Unlocking Aspiration, Outcomes and Equity by unpacking Childcare Issues in the Wimmera Southern Mallee is a research report compiled by Horsham-based researchers Dr Cathy Tischler, Dr Kelsey McDonald, and Professor Keir Reeves.

The study was completed through Federation University's Future Regions Research Centre, with the intent to inform the ByFive Wimmera Southern Mallee early years initiative.

Research occurred and finished in 2020, and assessed the state of play across the Wimmera's four rural Local Government Areas; Hindmarsh, Yarriambiack, West Wimmera and Northern Grampians.

Dr Tischler said the study was small in scope, but found clear faults in the Wimmera's childcare market.

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"It was just a really small study wanting to capture the range of challenges in childcare spaces, so there is a lot of anecdotal stuff talked about like staffing problems, problems with the retention of staff, poor economics and not being able to provide enough people," she said.

"One of the things that is perhaps not as obvious to people who don't engage in the space is that there is kind of no one really responsible for providing childcare when market failure occurs.

"Parents and people might think they can go and complain to the local council, and they have a bit of responsibility in the planning space, but it is not necessarily their job to provide child care when the market lets you down."

In the report, Dr Tischler also pointed to funding discrepancies between the state and federal government prioritising kindergarten to the detriment of early childcare.

"The state government has kindergarten responsibilities but that doesn;t extend to child care. The federal government will fund child care but you have to have an existing service," she said.

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"So who's job is it to pull together a response to a childcare failure when it occurs, and it is kind of no one. So that was interesting.

"We found that there is a need for a more extensive investigation into what people do when market failures occur because it seems that many are leaving the regions or they go and work in a bigger centre where they can get childcare and this has flow-on effects to the smaller communities.

"We spend all this money trying to attract people to the regions and then we don't have the infrastructure to support them as their life changes."

The report made 11 recommendations on how to address childcare issues in the Wimmera.

Dr Tischler said the research identified that the difficulty in securing childcare services meant the issue needed to be reframed from a problem for individuals to an economic development and equity issue for the region.

"There are probably learnings for many other regions with what we're trying to do," she said.

"This is not an individual problem for people or even an individual problems for councils, but the question should be how the region can actually provide a cohesive response to this."

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