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FDCA has recently reviewed and updated our Independent Contractor Guidance Note Factsheets to reflect the recently introduced amendments within the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024, which takes effect on 26 August 2024.
The strengthening of the family day care contractor model is paramount in ensuring the sector’s ongoing viability. One such mechanism FDCA supports the sector in achieving this is through the provision of these resources. Currently, FDCA provides a template educator and service agreement and a suite of fact sheets on the contractor model.
FDCA engaged our Legal Services partner Wotton + Kearney to ensure our suite of contractor model resources is accurate and up to date. We have made changes to our guidance notes to incorporate the latest legislative requirements and to support your compliance efforts. There have been no changes to the Educator Agreement template since the last version released in June 2023.
Key Updates
Closing Loopholes Legislation:
Regulation of Independent Contractors:
FDCA’s previous advice on the importance of having a written contractual agreement remains in place.
However, if you are not using our template, we recommend considering its use to strengthen the independent contractor model within your service or seeking your own independent legal advice. Our templates are designed to help you maintain compliance and support the effective management of your service.
To access the updated Independent Contractor Guidance Note Factsheets or Educator Agreement Template, simply log into the FDCA Member Zone and navigate to the subheading Resources and Factsheets.
If you would like more information about these resources, contact enquiries@fdca.com.au.
National Science Week is Australia’s annual celebration of science and technology. Running each year in August, it features more than 1000 events around Australia, including those delivered by universities, schools, research institutions, libraries, museums and science centres. These events attract a wide audience from children to adults, and science amateurs to professionals. Over one million people participate in science events across the nation.
For more information on National Science Week events, visit the National Science Week website. There are also a range of DIY science resources and activity sheets available for download.
Make sure you visit the FDCA Facebook page where you can share your National Science Week activities and get some inspiration from the family day care community.
For more resources on embedding STEM and science in your practice, visit the FDCA Member Zone for courses ‘STEM in Early Childhood’ and ‘ABC Kids: Exploring science content knowledge with Imagine This’ in the Learning Hub.
The Australian Government has recently updated and enhanced its best practice resource for kindergartens, early education centres, schools, and other care services to help limit the spread of infectious disease.
This long-awaited update reflects the latest understanding of how diseases can spread in education and care environments, where close physical contact among children, educators, and staff is common. Younger children engage in behaviours such as putting objects in their mouths, and even older children are still learning about health and hygiene practices (for example, covering their mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing).
The revised guide, Staying healthy: Preventing infectious diseases in early childhood education and care services, provides simple and effective ways for education and care services to help limit the spread of infectious diseases. For more information visit the Building a Healthy Australia website.
Developed and guided by FDCA’s hard copy resource developed in 2023, Safeguarding Children: Harmful Sexual Behaviours, this interactive online module has been created in partnership with ECA and allows FDCA members to explore this very important topic at any time, via the FDCA Learning Hub.
The online module will assist educators and service staff to:
Accessible via the FDCA Learning Hub, this important and unique resource is available for FREE to all FDCA Members.
Login to your FDCA Member Zone and navigate to the FDCA Learning Hub tab to access this module.
With the Paris Olympics coming to a close and the Paralympics due to begin, make sure you check out the FDCA Facebook page where educators have shared some amazing themed activities, provocations and experiences they have prepared. Thank you to all those who have shared their activities, provocations and experiences - they are truly inspiring!
Thank you to everyone who responded to our new initiative ‘Recipes for Fun in FDCA’. The variety of themes and effort by educators to create engaging activities, resources and provocations was outstanding. We have selected this month’s winner and look forward to sharing the ‘recipe’ with you next week. To see some of the remarkable work family day care educators are doing visit the FDCA Facebook page.
Did you know that so far in 2024 our Family Day Care Locator has generated over 12,000 child care enquiries for FDCA members. That’s over 1,700 leads for FDCA members per month!
With numbers like this, ensuring your Family Day Care Locator listing is up to date is crucial if you want to attract new families to your family day care business, and with every FDCA member having access to a FREE listing there’s no excuse not to get moving.
To help you add some sparkle and polish to your listing, we’ve got some easy to understand, short video guides to set you on your way.
Managing your listing
To get your Family Day Care Locator listing standing out from the crowd, you’ll need to add a little shimmer and shine! This means adding your business name, updating your profile picture and telling your story.
To view a short video on how to manage your listing, click here.
Checking your enquiries
Once your listing is glistening, you’ll need to be ready to respond to care enquiries when they start coming in.
Click here, to see how you can access your Family Day Care Locator enquiries inbox to check, manage and respond to enquiries.
Level up your listing
Once your listing is in tip top shape, we have a range of marketing packages that can help you get your listing to the top of the pops!
There’s too many exciting features to list here, so we’ve created a quick video below that will guide you through all the benefits available across each package that can help you level up your listing!
Click here to find out how you can level up your listing.
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