Response to the proposed sale of three community early childhood learning centres by the City of Port Phillip

February 2022

Six Recommendations

1. Council should embrace the centrality of publicly owned and managed high quality local early learning services, rather than provide and support these services as a last resort - as per current policy.
2. Council should increase its investment in and express an intention to grow community and Council owned and managed early childhood learning centres (CCOMECLC).
3. Council should withdraw its intention to sell the three community managed centres and discontinue the sale process at this time.
4. Council should initiate a process of genuine engagement directly with the committees of management, staff and parents of the impacted early childhood centres with a view to exploring all possibilities for future preservation of the centres, led by the section of Council responsible for fostering community and Council governed children’s services (and not via consultants). Alternatives to the December 2021 Council recommendations, including strategies to repair and maintain the current buildings and an examination of potential alternative sites if necessary, should be considered and a report completed by June 2022.
5. In approaching the Victorian and Commonwealth Governments for funding, Council should flag that it is prepared to invest the $9.2m currently held in its cash-backed childcare infrastructure fund and to borrow, noting that these community facilities will deliver inter-generational benefits for Port Phillip residents over many years.
6. By December 2022, Council should develop a properly costed ten-year vision and strategic plan for its investment in community and Council owned and managed early childhood learning centres, noting the importance of early learning to the development of children and adults and the vital role of the sector in developing a stronger community in Port Phillip.

What is at stake?

These centres have distinctive cultures and distinctive communities of practice. They are places for the socialization and education of children through a collaboration between parents and early childhood expert practitioners. They are an outcome of the movement begun in the 1970s, primarily by women – a new way of meeting the conflicting demands of work, family life and the call of autonomy.

Parents in placed based communities have formed democratic governance structures and practices to mediate the relationship between tiers of government and employment relations of workers to provide a sheltering setting for loving childrearing.

The relationship of local government to the centres should be one of immense respect and humility. As one of the speakers said at Council’s December meeting, these institutions are a primary foundation for building community. The idea of community is Council’s source of legitimacy, trust and authenticity – mess with it at your peril.

The Council may own the buildings (and even then it does so only on behalf of the community) but it does not own the institution. It is crucial to make this distinction between buildings and dynamic flourishing institutions. It is only if the value of these centres as outstanding communities of practice is recognised that the real issue can be posed. This is: how can these cultures be maintained and supported by Council while also addressing any facility maintenance or rebuilding issues?

Council’s description of the centres as ‘buildings’, ‘fleets’ and ‘assets’ is utterly reductive. The report authors provide no sense of the shared public responsibility for the development and learning of children. So the ‘childcare place’ then becomes the essence of the institution, a commodity that can simply be interchanged in the marketplace. This approach is at odds with Council’s own policy adopted in 2019 – reference to the Policy is minimal in the December 2021 report – and signals a complete blindness to the real value of these institutions.

And if early learning places are the currency of the debate, at the end of the proposed process close to net 80 places in the community and Council sector will be lost. As places are shared across many families this will force hundreds of families into a more expensive private market focused on profit as a primary objective.

Is this what Councillors really want to see?

Council’s role as a model landlord

A lack of prioritisation of early learning in the City is reflected in Council’s role as the owner and landlord of these centres. The physical infrastructure of the centres has declined while their social infrastructure has thrived.

Council has known of the risks attached to centres not being DDA compliant for a number of years, but it has failed to act. Ironically, improved disability access is meant to open up community facilities to more people; in this case it is being used to close centres down.

All of this has occurred despite Council having the wherewithal to improve the centres through maintenance and repair levies imposed on the centres over many years.

Council itself says that three Council owned and managed early learning centres ‘require significant upgrading or redevelopment’ and in the community managed sector, only one centre is considered to be ‘future ready’. Sustained capital investment and a longer term plan for the CCOMECLC sector is needed.

Council’s failure to plan and invest in this sector has implications for many other Council owned facilities – aged care centres, sporting clubs, community centres, libraries, social housing and other early childhood learning centres as mentioned above.

Failure to consult

We note the that the proposed sale is a significant change in Council’s property portfolio and approach to the community sector which was not publicly flagged in the 2021 Council Plan. Officers now say that terminal defects with the centres are long standing. The Plan and Budget is Council’s premier consultation vehicle. What faith can residents have in this process if decisions like the proposed sale are executed without transparency and decent community engagement?

The sale option has been put out to public consultation with minimal notice to the centres and with responses expected over the Christmas-New Year period. So of course, many residents are sceptical about Council’s good faith in this process.

What are the possible ways forward?

There are several important principles and actions that should take place. A menu of short-term solutions is required now and a properly costed ten-year vision and strategic plan for the community and Council owned and managed early childhood learning in Port Phillip is needed to provide certainty for parents, staff and the community.

The lack of coherent planning is evident in Council’s 2019 proposal to transfer Council centres to the community sector – which we now know faces considerable physical challenges to be ‘future ready’; and the sale of the York Street centre in 2020 and subsequent loss of capacity to provide transitional early learning places as other centres are renewed or rebuilt. Continuing community uncertainty as to the future of the St Kilda Adventure Playground adds to the sense of drift in the delivery of children’s services in Port Phillip.

The way forward will involve:

• Genuine consultation with the affected centres and the whole childhood early learning sector in Port Phillip
• Placing childhood early learning infrastructure reserve funds on the table to attract State and Commonwealth Government contributions and flagging a willingness to borrow in order to meet capital upgrades and relocation if necessary
• Examination of relocation options if the centres, following detailed and genuine consultation with Council, deem that moving to new sites may be necessary and desirable. Without limiting options and without knowing availability or feasibility, sites could include

• Some sites in Council’s asset portfolio, such as the Triangle and Lower Esplanade, St Kilda and Elwood Foreshore. We note Council’s plan to shift tennis courts for car parking at the Elwood Foreshore reserve, could it possibly prioritise a place for children and families too?
• Negotiation with civil society, Victorian and Commonwealth Government partners, around sites such as Christ Church Square, St Kilda; the heritage listed St Kilda Artillery Orderly Room and Drill Hall site, Chapel Street; and primary school sites.

Therefore, we recommend:

• Council should embrace the centrality of publicly owned and managed high quality local early learning services, rather than provide and support these services as a last resort - as per current policy.[1]
• Council should increase its investment in and express an intention to grow community and Council owned and managed early childhood learning centres.
• Council should withdraw its intention to sell the three community managed centres and discontinue the sale process at this time.
• Council should initiate a process of genuine engagement directly with the committees of management, staff and parents of the impacted early childhood centres with a view to exploring all possibilities for future preservation of the centres, led by the section of Council responsible for fostering community and Council governed children’s services (and not via consultants). Alternatives to the December 2021 Council recommendations, including strategies to repair and maintain the current buildings and an examination of potential alternative sites if necessary, should be considered and a report completed by June 2022.
• In approaching the Victorian and Commonwealth Governments for funding, Council should flag that it is prepared to invest the $9.2m currently held in its cash-backed childcare infrastructure fund[2] and to borrow, noting that these community facilities will deliver inter-generational benefits for Port Phillip residents over many years.
• By December 2022, Council should develop a properly costed ten-year vision and strategic plan for its investment in community and Council owned and managed early childhood learning centres, noting the importance of early learning to the development of children and adults and the vital role of the sector in developing a stronger community in Port Phillip.

[1] City of Port Phillip, Every Child Our Future, 2019: Council provides facilities where there is evidence of a community need that can’t be met in any other way.

[2] City of Port Phillip, Council Budget and Plan 2021-22, Vol 2, p87