“That ICPA Qld collaborates with the Future Care Project to gather data on the availability and demand for Early Childhood Education and Care in rural and remote Queensland, to present clear evidence to government and drive meaningful outcomes.”
Regional, rural and remote communities across Queensland are being systematically left out of the conversation when it comes to understanding the true level of childcare demand, as current data does not accurately reflect their needs. The Future Care Project (FCP) is focused on strengthening early childhood education and care (ECEC) services by working collaboratively with communities to deliver practical, inclusive, and sustainable solutions.
The FCP has partnered with local governments in Central West Queensland, to address the significant data gaps that underestimate true demand. Current assessment models rely on counting licensed places in formal, registered services and comparing them to population estimates—an approach built for cities, not regional, rural and remote communities.
These datasets fail to capture key gaps, including inactive service capacity, informal care arrangements, families unable to join waitlists because no services exist, and those relying on unregulated or alternative care options. They also do not account for families requiring flexible care, those with complex needs, or those working non-conventional hours such as farmers, nurses and police.
Families who are technically enrolled in a service but do not access enough care to meet their needs are off the active waitlist and remain invisible in every dataset.
Consequently, many communities appear to have no demand, leading to limited or no funding and support. These gaps extend across In-Home Care, Family Day Care and informal care networks. The most significant gap in the data is not what is counted incorrectly, but what is never counted at all.
Targeted, community-informed data collection in Central West Queensland aims to produce evidence that accurately reflects unmet need and ensures government funding and policy decisions are based on the real circumstances of regional communities. This model has the potential to be extended to other regions to address similar datagaps.
