parent, buying a house or anything like that is just not an option at all.

FREYA MICHIE: Gavin Liddle agrees: getting a mortgage is out of the question.

He's not your typical child care worker. For a start, he's male in a field that's 95 per cent female.

He's also a qualified school teacher and, while he enjoys working at this inner Melbourne child care centre, he's not planning to stay. The job is only temporary while he waits for work as a primary school teacher.

GAVIN LIDDLE: (CHILDCARE WORKER) I don't think the money is good enough as a living wage, particularly for people who are looking for a home loan or something like that.

It's a bit short.

FREYA MICHIE: He's not the only temporary worker at this council-run centre. The City of Yarra has been seeking child care workers for its after-school-hours program for months, but the job ads are going unanswered.

BARBARA ROMERIL: We're in regular contact with Services on a daily basis, and they're reporting to us that they're advertising positions and receiving no applicants whatsoever week after week.


JANE FARRELL: We know that the reason people find it difficult to recruit and retain child care workers in this sector is directly related to the wages and the conditions of employment.

FREYA MICHIE: Unionists have been celebrating last month's Industrial Relations Commission decision to grant Victorian child care workers wage rises of between $6 and $148 a week.

It was a hard-fought three-year battle. While the pay rise is welcome, unionists say it won't be enough to ease what they say is a dramatic national shortage of child care workers.