A caring Inner West: Early childhood

A progressive council supports all residents to access children’s and family services. This includes, where necessary, council  subsidising our children and family services. The entire community benefits from these services and users should not need to bear the entire cost. Therefore, Greens Councillors will work to:

• Ensure that the diverse range of parents and carers in the Inner West meet no barriers to accessing Council children and family services programmes.
• Explore opportunities to expand IWC children’s services and out of school hours services including into the former Ashfield LGA where there are no Council run family and children’s services. 
• Fight to retain, and where appropriate expand, IWC Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) services at local public schools, including advocating to the NSW Government and Department of Education to retain council-operated preschool and out of school hours care on public school grounds, unless the majority of service users call for a change.
• Advocate for more transparency where the Department of Education runs tenders for OSHC at public schools, including in relation to the criteria used to evaluate tenders. 
• Harmonise fees across wards without any increase (and decreases should be considered)
• Support all IWC childcare and OSHC to strive for ‘exceeding’ quality ratings on the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) 
• increase the number of permanent positions in council run child care services and decrease reliance on casual staff for the well-being of staff and to provide continuity of care for children
• for OSHC services, decrease the notice period (when the service, or particular days, are no longer required) from 20 working days to a maximum of 10 working days. 
• modernise the booking system for children’s services so that vacancies are made visible and available to parents, and bookings can be made online once families are registered. Ensure vacancies are advertised by council so that services are fully utilised.
• Ensure the 10 Child Safe Standards arising from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse are implemented in all IWC Children’s Services
• Ensure IWC Children’s Services continue working with local Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups to provide culturally-appropriate care for children.
• Establish parent / carer consultation groups for each children’s service
• Provide free places at IWC childcare and OSHC services for vulnerable people including asylum seekers and families in crisis accommodation. 
• Expand the calendar of activities for children at IWC libraries, and relevant workshops for parents / carers.
• Support the development of new playgroups and mobile play centres, including for socially and economically disadvantaged families, non-English-speaking parents, grandparents and fathers.