We are always looking at ways to help parents find child care more easily and are happy to announce that in collaboration with Google, CareforKids.com.au today launches a Google Gadget to help parents keep child care search at their fingertips.

CareforKids.com.au has been working with Google, the world's best known search engine for some time now, using Google Maps to pin point child care centres and vacancies.

Now we've gone one step further in the partnership and from now on you can have the CareforKids.com.au search tool as one of your iGoogle gadgets (mini applications that iGoogle users can arrange on their iGoogle page or other websites), so that every time you click into your iGoogle home page, child care search and information is at your fingertips.

The new child care search gadget is one of several new gadgets launched today by Google in conjunction with News Digital Media for iGoogle, Google's personalised homepage. These gadgets will make it even easier for Australians to create a page that reflects their individual needs and interests.

The CareforKids.com.au gadget will make it easy to search for child care vacancies and find information on child care providers, including fees, testimonials and maps as well as helping to provide vital additional information to parents all over Australia.

"CareforKids.com.au was founded on the basis of making searching for child care a simple process, says Roxanne Elliott of CareforKids.com.au. Our experience with parents is that they are time poor and with such an important decision to be made about the care of their child, they require a reliable and trustworthy tool to make the first step of engaging with a child care resource.

She continued: “The new iGoogle gadget will allow parents to search for and find a possible solution for their child care needs every time they go online, taking away some of the guesswork of securing effective care for their child”.

The latest CareforKids.com.au Child Care survey results showed that although 38 per cent of parents found care within 2 months and 80 per cent were able to find the child care they wanted, 15 per cent were unable to find the right care in an acceptable time frame and 17 per cent of parents still spent over a year looking for appropriate child care. The new child care search Google Gadget should provide parents with additional help to make their child care search more convenient and accessible.

The new gadgets coincide with the rollout of an updated version of iGoogle for Australia. The main feature for this version being “canvas view” gadgets which allow users to expand a gadget to access more content allowing users to read news, play games and watch videos in full screen, all on their personalised iGoogle page.

"iGoogle has been one of our fastest growing products in the last two years, and it continues to increase in popularity, says Rohit Dhawan, Head of Products for Google Australia. Hundreds of thousands of Australians are accessing quality content from around the web directly from their iGoogle page. For local developers and content owners, this updated version of iGoogle with canvas view allows more possibilities for building rich, compelling gadgets”.

  Add our gadget to your iGoogle page.