Fifteen years ago, Alison Burns could not access child care for her kids, so she took matters into her own hands by starting her own family day care centre.
Living on New South Wales' Far South Coast in the small town of Dalmeny, there were few affordable options for her three children, who were under the age of five at the time.
"I left my retail job to start my own business in child care so I could be there for my kids, because the cost of working and paying for three kids' childcare wasn't viable for me," she said.
Opening a family day care centre out of her own home gave Ms Burns the freedom to both work and spend quality time with her kids.
Flash forward to today, the shortage in childcare across the entire Eurobodalla Shire has only worsened.
"The waiting list is massive and there are so many people who want to return to work but can't," Ms Burns said.
A growing waitlist
There are currently 107 children under the age of five waitlisted for 12 council-run family day cares across the Eurobodalla.
"Last year my waiting list had approximately 20 mothers with children, of which I only took on four new families," Ms Burns said.
The Eurobodalla Shire Council has called on more people to consider opening family day care homes to address the growing demand.
"We can help start up services quite quickly because it's around the individual educator," Children Services coordinator Louise Hutton said.
Ms Hutton said most of the parents on the family day care waitlist were also likely to be waiting for a spot in child care centres across the area.
But one expert said more family day care operators would not address the significant shortage.
Charles Sturt University senior lecturer in early childhood education Leanne Gibbs said remote areas were in desperate need of both child care and family day care centres so children had access to a wide range of quality care.
"You can't sort that out by just having family day cares everywhere. You need to think about early childhood settings that can also cater for larger numbers of children," she said.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, at more than 85 per cent, remote Australia had the highest proportion of the population living in what were named "childcare deserts".
"There's a chronic undersupply and, regardless of the number of services that we have, we don't have the workforce that we need in those areas to actually staff those centres," Ms Gibbs said.
Despite this, Ms Burns said she was happy to help out even a handful of parents desperate to balance work with raising young kids.
"It has just gotten harder and harder as more people need to work and easy access to child care is just not there," she said.
