Broome resident Tara Lawn used to love working, but had to quit her job when her local childcare centre closed one of its rooms due to a shortage of qualified staff.
"The daycare [centre] sent out an email, probably six weeks before, saying, 'If anyone is able to pull their kids out, if daycare is not essential for you, please do so now,'" she said.
"They said, 'This is the date it's closing, we're really sorry for this, we can't do anything about it because we don't have enough staff and if we want to keep the centre running, we're going to have to shut that room'.
"Ultimately, it's not the daycare's fault … they get paid so little to do what they do, and they just can't keep the staff."
The mother-of-two said she initially felt a rush of "overwhelm" after receiving the news, as she was told there would be an 18-month waitlist for care at the other day care centres in town.
"You can go on a waitlist, but it's almost like, what's the point," she said.
"You're not going to get on there, and in 18 months' time my youngest will almost be out of day care.
"It's just not worth it, but we still sort of need to find a solution because I can't just not work for the next two years."
The room has since reopened, but Ms Lawn said she was only able to secure one regular weekday and then an extra day every fortnight — a far cry from the initial four days she could previously access.
"I was walking around town and bumped into a couple of people who have had babies in the last year or so and some of them are supposed to go back to work at the end of the year, but they can't," she said.
"None of these capable women can work because they've got no care for their children."
The long childcare waitlists — and workforce shortages in the region described by Regional Development Australia Kimberley (RDAK) as "unsurmountable" — have prompted calls for an urgent review of the regulations governing Australia's early education industry.
Call for change
RDAK is one of the voices calling for amendments to federal regulations and for more support for the childcare workforce to help ease pressures on centres already operating in hard-to-staff regional and remote locations.
It is part of RDAK's submission to a current Productivity Commission inquiry into the early childhood education and care sector, which is examining, among other things, cost and availability barriers.
RDAK acting director Kim Brown said federal regulations were impeding regional centres' ability to attract and retain staff.
"Particularly the current regulation which stipulates that all early childhood educators are required to be enrolled in formal certificate III or diploma studies to be counted towards ratios in centres," she said.
"We're asking that there be consideration to regions, and that not all early educators need to have the formal qualifications to count towards [carer-child] ratios.
"We acknowledge this recommendation does not align with the National Quality Framework, however, a 'national' framework implies all regions and regional centres have the same capacity to deliver the same service, and this is simply not the case."
One-size-fits-all approach
Ms Brown said different settings were required based on the different locations of the services, because each region faced different challenges and barriers.
"We by no means wish to deregulate this industry sector, nor lessen the importance of early educators — there absolutely needs to be formally qualified people," she said.
"But we just question whether they all need to be formally qualified.
"At this time, Kimberley residents just need access to care and need to return to work. Our centres, they just need a workforce to be able to operate, to be able to open their doors and provide this care."
The RDAK submission noted the lack of qualified staff had led to capped numbers, closed rooms and services, and 18 to 24-month waiting periods for all centres.
"The flow on impact [the shortage] is having on our region is that people are leaving — we can't attract nurses, we can't attract doctors," she said.
"It's so vital for our community stability … to attract people to our region, to keep people in our region."
The Productivity Commission's final inquiry report is due to be handed to the Australian government in June 2024.
