REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Saturday, July 31, 2010

AUSTRALIA’S childcare centres were battling a $50 million black hole of bad debts each year.

A phenomenon known as “childcare hopping” was robbing centres of an average of $5000 as parents skipped paying bills by shunting their children between kindergartens.

A Gold Coast man, however, was drawing a line in the sandpit with the invention of the Child Care Credit Agency.

Nerang’s Steve Stemp had been working for four years on what would be the country’s first credit agency for childcare centres, after a string of unpaid bills at his own centres drove him to find a solution.

The agency would allow centres to check the payment history of parents enrolling their children.

Mr Stemp said some parents used a system of “childcare hopping” where they enrol their child into care, do not pay the fees and then move on to another centre where they repeat the process.

Mr Stemp said it was almost impossible to track down the parents for outstanding fees once they had moved address.

The problem was so bad that after running three childcare centres on the Gold Coast for four years Mr Stemp was owed almost $80,000 in outstanding fees.

‘‘It’s quite common and if I attend meetings it’s something we all share and we’re not proud of,’’ he said.

‘‘They (the parents) do it because they can and there used to be nothing we could do to stop them.

‘‘Hopefully it (the agency) will become a business process.’’