Psychologist Tegan Podubinski knows her regional city needs more mental health support, but first, she and other essential workers need the childcare crisis fixed.
For psychologist and mother-of-two, Tegan Podubinski, a lack of childcare access will leave her community 20 weeks poorer in mental health services this year.
“We have have a very limited mental health workforce,” Dr Podubinski said.
She is an example of the one-in-three Australians who live in a childcare desert, where there is one childcare spot for every three or more children, data from Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute shows.
Dr Tegan Podubinski and husband Ty, with kids Ida and Henry in Wangaratta Victoria.Credit: Yasmin Rose Photography
In Wangaratta and its surrounding northeast Victorian catchment, more than nine in ten people live in a childcare desert, which means fewer doctors, nurses and teachers can offer full-time services in regions already under-served by worker shortages.
“Every time you jump on the Facebook notice page, you see somebody desperately looking for access to childcare and trying to figure out how the heck they’re going to be able to work,” she said.
Dr Podubinski sometimes takes her children to her work as a research fellow, or has been able to have Henry join a playgroup at a rural school when she offers treatment.
Despite the support, her limited days of childcare forced her to knock-back a role supervising rural psychologists-in-training, a missed opportunity to expand the local mental health workforce.
“These students would have been likely to stay in a rural area,” Dr Podubinski said.