KINGSTON SET TO GET A NEW PURPOSE BUILT CHILDCARE FACILITY
MEDIA RELEASE - 29 APRIL 2022
Photo: Excited; Tony Pasin MP and members of the Kingston Early Learning and Childcare Services Working Group
A commitment to improved childcare services will be a life changing opportunity for Kingston families following a $1.8m funding announcement by the Member for Barker Tony Pasin this week.
In making the announcement, Mr Pasin said “not only is early childhood education beneficial for children but it allows both parents the ability to re-enter the workforce. The flow on benefits of this for the community will be huge.”
“Increasing the childcare offering in Kingston SE will give the opportunity to increase household incomes, easing cost of living pressures and it will open the door for local businesses to a new pool of employees.”
In a ground-breaking move, the Labor government have announced bipartisan agreement, matching the coalitions commitment to the project.
This follows more than five years of the community actively working to address the childcare shortage through the Kingston SE Early Learning & Childcare Services Working Group (KELCS). Chairperson of KELCS Kirsty Starling welcomed the announcement, saying “we are ecstatic that the federal Labor government are matching the $1.8m to fund a childcare centre build!”
“We have been advocating for equal access to early learning for many years and to have a source of funding for a new build will be life changing for our community.”
The announcement comes on the back of an Australian-first study by the Mitchell Institute released last month which revealed that 82% of regional South Australians are living in areas considered to be “childcare deserts”, with Kingston being named as one of the worst “childcare deserts” in South Australia.
Kingston’s Chief Executive Officer Nat Traeger said a key issue has been that there is no particular organisation with responsibility for the provision of childcare when the market fails, which is a very different scenario from that of kindergarten services, which are funded by the state government and have to be delivered.
“When insufficient services exist, it is left to the individual to find their own solutions to try and address it”. “We don’t and have never accepted that – it is a community problem, one we have been standing alongside for a few years now”.
“We want to attract people to our community, but when you don’t have the social infrastructure to support them, it is very problematic”.
In December 2020 the Council included improved childcare services in its Community Plan, declaring it as the number one priority it needed to address. Since that time, advocacy efforts, with particularly strong support from Tony Pasin MP & Nick McBride MP, have escalated, including a visit to Parliament House in May last year.
The Council was devastated when its submission for funding under the Australian Government’s Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Fund was knocked back earlier this year. Vowing to do everything he could, local member Tony Pasin was instrumental in raising the profile of the project, indicating the dire need for improved childcare services for Kingston.
Mr Pasin immediately lobbied the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who responded by saying if the government was returned to power, it would spend $1.8m on a new childcare centre in Kingston SE.
Following the announcement, Kingston District Council Mayor Kay Rasheed said, “we have been at the forefront of addressing this issue and are delighted that a huge step forward has been made, with the commitment of guaranteed funding by either party, for a capital build”.
“We are grateful for the advocacy and support by Tony Pasin, which has been the catalyst for this bipartisan agreement being reached”, she said.
The Council confirmed that it has turned its attention to lobbying the state government for a commitment to move the existing kindergarten to the new childcare facility, which is intended for the grounds of the Kingston Community School, thereby providing a state-of-the-art integrated service and remove the ‘double drop’. Further, the Council also indicated that given the state government holds the provider licence and funding, it would make sense that they also take on the operation of the facility once the build is complete.
- ENDS -
Contact:
Nat Traeger
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER | KINGSTON DISTRICT COUNCIL
Phone: 0408 809 712 | E: ceo@kingstondc.sa.gov.au