KEY POINTS:
The prices of after-school care and holiday programmes could be slashed over the next five years if the Government adopts recommendations from the Families Commission.
The Government asked the commission to come up with suggestions for its plans to introduce affordable after-school care for working parents.
The commission has responded with a proposal to extend an existing income-tested subsidy for low-income families to a "universal" subsidy such as one used in Sweden, where all families pay no more than 3 per cent of their incomes for after-school care.
Current costs of after-school care range from $30 to $90 a week, or from 3.5 to 10.5 per cent of the average wage.
The Oscar Foundation, representing the country's 600-odd out-of-school care and recreation programmes, says the commission's proposals could increase the cost to taxpayers from $20 million at present to between $120 million and $140 million.
Foundation chief executive Murray Upton said that only about 80,000 children, or 13 per cent of all those aged 5 to 13, attended formal after-school or holiday programmes.
"To get up to a reasonable level you'd have to raise that six or seven times," he said.
For comparison, 94 per cent of primary school entrants have attended early childhood education, which cost taxpayers $600 million last year.
OECD reports show that New Zealand lags behind other developed countries in use of after-school care. OECD social policy analyst Willem Adema told the Herald in April that cheaper after-school care was a key to helping parents into the paid workforce. A strategy announced by Prime Minister Helen Clark in August promised to "work towards ensuring parents and carers have better access to quality, affordable and age-appropriate care for their school-aged children".
"Employers will have access to a wider pool of talent if more people with caring responsibilities are able to enter the workforce or participate in it more fully," the strategy said.
Social Development and Employment Minister David Benson-Pope yesterday welcomed the commission's proposal as useful and timely.
At present after-school programmes are subsidised at up to $3.31 an hour, or about $50 for five three-hour sessions a week, if parents earn less than $870 a week with one child, $1050 a week with two children or $1210 a week with three or more children.
Reduced subsidies are available at higher family income levels up to $1450 a week. But subsidies are only claimed for about 6000 of the 80,000 children using the services.
The Families Commission surveyed 600 members of its family opinion panel and found that the numbers using any kind of non-parental after-school childcare would increase from 44 per cent to 73 per cent if services were accessible and affordable.
Families Commission chairman Rajen Prasad said the commission was not specifying the details of a new subsidy scheme or a budget, but the cost would be "significant".
"We are way below in the league table," he said. "If you look at the services overseas in Australia, Britain, Sweden and America, you begin to say hey, we are talking about quite a significant investment in this area in the next few years."
The commission recommends that the subsidy should go up gradually over five years. "Increased government investment should begin now," its report says.
"During a move to a universal approach to out-of-school funding, an interim solution would be to increase government assistance to out-of-school services in a series of stages, in order to reduce parental fees over time.
"Until increases in direct funding result in a substantial reduction in parental fees, providers should continue to receive higher levels of funding for children from low- to middle-income families."
The Plan
What: Subsidised after-school care for all families, not just those on low incomes.
How much: Could cost taxpayers up to $140 million a year, compared with $20 million now.
When: Over the next five years if the Government agrees.
