Touching the earth: the challenge of providing culturally appropriate child care services in a landscape where profits are the priority

The last decade saw the rise and collapse of Australia's largest for-profit child care provider. Government policy makers assumed that the for-profit sector would ensure a 'market' that provided a wider range of child care choice, and increased opportunities for accessing quality long day care. However, in the rural and regional areas of Australia, the idea of 'choice' is necessarily limited by what is available within a practical distance. This paper presents qualitative data gathered from Indigenous parents in northern regional Australia, interviewed as part of two research studies in 2007 and 2009/10. Parents spoke of their search for quality long day care in a complex and rapidly changing child care landscape. The role child care played in Indigenous parents' lives went far beyond an educational tool or child minding service. Quality child care potentially offered the hub of 'community' that many families sought, particularly in communities characterised by distance from friends and family, fluctuating economic growth and limited services for those outside the mainstream. However, for the Indigenous parents in this study governments' reliance on the 'market' served only to increase their alienation from a valuable service and to emphasise the market's insensitivity to the needs of a diverse community. This research draws on the voices of Indigenous parents to explore the complex interplay between child care policy, conceptions of diversity and community, and ideas of choice, quality and the implications of government reliance on market mechanisms.