We were excited when this new childcare centre opened around the corner. We booked in well before it opened and we sent our 3 year old daughter.

We found the centre to be clean and clinical but it doesn't have any atmosphere. The rooms are quite big and the kids just seem lost in them. Not to mention the fact that I never saw the correct ratio of carers (5:1 under government legislation) . Commonly when I would drop my daughter off there would be 20 kids in the room and only 1 or 2 carers.

I found that the carers didn't really build a rapport with the kids, they really just saw it as a job (obviously you don't want them to get too close or it makes it hard when one of them is away). In fact the first time I dropped her off the carers didn't even attempt to introduce themselves to me or try to make my her feel welcome.

One of the most annoying things was that they charged us for public holidays even though they were closed. I know this is not the only centre that does this but I can't think of another industry where you can legally charge for a service you don't deliver. The big issue for us was out daughter was only going 1 day per week which was a Monday because the didn't have any other days available. About 9 of the public holidays each year fall on a monday so we were paying for 9/52 monday's and not getting anything! We took this up with them to see if they would wave this for us due to our only day being a monday but they refused to.

Luckily a new centre opened in Brighton called Bambini and we now have our daughter there and she is very happy.

Approximate cost: $80+