Families face 150km daily drive as more regional childcare centres close

After working as a police officer across Western Australia for more than a decade, Julienne Slade made the switch to teaching to spend more time with her family.The veteran officer worked in rural towns in the state's Great Southern and Pilbara regions before moving back to her hometown of Mount Barker, 370 kilometres south of Perth, to settle down with her husband and begin a teaching career.However, news that one of the town's two childcare centre will close in December has cast a cloud over her plans."I couldn't believe it because that's the daycare centre I went to when I was a child. It's been operating for at least that long, if not longer," she said.Julienne Slade says families have received little notice of the centre's closure. (ABC News: Andrew Chounding)Three centres closing The family is not alone, with childcare provider Uplyft announcing it will close centres in the neighbouring towns of Mt Barker, Kojonup and Katanning in the next six months. Affected parents say they will have to drive hundreds of kilometres each day to access alternative services, or join waitlists for closer centres.Ms Slade's husband works in agriculture and they both said the closure would impact their careers."We'll have to adapt work. I'll either need to take leave or my husband will have to not work," Ms Slade said."If he's home looking after the kids, that's lost income, sometimes up to $5,000 or $6,000 a day because of how sporadic his work is."Uplyft will close two centres next month and a third in June. (ABC News: Andrew Chounding)Uplyft announced closures to some of its centres across WA in October.The company's chief executive, Jo Sadler, said Mount Barker and Katanning's closure were due to lease conditions and also resulted in the Kojonup branch being unviable."As a result of these two events, it will be unfeasible to continue with an isolated service operating out of Kojonup," she said."At this stage, the Mt Barker and Katanning centres will close by the end of December 2026, while Kojonup will close in the first half of 2027."The ABC spoke to several impacted families who said they were scrambling to secure places at alternative centres, but faced waitlists and limited availability.Ryan Colman says he will have to drive more than 150km a day to access another childcare service. (ABC News: Andrew Chounding )No other options Kojonup mechanic Ryan Colman sends his two-year-old child to Uplyft five days a week, and said he does not know what he will do when the town's only centre closes."We don't have another option, unless we're driving 80 kilometres return twice a day … That's the only real option, but that throws another financial burden into the mix because it's more fuel," he said."We've got mortgages and bills and that's not helping with interest rates always going up."Data from the Early Learning and Care Council of Australia shows 152 services permanently closed between 2024 and mid-2026, with a further 276 services at risk of closure by July 2027.Nesha Hutchinson says hundreds of centres across Australia are under financial strain. (Supplied: Nesha Hutchinson)Australian Childcare Alliance vice-president Nesha Hutchinson said rising inflation and high running costs were driving the closures."It's absolutely a problem — not just in Western Australia but across the country — that regional, rural, remote services are being pushed to the brink of financial viability," she said."Month by month … we're hearing of hundreds of services closing across the country … It's not going to get any better in the short term."