Keep the Childcare Centre at RNSH

As you may be aware, Royal North Shore Hospital provides a high quality affordable Childcare Centre on site which provides care for over 140 children of hospital staff.  At a redevelopment meeting conducted at the childcare centre, we were informed that it will need to be relocated, as it is currently situated on land which will eventually be sold to help finance the redevelopment. 

NSW Health has committed to providing childcare on-site for staff.  They won%u2019t, however, provide any further information on how it's to be run, what the operating hours will be (a necessity in a workplace that runs on shift workers) or even where it will be in the new hospital.

We are concerned this will become another failed experiment in the privatisation of a fabulous public asset.  Obviously the present and future parents and children of the centre will suffer from this decision, but so will the hospital, as the provision of quality affordable childcare is such an important part in a parent%u2019s decision to return to work.   Nurses are the largest single group to utilise the childcare service and are the largest single group on the waiting list.  The need for the Childcare Centre is clear with 174 staff on the 0-2 year old 2009, waiting list.  Our centre currently provides 98 families with the support they require to fulfil work commitments.

The Childcare Centre and those who use it now and in the future need your support.

We have an excellent Childcare Centre, which provides a high quality and affordable service and we need your help.  The long-term survival of this essential service is too important to be reliant on some form of privatisation.  Please sign the following petition, which we will forward on to the General Manager of RNSH & Ryde Hospital, Area Executives and Local Members of Parliament.

Yours sincerely

The Concerned Parents Group