The search for a provider to take over two non-profit daycares in Newcastle and Maitland slated for closure at the end of the year has ended in the 11th hour.
Parents, frustrated by a perceived lack of communication and consultation from the local Anglican diocese, were facing the imminent search for alternative care arrangements in the city.
Newcastle Anglican's Samaritans chapter said it was moving out of early childhood education in August to focus on core welfare services.
As a result it planned to close its two daycare centres at Woodberry and on Darby Street in December, leaving parents at a loss to arrange alternative care as space runs at a premium throughout the sector.
Samaritans wrote to parents around midday on Friday, October 4, after what families say were months of unheeded calls to meet with a concerned parents group that rallied to save the centres.
Friday's letters confirmed the centres would be transferred to Sydney-based provider Sera Direct from the year's end.
Parents are hopeful that the new provider, which records show runs three other centres in the Hunter and Sydney, will engage with them and meet their concerns when they take over.
It was a bittersweet moment of relief for the parents of more than 50 children who attend the Darby Street centre, the group's representative Emily Winborne told the Newcastle Herald on Friday.
"We're relieved to have some kind of certainty," she said. "Our underlying goal was always to save the centres and to maintain continuity of care. We have such a valuable community there."
"I think people are still going through a process of feeling quite distressed about how lacking the communication and consultation has been from (Samaritans). We have been asking for a meeting since the end of July (but) we have never had an actual response to our repeated requests to meet with the full board or the executive to have our voices heard."
Parents chose the Darby Street centre for its proximity to home, connections to the community, and relationships with local schools, which helped their children socialise and become familiar with their neighbourhood.
The not-for-profit provider was also attractive, they say, as it gave them confidence that funds were going directly to the education of their children rather than corporate profits.
"We had advocated for another not-for-profit as a primary preference," Ms Winborne said. "We are a bit disappointed about that, but we hope that this new provider will work with parents in a spirit of full and open communication."
In a brief statement released shortly after writing to parents, Samaritans said it "carefully considered a number of proposed operators, both not-for-profit and for-profit organisations" and said the transition to Sera Direct "was based on assurances children and staff will be able to continue at the centres if they wish to stay on".
Samaritans will stop its operations on December 20 before the centres re-open under the new provider next year.
In December last year, an Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal review of the early education sector found that there was a shortage of accessible and affordable quality childcare services generally, exacerbated by a short-handed workforce and a fragmented and inefficient funding system across the sector that left families, particularly those whose children have diverse needs, at a disadvantage.
The lack of availability, the report warned, resulted in "major inequalities in education and employment outcomes" over time.
It estimated that long daycare services, like those offered by the Darby Street centre, could cost parents as much as $195 a day per place, while community preschools were priced between $80 and $150 per day.
"Our primary goal was to keep our centre open," Ms Winborne said on Friday. "In that respect, we are grateful for the news that the centres will remain open and that there will be a provider committed to taking the centres forward.
"(But) there is some grief because it was the last not-for-profit daycare in the Newcastle CBD, and in the policy space that daycares operate in, it seems unlikely that that will come back."
The details of this report are developing. It may be updated.
