When Leah Ann Stephenson took maternity leave from the job she loves at the local hospital, she expected to be back at work in a year, caring for patients and joking with her workmates again.
Fourteen months later, she still hasn't managed to find even one day of child care for her son Monty — despite putting his name on the waiting list at five different childcare centres around her closest town before he was born.
The family live just south of Swan Hill, about four-hours' drive north-west of Melbourne.
"It's really frustrating," she said. "[My husband] Harry says I've lost more sleep over this than I have with the baby waking up."
The lack of child care has forced the nurse and diabetes educator to take another year away from her beloved job. It has also robbed her family of their second income and the town of 11,000 people of an essential worker.
"Work is part of my identity and when you leave it to have a child, it's scary," she said.
"It shouldn't be so stressful that you feel scared about leaving work to have a baby."
There are more than 13 children for each childcare place in Ms Stephenson's neighbourhood, according to a world-first study from Australia's Victoria University that lays bare the harsh reality of the child care scarcity in many parts of the country.
The groundbreaking research analyses childcare access down to the street level for the first time in nine developed countries, including England, Netherlands, France, Norway and Sweden.
The Australian data, supplied exclusively to the ABC, reveals that across Australia, there are more than twice as many children as childcare places.
Nearly 6 million Australians — that's close to one in four — live in a childcare desert, defined in the study as an area where three or more children compete for each childcare place.
The figure includes more than 680,000 people living in areas with no access to child care at all.
This is an improvement. In 2020, there were 2.4 children per place and 7.8 million people were living in childcare deserts, including 1 million Australians in areas with no child care access at all.
But not everyone has shared equally in the gains. The gap between the city and bush has widened, with families in very remote areas now 3.7 times as likely as those in major cities to live in a childcare desert. In 2020, they were 2.3 times as likely.
Childcare policy has been in the national spotlight since a Labor government was elected in 2022 on a promise to overhaul what was described as "a broken childcare system".
But despite a raft of changes including greater investment and an expanded childcare subsidy, this latest research shows deeper change is still needed, says Peter Hurley, director of Victoria University's Mitchell Institute for Education and Health Policy and lead author of the report.
"I can't see how, under the current settings, we're going to solve this issue. If the government is aiming for a universal system, a universal [childcare] offer … they're going to have to do something different."
Mapping child care at the street level
The Mitchell Institute calculated supply (childcare places) and potential demand (children aged five and younger not yet in school) for centre-based services like long day care and preschool in every neighbourhood in Australia in March 2024 and September 2020.
That's more than 58,000 neighbourhoods and 13,000 childcare centres.
The study examined where a family lives, rather than where they work, and does not include family day care.
Nationally, childcare access has improved by 12.7 per cent since 2020, based on the change in median places per child.
Increased supply, steady demand
A boost in the number of childcare places means some 1.9 million Australians no longer live in childcare deserts, according to the data.
On top of that, an extra 2.9 million now live in a childcare "oasis", where there are fewer than 1.67 children for each place – the equivalent of three days of child care a week.
This pushes the total number in childcare oases to 11.5 million or 45 per cent of the population, up from 8.6 million or 34.5 per cent, in 2020.
"The supply has grown. In addition to that, which I also found a bit surprising, is that … the number of children hasn't grown, so you haven't got as much demand for it overall," said Associate Professor Hurley.
Nationwide, there are now 70,000 to 80,000 more childcare and preschool places compared to 2020, according to the report.
Excluding areas with fewer than 100 children under five, all but three of the nation's top 10 locations with the best access to child care were in the ACT.
Topping the list is Petermann-Simpson, a regional area south of Darwin, with roughly 2,200 people. Here, childcare places outstrip children, with more than 3.3 available places per child. The federal government funds an early childhood development program in this area.
Herberton in Queensland's Tablelands region and Oberon, near Bathurst in NSW are among the locations where access has deteriorated the most since 2024, with the number of places roughly halving in both.
Herberton's only childcare centre closed in 2021. It had been operating privately for more than 14 years.
In the charts above and below, locations are based on larger areas known as SA2s, which have an average population of 10,000 people.
In a dataset of thousands, one can seem like an insignificant number. But Yorke Peninsula high school teacher Elouise Fehring has felt the difference a single childcare centre can make to a community.
The mother-of-two originally planned to take a year off work when her first son Llewellyn was born in 2020. She ended up off work three years after being unable to find the care she needed and later falling pregnant with her second child.
Roughly 70 per cent of people in SA's Yorke Peninsula live in a childcare desert. Across the peninsula's south, an average of 4.3 children compete for every childcare place, while in some neighbourhoods, this figure soars past 50 children per place.
But the community was transformed when a new childcare centre opened its doors in Minlaton, Ms Fehring's closest town, in July.
"Seeing the amount of families that are accessing it, the children's photos on the walls… it might seem like a drop in the ocean but for our community, it's really quite huge," says Ms Fehring, who is now back at work four days a week.
"It's paying off 10-fold… because it benefits families in more than just care. It's a way for families to connect and brings people together. It makes the community more vibrant."
Ben Phillips, an economic and social researcher from the Australian National University, says the federal government's $5.4 billion investment to increase and expand the Child Care Subsidy has "indirectly" encouraged more childcare centres to open.
"When you make the subsidies more generous, it's more beneficial to be a business in that sector," he says.
Elizabeth Hill, professor in the University of Sydney's department of political economy, says the increase in centres isn't surprising.
"Commonwealth support for the sector makes private investment in early learning a pretty good bet."
Pursuit of profits leaves families behind
In regional areas, the share of people living in childcare deserts has fallen at about half the rate of cities. Remote areas have fallen even more slowly.
Most of the improvement has been in major cities, where the share of people living in childcare deserts fell by 12 percentage points and the share living in oases rose by nearly 13 percentage points.
By contrast, the improvement in remote and very remote areas was less than 4 percentage points.
Stark differences also divide the states and territories.
The ACT has the highest rates of availability, with 1.57 children for each place.
Worst off are Western Australia and Tasmania, where nearly double the number of children compete for each spot.
Associate Professor Hurley says the reasons need further investigation but it may be that WA and Tasmania lack the large metropolitan centres of Sydney or Melbourne, to boost the state-wide average.
It's also possible that the price incentive to operate in these areas isn’t as strong as cities like Melbourne and Sydney, he added.
Ultimately, families in lower-income and more sparsely-populated areas are "at the mercy of providers," Associate Professor Hurley says.
"It's more catastrophic if there isn't enough supply in a regional area. If a childcare provider closes or even if that provider just isn't very good … it's very difficult for [families] to find alternate care."
Rural charity program manager Kate Brow knows this struggle well. Her family of five live on a rural property in Bibbenluke, in south-east NSW. In Bibbenluke, 9.7 children vie for each childcare place.
Ms Brow, whose husband is a sheep and cattle farmer, says the lack of child care is especially tough for regional families that increasingly depend on two incomes.
"My [mother-in-law's] generation, the farmers' wives … They didn't work [an independent job]. They helped on the farm, cooked lunches, supported the shearers, all of that stuff," she says.
"But pretty much my whole generation, all of the wives have jobs or have a side hustle or are making income in some way. They're large contributors to the household income."
As vital as their contribution may be, however, it is usually the woman who has to give up or cut back her work when the family can't get child care.
"My husband tries his absolute best to help but farming just never stops. So it's really, really difficult when you don't have a partner that has access to flexible work or time off."
Part of the issue in regional Australia is that child care has become big business, and businesses are motivated by profit, says Associate Professor Hurley.
While Australia's system is subsidised, subsidies go to families rather than providers, which are free to choose where to operate in response to that demand.
So in a market-driven system, they flock to areas where they can charge more, leaving families in regional areas desperately under-serviced.
"Incentives really matter. That's why you have more providers operating in more advantaged areas. They're going where they where they can make the most money," Associate Professor Hurley says.
Compare this to countries with more equitable childcare access, such as Norway and Sweden, he says. These systems subsidise providers to operate in locations that would otherwise be seen as high risk.
"It's a big risk for providers [in Australia] in regional areas because if they don't get enough business, then they can't afford to operate," Associate Professor Hurley says.
"In the Scandinavian countries … it's like, okay, we're going to give you money just to operate in a particular area. And that means [providers] are not so much at the mercy of variations in numbers."
Childcare workers living pay to pay
But perhaps the most urgent issue plaguing the sector is staffing.
Marg Rogers, a senior lecturer in early childhood education at the University of New England, says worker shortages are often preventing childcare centres from opening in less populated areas.
Low wages and poor working conditions, which worsened in the early years of COVID, are to blame, she says.
"Childcare workers really do often live pay to pay — most early childhood educators have to have a partner who earns far more than them or they have to have a parent who's helping them out," Dr Rogers says.
"They were really badly treated in the pandemic and their workload went up but the support for them from the government wasn't there."
Earlier this month, the federal government pledged $3.6 billion for a staged 15 per cent pay increase for childcare workers over the next 18 months for centres that agree to limit fee increases.
Care workers on the award wage – which is currently $1,032 – will see their pay rise about $150 a week by the end of next year.
The earnings of these workers, who are predominantly women on part-time or casual contracts, lag those of other workers in care and education, according to taxable income figures from the Australian Taxation Office.
While Dr Rogers welcomes the wage increase, she says many educators will still leave the profession in the coming months, given the growing cost-of-living crisis and the fact that not all will receive the rise.
An interim report from the Productivity Commission has recommended all children under five have access to three days a week of "high quality" child care.
To get there, "workforce attraction and retention needs to be a priority", it said.
The report also recommended the government directly fund childcare providers to boost "thin markets — areas where the cost of delivering services is higher than what families can or are willing to pay.
The commission's final report is now with the federal government, as well as an earlier ACCC report on childcare accessibility, which also called for market intervention.
Education Minister Jason Clare says the government is committed to moving towards universal child care.
"The draft report from the Productivity Commission told us children from poor families are the least likely to go to early childhood education and care, and the most likely to benefit from it," he says.
"The Productivity Commission's final report is now on my desk and it will help chart a course to building a truly universal early education and care system."
Research 'all points in one direction'
The seismic demographic shift of women into the workforce and children into formal care has created an international policy puzzle that's yet to be solved, Associate Professor Hurley says.
"There is a case for more of a focus on funding providers to operate in under-serviced areas," he said. "It doesn't have to be for the whole country, but certainly for regional areas."
Professor Hill backed this view, adding that Australia needs to treat early childhood education "as part of our public infrastructure of essential services", like schools, hospitals and public transport.
"The research across multiple disciplines — including health, child development, education, economics, brain science, philosophy and community development — all points in one direction," she said.
"Access to high-quality early childhood education and care provided by well-trained and properly paid staff is great for children and great for parents."
But Dr Phillips says a comprehensive survey should be conducted to understand exactly where the demand for childcare is across Australia so that government resources can be spent appropriately.
"It would be very expensive for government to set up childcare centres in every small town in Australia … and it means they can't spend money elsewhere on things like, say, public housing," he says.
"The government's got limited resources, and they have to invest that money wisely."
Whatever the path ahead, the public is deeply invested, Professor Hill says.
"Universal early childhood education and care … has been a long-standing commitment of [the prime minister] — both personally and now of his government
"A lot of people who have been listening to this message have high expectations that the prime minister and his government will deliver.
"Let's see where we get to — but I think the ship is facing the right direction."
Credits
Data and reporting: Inga Ting and Madi Chwasta
Development: Thomas Brettell
Design and illustration: Brody Smith
Notes about this story
- A "neighbourhood" refers to a geographical area known as SA1 or Statistical Area 1. In urban areas, SA1s can be smaller than a suburb or postcode, and have an average population of 400 people.
- Potential demand is based on the population of children aged five and younger who have not yet started school. An updated methodology calculates supply based on whether a childcare centre is within 8km for metropolitan and inner regional areas, and 20km for outer-regional and rural areas.
- A previous ABC story reported on an earlier study from the Mitchell Institute that examined childcare access at the neighbourhood level in 2020. Some of the figures in that earlier report differ from this latest research because the studies use slightly different methodologies.
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