The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) is a not-for-profit, member-funded organisation advocating for the future of Australia's children.
We work on behalf of long day care owners and operators to ensure families and their children have an opportunity to access affordable, high quality early learning services throughout Australia.
As all ECEC service providers would probably now be aware, the new Child Care Subsidy package, which will include a new payment known as the Child Care Subsidy (CCS), is due to be fully implemented on 2 July this year.
The CCS will replace the Child Care Benefit (CCB) and the Child Care Rebate (CCR) and will be paid directly to Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services on behalf of families.
As the changes surrounding this new package will affect more than 17,000 service providers across Australia and over 1.2 million families using ECEC services, it’s important that all ECEC service providers and their families understand what they need to do between now and July to ensure a successful transition to the new system.
Written by Heather Barnes OAM, Early Childhood Consultant
The start of the year is always busy with new children and families settling in, new staff to be inducted and supported and a myriad of other conflicting pressures on your time. You will have received updates from ACECQA about the changes to the NQF and you may have skimmed it quickly and then parked it in your ‘To read when I have time’ file! Those of you who anticipate having an Assessment and Rating visit in early 2018 may have read widely about the changes so that you are prepared and so that there are no nasty surprises!
This article is designed to give you a quick update about the changes and will provide some links for further information to save you having to hunt for it.
ACA and Maggie Dent are giving away three double passes to Maggie Dent’s Raising Children Who Shine conference series being held in Perth, Sydney and Brisbane this March. The conference will feature four leading experts from Australia and overseas discussing some of the key challenges faced by those raising or working with children. As well as bringing parents and educators together, the conference will explore issues such as disciplining children, making a successful transition to school, stopping the fights over technology, connecting to kids even when they’re challenging, supporting boys to get to and through school and more.
Just fill out the form below to enter the draw. Winners will be announced on Monday 29th January.
Thank you to everyone who entered the draw! The competition is now closed.
The winners are Flutterbys Preschool in NSW, Murdoch Early Learning - Morley Campus in WA and Bay Explorers Early Learning, Deception Bay in QLD. Congratulations to the winners - we hope you gain some fresh insights from the conference.