A childcare centre owner has reduced her prices by nearly half the average for similar services in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs to help her customers and increase occupancy rates that were decimated over the past year by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plan has worked for Chrisstanthy Tsigolis who runs a childcare centre in Rose Bay and another in Roseberry and who has been in childcare since 1995.

“Reducing my costs by changing the hours and not providing lunch, I could pass those savings onto my families. Our Rose Bay service has seen an increase in occupancy of 46 percent since we introduced the slashed fee,” Ms Tsigolis told the Daily Telegraph.

The Sydney newspaper reported that parents in Sydney’s eastern suburbs could pay between $110 to $150 a day for childcare. Daily fees on the city’s north shore can reach up to $177 a day.

The child care industry in the city suffered a major blow when attendance and enrolments to childcare centres fell rapidly in the first half of 2020.

“I wanted to make childcare more attainable and affordable for those who had lost their jobs, their businesses, and could only resort to family to provide early childhood education,” Ms Tisgolis said.

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The CEO of Early Childhood Australia, Samantha Page, told the Sydney newspaper that not all childcare centres could reduce their costs but that “it is good that services are responding to the needs of families when they can.”

She said that with the end of JobKeeper and reduction of Jobseeker, it was likely that more families would have difficulties in paying for early education and care.