Essay - Market Analysis For Child Care Centre - Assessment Answer

Essay Assignment

Assignment Task

You are to complete a market analysis for childcare centre.your essay needs to include introduction, industry background,pest analysis, conclusion and references. Minimum of 5 references from industry associations, governmental bodies and professional industry research and data on Harvard style

Introduction

Childcare refers to the process of attending to the needs of infants, toddlers, and preschool children while they are not in school. They are taken care of people who are not their parents. A childcare Centre is an institution taking care of a child for certainduration of time. In the formal policy and regulatory domains, childcare services are primarily for children 0–12 years. The primarychildcare services that are recognized in the Commonwealth Children Services banner include Long Day Care, Family Day Care, Outside School Hours Care Services and Vacation Care Services (Fleer 2013, pp. 21). A majority of the long day childcare services such as the Family Day Care are available during the normalworking hours (7 am – 6 pm) or longer. However, some of the childcare services offer these services in the night up to 9 pm. In some cases, some offer overnight, for children who belong to parents working in night shifts (Fleer 2013, p.93)

Industry Background

Since the ancient times, the wealthy people in the community have always been able to hand over their childcare needs to other people for a fee. Currently, it is estimatedthat over 11 million children need childcare services every year. The need for childcare arose because parents needed time to go to work (Groves & Lui 2012, p. 109). For a long period, child daycare arrangements have been informal in nature. The child care industry is constantlyrunning up against the widespread belief that mothers offer the best childcare for their children. It is often believed that mothersshould not leave their children in the care of other people (Fleer 2013, p. 98). This hasresulted in putting many mothersout of the workforce. Mothers often undergo a lot of pressure from the society and employment discrimination. However, motherswho were poor were forced to stay at home with their children because they could not afford to hire childcare services for their children. This situation became worse during the last years of the 20^thcentury. An increase in the rate of divorce anda stagnant wage growth, have forced women in the middle-class to work. For this reason, a child care program was initiated to target the low-income familiesin the community. The program was referredto as Head Start. A Government-initiated program was geared to providing funds that will provide child care services to the mothers who could not afford(Mastrulo 2016, p. 96). The need for the government to fundthese child care services, it allowsthe women to go back to work and continue earning an income. For this reason, it was crucial that the childcare services be made affordable to everyone.

Pest analysis

Political

The government of Australia has implemented policies that will ensure that all children receive adequate child care services. It was seenas an overwhelming concern that women should go back to work. However, this would not have been possible when they have small children who need their attention (Craig & Siminski 2011, p. 252). For this reason, the government established a fund that would cater tothe needs of women who are not in a position to affordchildcare services.

Economic

Australia currently has over 1 million children in need of childcare services every year. An estimate of about 1.6 million children who are aged 12 years and below, is required to attend some of the government-funded childcare servicesover 2016-17 that are approved by the government. Government assistance increase will help drive the industry revenue growth, with revenues that are expectedto increase by an annualized 14.3%. In 2016-17, the industry is expectedto produce revenue of around $12.4 billion, up 12.0% fromthe year before that, due to increased charges andhighincrease in government funding.

Social

The Australian childcare services industry is often small-scale fragmented nature. The top four players in the industry to cater for less than20% of the total revenue in the industry. The Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority reported that as of March 2015, most of approved child care providers (83%) are only tasked with managing one education and care service. 16% of the other childcare services provided 2 – 25 services while the remaining 1% offered 25 or more services(Bauernschuster & Schlotter 2015, p. 12).

Technological

About five years ago, the Child Care Sentral officially became the first web-based CCMS registered the software in Australia. The system introduced various updates that were in line with the client requirements, and also conformed to the government requirements. The new software system controlled the operational aspect of the business (Groves & Lui 2012, p. 109). It ensured that money from childcare services continued coming in. The system was designed to integrate seamlessly with the Central Information Hub (CIH), thereby giving one, instant access to the parent and child records.

Conclusion

In today’s convergence of all ideological positions on childcare for young children, means that most children require some attention from childcare givers because women are now engaged in the workforce. The government has ensured that the access to quality of early childhood education programs and childcare is improved. The Australian Government developed these reforms to ensure there is an improvement in the early childhood development of children. The reformneeded toinclude access to early education programs for all children in the year beforeformal schooling and ensuring that childcare is affordable to most people