The labour shortage in regional towns forced our daughter out of childcare

‘How can people move to a town where they can’t get childcare or a doctor’s appointment?’ asks Lucy Jones. Photograph: Daria Nipot/Getty Images/iStockphoto

I receive emails from my daughter’s childcare centre almost daily. Usually they are administrative notes, reminders about dress-up days and warnings of gastro outbreaks. So when an email arrived at 5.30pm on a recent Thursday, I wasn’t expecting it to throw our lives into chaos.

Citing the national workforce shortage, the email said the nursery and toddler rooms would be closed from 8 May, but that the centre would continue to offer care for children aged three and older “at the reduced operating hours of 8am-5pm”. At 18 months old, my daughter, Zara, didn’t make the cut, so with just a week’s notice we would be without childcare.