Last month it was announced that a $300million federal fund is being allocated to the child care industry to subsidise a long overdue increase in wages of child care workers.

About time I hear you say. Well not so fast as not all child care workers will get more money.

As with all government grants there are conditions. Funding is only available to long day care centres and is for a period limited to two years. Centres must apply for the funding and must meet various criteria in order to be eligible.

Centres that miss out on the grants will be under pressure to increase wages in order to retain staff. The Australian Childcare Alliance has calculated that these centres will have to charge parents $10 a day more in fees, to cover the cost of pay rises.

So will the $114-a-week pay rise have a significant impact on those teaching and caring for our children? Despite the rise in wages for childcare workers, this essential part of our workforce represents some of the lowest paid wage earners in the country.

Which begs the question: Why don't we value our child care workers as much as other professions like doctors and dentists, other healthcare professionals or social workers, or even as much as teachers and other educators who, let's face it, are pretty badly paid as well.

Child care workers may not have gone through as many years of training as doctors and dentists, but they provide care, compassion, education, healthcare, training and substitute parenting for hundreds of thousands of children around Australia.

So is it any wonder that experienced child care workers go off and do something else after a few years? According to PayScale, child care workers with less than a year's experience make up around 12% of the category; the vast majority (61%) have between one and four years' experience. Child care workers with five to nine years' experience represent just 16% of the industry's employees and only 9% hang around long enough to clock up 10 to 19 years' experience.

Australia is a country whose workforce has to grow to survive. We've grown in GDP exponentially over the last hundred years or so and have some of the best business standards in the world. The IMF had Australia ranked number 12 in the world's top economies in 2012 – with a GDP of USD$1,542,055.

However we have a miniscule population compared to other countries, close to us in output. India, ranked number 10 on the IMF's list, has a population of 1,210,193,422 (that's 1.2 Billion) compared to our puny 23 million!

So if we're to keep our economy growing we desperately need women to be encouraged to enter and stay in the workforce, as much as we need them to keep having babies! Fact.

Another fact is that the population is ageing, pensions are now collected later, and so people are staying in work for longer and therefore grandparents and extended family members are not as accessible as they once were.

So if women are working as well as having babies and grandparents are working too before they head off on round-the-world cruises, where do the babies go? Child care! Yes, of course.

And in order to run child care centres, what do we need…? (Hands up if you know) Child care workers! Well done. And in order to encourage child care workers, we need to do what? That's right! PAY THEM A DECENT WAGE!

Really, a pre-schooler could actually get that, so why is it so difficult for us to work out?

Child care workers pretty much keeping the country going. They are the custodians of Australia's future workforce. Pretty important really.

Funding Summary
The money will be made available under a new Early Years Quality Fund (EYQF) and will provide grants to child care services to offset the cost of employing more qualified staff without raising the cost of care.

As always with announcements like this there is a fair amount of small print you need to wade through to figure out who will get the money and when, so here goes:

• The money will be available for two years from 1 July 2013.
• Not all services will be eligible to receive funding (see below).
• Funding will be paid directly to eligible services and will supplement wages to the tune of $3.00 to $5.23 an hour ($114 to $198.74 a week) depending on qualifications.
• Only long day care centres approved for CCB can apply for funding.
• Eligible LDCs must show 'a commitment to improving quality outcomes for children, including workforce plans to attract and retain qualified staff' (see below).
• The number of services that received money will depend on the size of services that apply and the number of qualified staff they employ.
• Funding will depend on wage increases being included as part of an enterprise bargaining agreement.
• Funding will be allocated via an application process and services will be assessed against eligibility criteria including:
  • A demonstrated commitment to quality outcomes for children under the NQF including a plan to meet qualification requirements.
  • An agreement to use funds for wage increases only.
  • A commitment to keeping care affordable through fee increases limited to operating costs (and no increases as a result of wages arising from the operation of the EYQF).
  • Improved fee transparency for parents (services will need to explain to families how much financial assistance is provided by government through CCB and CCR).
• The Government is establishing an advisory board made up of employer/ee organisations, child care industry representatives and officers from DEEWR to advise on how all of the above will be administered and who should receive the money in accordance with the eligibility criteria.