Recent public debate about the child care system in Australia has focused primarily on the availability and affordability of child care. Drawing on the results of a national survey of long day care centre staff, Emma Rush considers the quality of the care provided. For all the aspects of quality care investigated, results show that community-based long day care centres offer the highest quality care. Independent private centres offer a quality of care that is usually similar to the high quality offered by community-based centres. Corporate chains offer the lowest quality of care on all aspects of quality surveyed, and in some cases it is markedly lower than that provided by community-based long day care centres.

A summary of the report is available online.