Seven Hills contains 1 Long Day Care centre (48 places) and 1 OSHC facility (180 places), while overall provision relative to the local child population appears limited compared to national benchmarks, and is below the Greater Brisbane average. With no preschool/kindergarten services observed in the area, only long day care, the ratio of children per place for the under 5 age group is 3.8 - placing the area among the bottom 20% nationally for supply per child. To meet the Greater Brisbane average 63 new places would be required (LDC+PSK to service the under 5 age group). Meanwhile, with projected population growth of 21.9% between now and 2041, and 1.2% in the under 5 age group in particular. As well as this projected growth, other drivers of note in the area are high female labour force participation of 66.3%, as well as strong income performance.
In assessing child care markets local school supply is a particularly important factor, given school-run convenience, and enrolment vs child care place analysis can provide useful insight into capacity both for parents seeking child care options and child care operators assessing opportunities in an area. The catchment sees a level of school enrolment relative to population of 15.7 per 100 residents with 499 enrolments across primary and secondary institutions. This above-average concentration of school places suggests the area serves as something of a destination for educational services, which typically supports elevated childcare demand through school run convenience patterns. Additionally, the level of school places per child care place (LDC+PSK) is higher than average. Rather unsurprisingly, out of school hours child care - serving school age children - was found to be much more abundant than other service types in the area. Proximity analysis saw distances of local residents to their nearest child care centre being shorter than average.
7 school catchments intersect Seven Hills (note; school catchment data provided for public schools only), in which a combined 7,419 children aged under 5 reside, served by 5,948 LDC and preschool places. The overall demand-to-supply ratio across these catchments is 1.2 children per place, with significant variance in this ratio. Meanwhile, the discrepancy in this ratio between Seven Hills and the intersecting school catchments highlights the need for a catchment based approach for specific site assessments.