Childcare helping hand could be found in formal au-pair visa.

Making the transition from corporate life to a retiree is often challenging, and particularly for baby-boomer men who probably have had very little experience and responsibility for home and child care.

For this 65 year-old, I was about to be given a rare look into the World of young parents – mostly mums – when a year before my retirement our daughter, Lisa presented us with our first grandchild.

Sadly, Lisa’s partner ‘disappeared’ three days before the birth of Ember, and due to unfortunate circumstances, his family also lost contact. Enter the role of sole grandparents as childcare providers.

Over the next year following my retirement from paid work, my role – along with my wife ‘Nanna’ Katherine – would see us seeking-out a range of fun places where our granddaughter could visit on day excursions; playgrounds, nursery rhyme classes, toddler gyms and local swimming pools have become familiar places.

Being completely unprepared for my new role was to be both confronting and immensely rewarding. My past-life, sitting at meetings with senior government officials and corporate types with my PA at my side, was suddenly replaced by having 25 mums, carers or grandparents at the local library as we sang-along to children’s nursery rhymes.

This has continued for over 14 months now and granddaughter Ember has just turned two, having allowed me to learn some interesting lessons along this journey that are worth sharing:

Grandparents seem to be playing an increasingly important task as child carers. Like us, they appear to thoroughly enjoy the role although all agree by the end of the day you are feeling, to be blunt, buggered! Looking after an active 2-3 year-old is hard work for any parent yet alone a sixty something grandparent!

For me personally it has opened up a whole new world; a world that I missed when Katherine and I had our own children. Then, I was jet-setting off every second week and at meetings on the other weeks, so I never really experienced at close-hand my two children growing-up and evolving from babies to little people. The role as a granddad is therefore immensely joyful and has brought a new dimension to my life through the eyes of Ember.

The other lesson I have learned from the almost daily interaction with carers at these child-care venues is just how tough it is for young parents to even find, or afford, quality child care with parents relying on grandparents, or simply opting-out of the workforce altogether to stay home. 

Three years ago, the Perth-based Indonesia Institute – of which I am President – made a submission to the Productivity Commission to allow foreign au pair workers to live-in with Australian families. Our proposal was rejected as we had the politically incorrect temerity to suggest these workers could be paid $250 per week as a base wage.

Yet today, I am finding at these various activity centres hundreds of au-pair workers, who enter Australia as backpackers, undertaking exactly the role we had recommended.

Already, the Australian Government provides $6.5 billion in subsidies per year for child-care and the Commission estimates that figure will increase to $7.8 billion by the end of this year. 

Yet families and single parents – including skilled parents and shift workers wanting to return to work – either cannot find suitable child-care or simply cannot afford it given the $120-$140 per day per child price tag. The Australian Institute of Health & Welfare reported in 2014 that 21% of all children were subjected to ‘unmet child-care needs’ so clearly the system fails to meet the needs of many Australian families - unless they are shareholders in the growing number of corporations now entering this lucrative market thanks to government subsidies.

Desperate parents have told me they can legally access the large flow of overseas backpackers, who arrive here under the 417 ‘Holiday and Work’ Visa - and who we see in our cafes and farming areas - to take on the role of a live-in au-pair. From all the anecdotal feedback I have received from these ‘real’ parents and the au-pairs themselves, the backpacker au-pair scheme is working extremely well; despite its frailties.

The Backpacker au-pair workers experience the opportunity to live with Australian families cost free, and parents achieve an affordable child and home care solution. Most families pay around $250 per week plus full board. 

There is a downside to the Backpacker scheme however is that by the very reason young foreign backpackers are here, often after six months they wish to move on and experience life in another part of Australia; exactly what the scheme is designed to do. And even if the au-pair wishes to stay longer with the family – and as the children become accustomed to their guest – the 417 visa requires the worker to move on to another family or job, with the incumbent family forced to start-over again.

So as I continued to talk to parents it occurred to me that the government needs to introduce a formal Au-pair visa specifically tailored for families and child-care services. The visa would provide a structure to allow backpackers to continue working with families within a more secure, and affordable environment, but also to allow Asian maids who have at least three years experience managing an expat family, with good references and English language skills to apply.

Meanwhile Katherine and I will continue to joyfully support our daughter in getting back to work by caring for our gorgeous granddaughter; a task performed every day by thousands of grandparents and ironically, foreign backpackers.

Ross B. Taylor AM is the president of the Perth-based Indonesia Institute Inc., and a Granddad.

February 2017

(This article first appeared in "The Weekend West" Newspaper on Saturday 11th February 2017)