‘Wages lower than retail’: Rural communities rue lack of access to childcare

For psychologist and mother-of-two, Tegan Podubinski, a lack of childcare access will leave her community 20 weeks poorer in mental health services this year.

“We have a very limited mental health workforce,” Dr Podubinski told AAP.

She is an example of the one-in-three Australians who live in a childcare desert, where there is one childcare spot for every three or more children, data from Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute shows.

In Wangaratta and its surrounding northeast Victorian catchment, more than nine in 10 people live in a childcare desert, which means fewer doctors, nurses and teachers can offer full-time services in regions already under-served by worker shortages.