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Child Care News for Parents & Carers
February 25, 2015
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Welcome, this week we cover the Productivity Commission's final recommendations for improving the delivery of early childhood education and care services in Australia and there is a growing need for child care for those parents whose jobs fall outside of normal business hours. In response we've launched a new search for weekend and overnight care.
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| PC final report
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| recommends simplification and nannies
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The long awaited Productivity Commission's final report on Child Care and Early Childhood Learning has been released and recommends a range of sweeping changes including simplification of the child care payment system and subsidies for in-home care providers such as nannies.
Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, released the report and said it would be a key input to the Government's new families package, due to be released later this year.
"The Inquiry was the largest review of child care since the 1990s and the Commission has done an excellent job drawing together a wide range of input from families, service providers, early childhood education professionals, businesses and other experts to identify the challenges and potential ways forward," he said.
The Early Care and Learning Subsidy (ECLS)
The report recommends the axing of the current system in favour of a single payment, the Early Care and Learning Subsidy (ECLS), which would be means and activity tested and paid directly to a family's provider of choice.
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| Weekend and overnight child care
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A new search to cater to parents who don't work 9 to 5
Only a few years ago we published an article about overnight child care starting to catch on. It was actually just the beginning of our research into the need for overnight and weekend care and how many services were providing or intending to provide it.
The demand is such that we've now added weekend and overnight child care to our search. Weekend or overnight child care will generally be provided by Family Day Care, nannies, babysitters, au pairs and In Home Care services and is useful on an ongoing or ad hoc basis for those growing numbers of parents who work outside of normal business hours.
With the increase in the way we work and greater flexibility in work hours and the need to support families who work in hospitality, emergency services, shift work and those who simply work longer hours means that many parents' jobs fall well outside of child care centre operating hours.
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