“My heart was breaking”: Families like Amy’s are suffering

You may have heard of ‘childcare deserts’ – areas of Australia where there are more than three kids vying for a single childcare place. Almost a quarter of Australia’s population live in these deserts, with regional and rural families most affected.

But Australia’s childcare accessibility crisis isn’t only about a scarcity of childcare services. The early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector is also riddled with inclusion barriers for children with specific needs.

“I don’t believe that”: A struggle for support

It’s a problem Amy, a mum-of-two from Melbourne’s outer suburbs, has encountered firsthand.

Soon after her youngest daughter Emmy* started attending a local for-profit childcare service, Amy noticed the little girl was showing some behavioural changes. 

“She had sores on her lips because she was picking her lips, which I now know is a form of stimming,” says Amy. “And when I would go pick her up, she would be in the rooms running her hands up and down the wall with all the children outside, while she was inside.” 

Amy asked the educators for clearer communication around her daughter’s behaviour, wanting to monitor for signs of distress.

“I would get the photos that they sent me throughout the day and say … ‘When she’s self-harming, she’s actually very triggered [by] the environment, are you able to help her out?’,” she says.

“I realised very quickly that they didn’t understand neurodivergence.”

Amy felt repeatedly fobbed off. 

“When I went to the receptionist and spoke to the director of the centre saying, ‘this is what stimming is, this is what autism is’, one of the staff was there and they said, ‘Amy, it’s not autism, she just has separation anxiety’.”

Ultimately, Emmy received an official diagnosis of autism shortly before she turned three. But even then, Amy says not all educators at the centre took the diagnosis seriously.

“When I did originally share my youngest’s diagnosis with the centre, one of the staff members said, ‘I don’t believe that, she’s not autistic’,” recalls Amy. 

“I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe that I had just spent all this money to get my daughter the support … For someone to tell me they don’t believe me, that was heartbreaking.”

After almost three years of trying to make that childcare centre understand and accommodate her daughter’s needs, Amy and her husband withdrew Emmy.

“I then toured nine different centres to try to find a centre that would meet her needs and understand who she is,” says Amy. “None of them were educated enough to understand kids with neurodivergence.” 

When the family did find a centre that seemed suitable, they learned it had a lengthy waitlist.

“My heart was breaking. Because I was like, ‘how can I wait another six months to get her into a centre when we’ve already had five months off at this point?’,” says Amy.

A mental and financial toll

Emmy became “very clingy” after her experience at daycare, and her wellbeing plummeted.

“I was told by her therapist that she had actually been traumatised,” says Amy. “And then she became nonverbal. She was self harming every day.”

The stress of not having suitable care for their daughter also took a toll on Amy. 

“I was falling apart. I was breaking down and I thought, ‘something’s got to give’. Would it be my family, would it be childcare, would it be my marriage or would it be my business?” 

To free up time to focus on Emmy’s care needs, Amy ultimately closed her dog-grooming business, laying off her four employees.

“It left my family in a very vulnerable financial position,” she recalls.

Amy’s mental health also suffered a “tremendous” blow.

“I went from being a successful business owner to trying to work out how to support and advocate for two very different children. That left me in a very vulnerable position, mentally,” she says 

“I found that when I didn’t have my business, I did lose a part of myself. And I have yet to find that part of myself.”

A widespread problem

Sadly, Amy’s struggle to access suitable early childhood education and care for her daughter isn’t an isolated incident.

Surveys by Children and Young People with Disability Australia from 2022 and 2023 reveal one in three families of children with disability report being excluded from activities or events within ECEC settings. One in five said their child had been refused enrolment. A common theme in those survey responses was a lack of adequate teacher training on neurodivergence and disability – an issue Amy says is widespread.

“Some centres had no idea [that Kindergarten Inclusion Support] was an option available to them,” she says. “I not only had to educate some staff members on the supports my kid’s need, I also needed to teach them how to apply for this.”

In late 2024, the Productivity Commission report on the ECEC sector highlighted that the current system “does not cater for the needs of all children,” adding that children with disability are underrepresented in enrolments. That report recommended the Australian government “make significant changes to the way it funds supports for children, families and services” in order to promote inclusion.

Dr Ros Baxter, CEO of not-for-profit Goodstart Early Learning, agrees that disability inclusion should be a priority for the sector. 

“We have so many families who come to us that tell us they were turned away from centres because of their children’s support needs,” she says.

“Much, much more needs to be done on inclusion… How do you double down on teaching and learning, especially for the most disadvantaged children? It takes investment, it takes focus and, alongside affordability, inclusion and supply, we’d love to see that focus on equality,” she adds.

“We’d like to see governments and funders really investing in this.”

“This centre has actually helped her”

While the struggle to find a suitable childcare service took a heavy toll on Amy’s family, there’s a happy ending to their story.

“One day we were passing a little kinder childcare, one I hadn’t even considered because on the outside it looked really old,” says Amy. 

She dropped into the centre to request a tour, bringing along Emmy – who immediately began playing with the centre’s toys. 

“I was shocked. I was like, ‘this is amazing, she’s off doing something for herself,’” says Amy.

“Then they started using language that I knew. They said, ‘is she nonverbal? Does she stim? How does she like to regulate herself?’ And this is language that other childcare centers hadn’t actually used.”

Emmy started attending that new daycare within a fortnight and has thrived in her new environment.

“She ended up loving it. And within a few months, she got the kinder funding. She got an aid. And this centre actually has helped her,” Amy says.

As Amy’s story shows, high-quality, suitable and accessible ECEC can be transformative for families and children.

In an ideal world, she says, her family’s experience would have looked very different.

“What it would look like is just getting support straight away – day one, hour one.”

*Name changed for privacy reasons