Close
Today, Wednesday 23 April, live at 4.00pm AEST FDCA CEO Andrew Paterson hosts a Pre-Election Forum with The Hon Dr Anne Aly MP, Minister for Early Childhood Education and Angie Bell MP, the Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education.
The forum will explore how the next Australian Government can leverage the capacity and unique strengths of the family day care sector to better meet the needs of children, families and communities across Australia.
The forum will be streamed live across all FDCA’s channels, including FDCA’s website, Facebook page and YouTube channel. Links to these channels are listed below:
Before the Pre-Election Forum, we encourage you to read FDCA’s Request for Election Policy Commitments for the Family Day Care Sector document, which outlines our key policy, program and funding reform priorities presented to Australia’s major political parties and forms the basis for our pre-election advocacy efforts.
We will be calling on the Minister and Shadow Minister to articulate their vision for family day care in the broader ECEC landscape into the future and how, if elected, their government’s policies will support this vision.
Thank you to all those who submitted questions. Due to limited time, it may not be possible to present all submitted questions during the forum. Additionally, while there may be time during the event for a live Q&A from viewers, this will be limited.
National Family Day Care Week is less than two weeks away!
National Family Day Care Week is about recognising and promoting the important role family day care educators and services play in the development and wellbeing of more than 71,000 children across Australia.
National Family Day Care Week is integral in raising the image and profile of family day care. The annual celebration generates nationwide media, highlighting the many unique benefits of family day care and positioning our sector as a high quality, flexible early childhood education and care option for Australian families.
During National Family Day Care Week educators, approved services and families are encouraged to recognise that "Every Child is a Star" and give them the opportunity to celebrate their individual star qualities. For programming ideas click here.
A range of resources are available to download from the FDCA website, by clicking here.
If you’re a Canva user, you can download new customisable National Family Day Care Week templates that you can use on social media. To access these templates, click on the links below:
Remember to share your photos on social media using the official hashtag, #fdcweek25
Yes, you can charge for a public holiday if it falls on a day you would normally provide care and your service’s policy allows it.
In this case, you would record the sessions of care as an absence and collect the gap fee from the family, as usual.
For example, if your usual business days are Tuesday - Friday, and there are public holidays on Monday and Friday that week, you are
When reporting an absence on a public holiday, it will count towards the family’s 42 allowable absences per financial year. If a family has exhausted their 42 allowable absences, they cannot claim the public holiday as an exemption and would need to pay full fees for that day.
You can read more about absences from child care on the Department of Education website.
The Family Day Care Australia national office will be closed from 5.00pm AEST Thursday 24th April and reopen at 9.00am Monday 28th April 2025 for the Anzac Day public holiday.
Should your family day care insurance require renewal during this period or if you need to purchase a new family day care insurance policy, please visit our website. If you need to make an emergency claim, details of how to do this are located on our website.
Did you know that so far in 2025 our Family Day Care Locator has generated over 4,500 child care enquiries for FDCA members!
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.
.svg)
