Cathy and Trevor Carroll have owned The Willows Preschool and Early Learning Centre in Orange for 25 years and are calling for industry reforms to encourage workers to return to the industry, and to their centre.

The couple are the longest-standing directors in town and although the industry has always been a tough one to work in, Mrs Carroll said its been facing more challenges recently, particularly since the COVID pandemic when people left the industry in droves.

"It's Australia wide but particularly Orange wide," she said.

"We've got seven new centres opening this year and there's not enough staff for the centres that we've got and some centres are struggling."

Mrs Carroll said it has got to the point where some centres in Orange have had to close rooms and a worker being off sick, means parents cannot bring their children in so need to find alternative carers or take the day off work.

"Some centres have closed their babies rooms, some centres have closed the preschool rooms, some of them have closed days, they ring up families and say you can't come today because they don't have staff," Mrs Carroll said.

"Some centres are drastically reducing their hours, some centres that were 6.30am to 6.30pm are now 8am to 4pm - how can anybody work a full-time job?

"The economy in Orange is at risk because people can't go to work, it's quite a dire situation."

So far Willows has not had to turn away parents but Mrs Carroll is calling on people to join the industry and calling on people who have been on a hiatus that the industry needs them to come back.

"We've been very lucky," Mrs Carroll said.

"We started off very highly staffed, we staffed above ratios, though we've lost a lot of staff we've still been able to maintain ratios although maintaining ratios isn't ideal, the more staff you have, the better quality care."

However, there is still a waiting list at Willows and most early childhood centres across Orange with pregnant women having to book in places months before their baby is born with a year-long wait to get into many babies rooms.

"At the beginning of this year in our babies room we have eight places for our under twos and we had 90 on the waiting list," she said.

"There are people that we are offering places to now that have been waiting for years - they put their babies names down before they were born and they've only just been offered a place for the four year-old."

Mrs Carroll said part of the problem stemmed from school's having trouble recruiting teachers so they offered "really good deals" to people working in early childhood and people jumped at the chance to get 14 weeks instead of four weeks' holiday as well as higher wages and benefits for studying teaching at university.

"The schools have taken all the teachers out of early childhoood," she said.

"It's a very under valued, poorly paid sector so any person who is the bread winner in the family cannot really stay in early childhood because it just doesn't pay enough.

"A lot of our staff went to Nestle who pay double what we pay and there's the stress of working with young children."

According to the State Government's education website the median starting wage for a teacher with a bachelor degree in NSW is $73,737 where as the starting award wage for an early childhood teacher in Australia is $66,396.

Many general early childhood workers earn only about $23 per hour.

"However, I think the main thing that impacted us is during COVID people realised that they can get by on less. Why bust a gut five days a week when two or three gives a better work life balance? So half our workforce evaporated overnight," Mrs Carroll said, and added they lost 10 per cent of their staff also left due to the vaccine mandates.

"It's like a perfect storm all these things coming together and then these seven new centres opening."

She said the government has thrown money at the sector, particularly when it came to running courses, however, when she spoke to TAFE about the graduates so they could recruit them straight away but the graduates didn't exist.

"It's never been an attractive industry because it pays so poorly, it used to attract very young girls straight out of school, who thought they were coming to play, but then you realise the responsibility you've got keeping children safe and healthy, a lot of them didn't stay so it's always been hard to get staff but now it's almost impossible," Mrs Carroll said.

"We've had three recruitment campaigns this year and their response was zero so I'm very worried about Orange's economy if this continues."

Childcare workers across from Orange are expected to join a strike involving hundreds of early childhood centres on September 7 as workers call for an overhaul of conditions and wages.

"I don't think the industry will help but the industry needs to be respected more and paid more," Mrs Carroll said.

"In early childhood we do not make any money, it's not a money making venture, especially for single services so we can't increase pay but that's what needs to happen."

Their calls follow other cries for childcare reform from other Orange-based early childhood centres in March.

At that time, Imagine Childcare & Preschool Orange director Amilee McPaul spoke to the Central Western Daily.

She said workers in the childcare industry were tired, overburdened and severely underpaid for the growing requirements and demands placed on them - one of many reasons, she says, as to why employees in the sector were extremely difficult to find.

According to the Care for Kids website, 11 of the 37 childcare centres in Orange had placements with an average price of $131.95 per day not including subsidies.

The average cost for babies aged naught to two is $134.77 per day, a toddler aged from two to three is $133.99 per day and a child aged three to five years of age is $128.59 per day.

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.

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