That ICPA (Aust) endorse working with The Future Care Project to establish robust data ocollection and analysis on early childhood education and care (ECEC) access across rural, regional and remote communities, including the hidden costs and impacts of informal care arrangements and to use that evidence base to advocate to the Australian Government for fit-for-purpose ECEC policy that meets the demonstrated needs of these communities.
Early childhood education and care policy, including the Child Care Subsidy framework, is set and funded at the federal level. Current government data measures participation in CCS supported services, not unmet demand. This renders rural and regional and remote communities, where centre-based services are absent, statistically invisible in national funding and planning models.
Furthermore, the government does not measure or track the costs and impacts of informal care arrangements, the reliance on family, neighbours, nannies, and au pairs that rural and remote families use when no funded service exists. These arrangements carry real costs: lost workforce participation, forgone income and wellbeing impacts on rural families. Because they are invisible in the data, they are invisible in policy. The evidence base must capture and document these costs, which are the true measure of unmet demand in communities the current system fails to reach.
Without data that captures genuine unmet demand, including the cost of informal care families rely upon due to the market failure of mainstream CCS providers, federal policy cannot effectively reach thin markets. Flexible, CCS-eligible models, such as In-Home Care, are the care types best suited to serve dispersed populations, yet they remain under-supported in current frameworks.
This motion mirrors the approach endorsed by ICPA Queensland State Council and seeks to elevate it to the federal level, partnering with The Future Care Project to build an independent evidence base and convert it into targeted advocacy for policy reform and service delivery. This motion asks federal ICPA to commit to two things. First, a partnership with The Future Care Project https://thefuturecareproject.org.au/ to collect and analyse data that measures actual ECEC access and unmet demand in rural and remote communities, rather than relying on existing supply-side metrics that overlook them. Second, using that evidence to advocate to the federal government for fit-for-purpose policy, since all ECEC policy and funding sits at the Commonwealth level.
The data generated by ICPA members will feed into a central body of work undertaken by The Future Care Project, combining with data and information from other rural and remote communities facing the same barriers to ECEC. This makes the evidence base stronger and the argument more unified, driving a more coordinated push for genuine regional policy reform. The outcome sought is a shift in how rural and remote childcare need is measured and funded: from a system that counts only existing services to one that recognises true demand, including the hidden cost families bear when forced into informal care due to market failure. That evidence base underpins ICPA's case for federal reform supporting flexible care models suited to thin markets.
