Context
Childcare is chosen close to home
In the ACCC's 2023 childcare inquiry, most households said they wanted care close to home and would travel up to 15 minutes for it, and 60% of Australian children aged five and under attended a childcare service in 2022. The number of young children within that distance of a site bears directly on how many places a centre can fill, whether you operate it, build it for an operator or own the leased property.
The ACCC also found that supply has concentrated in major cities and more advantaged areas, where margins are higher, and the Australian Government's $1 billion Building Early Education Fund now pays for new and expanded centres in outer suburbs and regional areas where it finds supply short. The Census counts children under five, families with young children, household incomes and the languages spoken at home for every neighbourhood in Australia, and Censible works these out for any catchment you draw around a site.
An example
Within a 10-minute drive of Tarneit station
About 65,600 people lived within a 10-minute drive of Tarneit station, in Melbourne's west, at the 2021 Census. About 6,500 of them were under five, 9.9% of residents against 5.9% across Greater Melbourne and up from about 5,000 in 2016, while 51% of families were couples with children under 15 (33% across Greater Melbourne) and 65% of residents used a language other than English at home (36%).
Censible projects about 7,500 under-fives in the same catchment by 2031 as its population passes 95,000, though their share of residents is projected to fall to 7.9%, having peaked at 10.9% in 2016. The 2016 figures are carried onto today's boundaries, so they're estimates, and the 2026 and 2031 figures are projections built from ABS estimates and Geoscience Australia projections.
Limitations
Families around a site, without the centres
Censible describes the families who live around a site. It doesn't hold the locations or approved places of existing services, which ACECQA publishes in its National Register, or occupancy, fees, quality ratings and Child Care Subsidy data, and it doesn't turn a count of children into a number of places needed, because that rests on attendance and supply assumptions a needs assessment has to state for itself.
The Census counts children where they live, though some families use care near where they work. Children under five are counted in one five-year band, so babies can't be separated from three- and four-year-olds, and that band starts in 2016 rather than 2011. Censible's work figures cover all adults rather than parents, and those from the 2021 Census were affected by lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne.