At one of the city's newly-formed facilities, director at Imagine Childcare & Preschool Orange Amilee McPaul says workers in the childcare industry are tired, overburdened and severely underpaid for the growing requirements and demands placed on workers - one of many reasons, she says, as to why employees in the sector are extremely difficult to find.

"There's not enough staff in the industry - it's a very tough job with not-great pay," Ms McPaul said.

"We're exhausted, we're overworked and the amount of legal requirements - on top of difficult behaviours - there's not a day where we get to go home on time and we're always here at least 20 minutes before-shift to prepare - every shift, every day."

Classed as "childcare deserts", a study by the Victoria University's Mitchell Institute found an estimate of 36.5 per cent of children, in the naught-to-four age range across the country, lived in communities with scarce to no access to childcare.

One childcare placement tipped over into more than triple that of the realistic capacity of intake, meaning over three children are currently vying for a single placement.

With the majority of these "deserts" dropping pins in rural and regional areas, that's around 568,700 children under the age of four - and the families they're connected to - without an available spot.

Five years ago, from the years of 1996 to 2017, these figures also showed a rise in "child oases" to grow from an estimated 13 to 35 per cent.

Currently, only 11 of 36 local childcare providers are advertising current vacancies across Orange and surrounds, with the majority of those enrolments registered to family day care environments.

So, why do new childcare services continue to pop-up in the city when there's still the issue of high staff turnover rates, limited place availability for children and extreme burnout of workers?

Experts say that government policies need to "stop throwing money at families" and invest in the industry's workers, instead of concentrating primarily on lowering costs and erecting new childcare hubs as the solution, when it's not.

Orange-based early childhood teacher, Jessica McGrath says a majority of the sector's employees are "burning out", with blows to working families a realistic and daunting concern as a result.

"I think, for Orange in general, what we're experiencing right now is a really high staff shortage and it seems to be continuously impacted by more services being opened," she said.

"Ratios needing to be upheld, all of the COVID regulations have had to change or they've impacted policies in different ways and one of the biggest demographics of Orange is always going to be the younger demographic, and for those children to attend services you require more staff because you've got to meet ratios and, unfortunately at the moment, Orange just doesn't have that."

According to the National Quality Framework, centre-based requirements for educator-to-child ratios are calculated at one employee per four children from birth to 24 months.

For those between 24 months and less than 36 months, it's one worker to five children and for 36 months and up to pre-schooling age, it's one worker per 10 children.

Though, the industry is grappling to meet these regulations, which is why so many services are obligated to reject any further intake - regardless of volume.

"I know that a lot of services in town are really struggling to maintain the staff they have - they're struggling to recruit and the [staff] turnover is really high," Mrs McGrath said.

"Educators are burning out and the impact of this for families is that services can't enrol to their capacity, because they just don't have the staff.

"And I don't think any services willingly put their hand up to say we can't give you a space or 'sorry we've got to close at short notice'.

"Ratios are often misunderstood by families, because they just need to get their child in care and it's hard to realise that unless you work in the sector, and the younger the demographic a service caters for, the harder it is."

While still under construction last year, Imagine Childcare & Preschool Orange's enrolment registry was opened during the July-August months.

The books at the emerging centre, which are not unlike the majority of local childcare services, then closed those same months.

"The first day that we opened for spots, our enrolments team in Queensland said the phone never stopped," Ms McPaul said.

"When we opened on January 31, we also had a lot of cranky parents, upset because we were this massive new centre and couldn't help them with any availability - we were already chockas."

At present, Ms McPaul says while there's 94 children on the centre's books, there isn't, logistically, room for more intake - because it's not physically possible to accept any further enrolments at the moment.

"We're currently at 70 per cent capacity, but we can't go any higher than that because there's not enough staff," she said.

"We'd love to be operating at fully capacity, but we just can't - I don't have the staff to meet the ratios to be 100 per cent or approve any more spots.

"We don't know what else we can do asides from bringing the ratio down so we can provide more care. It's a constant battle."

Though the impacts for workers are understandably difficult, the ongoing issues with staffing and ratios throws several curveballs at families.

With multiple services in Orange sending out alerts to families, childcare centres have had to shutdown operations and often at short notice, according to Mrs McGrath.

This issue, which not only disrupts employment arrangements for parents, also creates added stressors for the overall well being of their child/ren.

"[As parents], we've had our days cut, we've had our enrolment days - that we initially wanted to match our working arrangements - either removed or changed and we've watched an entire team basically leave the service and you're really left as a parent questioning the stability of the team," she added.

"And you're questioning how those impacts of staffing changes are going to affect your child and their development while they're in that care: are they being supervised adequately? Are they building critical attachment and relationships with their caregivers? Particularly for that younger age group from zero to two, where [these issues] are critical for their entire development - especially for their brain development."

Many early childhood educators and trained teachers are also leaving the industry altogether, according to Mrs McGrath.

"Educators are going to completely different fields, because the conditions and the pay don't reflect the importance of the role and the role itself," she said.

"There's so many difficulties with working in early learning settings and, unfortunately, staff are often just not supported enough - they're wearing way too many hats and they're just not given the support or recognition that they need or deserve.

"Some tertiary students - that are training to either be early childhood teachers or primary school teachers - are choosing to go into primary school settings rather than early childhood settings because they're already aware that the conditions are not going to be ideal.

"So, we're also losing highly-qualified, early childhood teachers before they even start in the sector, which is really alarming."

Due to deadline restrictions, Orange City Council was not able to provide comment to the issues outlined in the story above. A spokesperson for the council has confirmed questions from the Central Western Daily have been forwarded to its childcare team.