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.
When parents and early childhood educators work together to form positive, trusting relationships, they can make a real difference to young children’s lives. Unfortunately modern life doesn't make forming these relationships easy; many parents struggle to find the time in their working day to be present in their child's early learning environment.
The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) has paired up with parenting and resilience specialist Maggie Dent, to help families and early learning services understand the importance of building these relationships, and the many benefits that these positive connections bring about for their children.
ACA is reminding Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services as well as families using their services, that the new Child Care Subsidy system will take effect in July next year.
On 2 July 2018, the Federal Government will replace the Child Care Benefit (CCB) and Child Care Rebate (CCR) with a single means-tested subsidy, known as the Child Care Subsidy (CCS).
The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) is pleased to confirm that the Federal Government's new Community Child Care Fund (CCCF), which is part of the new Child Care Safety Net, is now available to privately-operated Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services.
ACA's National Committee are extremely pleased that the government has acknowledged ACA's concerns, reconsidered their position and amended their application criteria, to allow privately-operated services to apply for the various grants under the new CCCF program.
We are delighted to acknowledge that our former National President, Gwynneth Bridge, was recently appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the General Division, for her significant service to the community through leadership in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector. The Order of Australia is the principal and most prestigious means of recognising outstanding members of the community at a national level.
The ACA has recently set up a new state body in Tasmania, with the help of a passionate group of local Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) service providers, in order to immediately address Tasmania’ s emerging childcare crisis.
The Liberal State Government plans to lower the school starting age to 3.5 years by 2020.
This goes against the best practice research from Australia and around the world which demonstrates that younger is not better when it comes to starting school and does not give children any academic advantage… in fact it can do the opposite.
This year Early Childhood Educators Day will take place on Wednesday 6th September.
The purpose of Early Childhood Educators Day is to recognise and celebrate the work of early educators working in long day care, community care and kindergarten/preschool services, for their enormous contribution to the wellbeing and healthy development of the young children in their care.
The event was inspired by World Teachers Day, an annual event which is celebrated in more than 100 countries in October.
ACA President Paul Mondo has expressed the ACA’s extreme disappointment that the Federal Government and crossbench have ignored a landmark opportunity to provide well balanced reform to child care subsidies and passed the Jobs for Families Legislation last night without ACA’s recommended amendments.
A summary of the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill 2016 and its progress through Parliament can be accessed here.
“This is an extremely disappointing result for the sector.” Mr Mondo said. “Our support of the Jobs for Families package was contingent on our recommendations being included in the new legislation, to better protect vulnerable and disadvantaged Australian children as well as ensuring an adequate safety net for many low income families.”
Read the ACA Pre-Budget Submission to Treasury January 2017.
We would like to see additional support introduced as soon as possible, whilst at the same time ensuring that no child is worse off and families can still access quality, affordable care.
The ACA would like to thank those members along with the kids, parents and staff who were involved in raising funds for our Project Rudolph initiative over the last few weeks.
Some of our members organised bake sales, others encouraged the children to dress up in Christmas theme, two of our members in Queensland held an auction of the children’s art, and some raised funds with a simple donation box. We hope that the children enjoyed getting involved and helping others less fortunate.
The ACA is proud to support Project Rudolph, a joint initiative between Aussie Farmers Direct and Australia’s largest hunger relief organisation, Foodbank.
Project Rudolph gives Australians the chance to give Christmas meal boxes to struggling Aussie families this Christmas. By providing the essential ingredients for a family dinner – roast meat, carrots, spuds, pumpkin and of course, Chrissie cake – Australians can help spread the joy of Christmas and ease the stress for a family doing it tough this festive season.
The Australian Childcare Alliance is pleased to announce Paul Mondo as President, Nesha Hutchinson as Vice President, Ann Marie Chemello as Secretary and Kerry Mahony as Treasurer of our National Executive Committee.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to our former President Gwynneth Bridge, and Vice President Judith Atkinson who did not renominate for these positions. After nine years of dedicated service as President Gwynn has chosen to retire from the ACA National Committee whilst Judith will continue working as part of the Committee.
Photo: ACA SA President Kerry Mahony and ACA Vice President Judy Atkinson meet with a Chinese Delegation in Adelaide
Kerry and Joan Mahony, in conjunction with members from ACA SA are hosting a visit to their Centres from a delegation of 3 members of the BZ Education Group which provides childcare services in Nanjing China.
ACA has released its Federal Election Policy Priorities, calling on all parties to commit to policies and immediate investment capable of delivering quality and affordable early childhood education and care for families across Australia.