Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday more locked-down Auckland preschoolers could go back to early childhood centres. What she didn't say was the majority of centres are already full.
You could almost hear it echoing around Auckland - the whoops of joy, the sighs of relief from working parents of preschool children as Jacinda Ardern pronounced those magic words at her Auckland roadmap announcement on Monday: “Early learning services can welcome more children back from Wednesday.”
At last, people trying to juggle work and childcare could once again relinquish the latter to the professionals.
Or not.
“The messaging from Government was, ‘centres have reopened, go out and drop your kids back'. The reality is nothing has changed.” – Scott McRobie
What Ardern appeared not to know was that a large proportion of Auckland childcare centres are already full, or as full as they can be under lockdown restrictions, with the children of essential and other desperate workers.
There is just no more room.
“The messaging from Government was, ‘centres have reopened, go out and drop your kids back’,” says Scott McRobie, from the Bumblebees childcare centre in the Auckland suburb of Glen Innes. “The reality is nothing has changed.”
Once Auckland moved to Level 3, centres could take children of essential workers, forming self-contained bubbles (one to a room) with a maximum of 10 children in each.
“We have three bubbles of 10, so we are already full.”
The only element that has changed for McRobie, and countless other already hard-pressed Auckland childcare centres, is now parents are expecting their children to go back to daycare – the Prime Minister told them so.
'We were blindsided'
Sue Kurtovich is acting chief executive of the Early Childhood Council, the main body representing the interests of independent early childhood centres. She says Ardern’s announcement on Monday came totally out of the blue – there was no consultation at all with the sector.
After a couple of meetings with seemingly surprised Ministry of Education officials since the announcement, she’s not even sure the Ministry of Health had told the their education colleagues about the move, or asked them for their advice.
“It’s been a stressful 24 hours, which could have been avoided if someone had talked to us,” Kurtovich says. “We were blindsided.”
She says the guidance for centres around how to operate under the new Covid Level 3, step 1 - including information for parents around masks, pickups and drop offs didn’t come through until 5pm on Tuesday, leaving managers just one night to get everyone up to speed for the opening the next morning.
And it’s not over yet. Centres were bracing themselves for some parents to bring their children in Wednesday morning thinking they would be able to attend, only to be told there wasn’t room.
“The shit will hit the fan” Kurtovich says. “Some working parents may be getting to the end of their tether and the prospect of getting those under 5s back into early childhood will have been pretty appealing.
“Some families will turn up and say, ‘The PM said I could have a space. I am enrolled here, I want my space. We didn’t have to be in the dark. We could have been forewarned and ready." – Sue Kurtovich
And it’s not the Ministry of Health, or the Ministry of Education or the Prime Minister that will take the rap.
“Where we can’t meet the demand from families that genuinely need us, that’s going to be the pressure point and it’s really unfair to put managers and teachers in the firing line.”
Newsroom approached both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education but neither were able to comment by the end of the day yesterday.
What bugs Kurtovich more than anything is the last-minute panic situation is completely unnecessary. “We didn’t have to be in the dark. We could have been forewarned and ready. If you want something to work, get people on board to make it work.”
In the dark about Step 2
Scott McRobie’s Bumblebees centre is licensed for 70 children; it can only take 30, so there will potentially be 40 disappointed parents.
At the Bear Park group, with 10 centres in Auckland, the problem is the same, just magnified. “We have no space anywhere, says director Sue Stevely-Cole. One centre is licensed for 50 and has just one bubble of 10 children, another should have 104 children and can take only 40.
“We have a waiting list, for if or when we move to bubbles of 15 or 20.”
There again, there’s no certainty, Stevely-Cole says. The level 3 roadmap doesn’t even mention early childhood beyond step one - tomorrow.
It's tough on the centres, financially and in terms of staff and management stress.
“There’s a lack of clarity and it's frustrating when we are getting information so late.”
