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Yesterday, Family Day Care Australia (FDCA) sent a extremely important bulletin to all service members regarding a large number of family day care providers appearing to be non-compliant with their obligation to report/”notify the Secretary” (which for all intents and purposes equates to notifying the Department) of current working with children check (WWCC) details for all registered family day care educators at their service.
If you have not yet viewed this bulletin, please click here to view.
The FDCA 2023 Excellence in Family Day Care Awards are officially open for nominations!
As Australia’s only awards program focused solely on family day care, the Excellence in Family Day Care Awards shine a light on outstanding achievement across family day care services, coordinators and educators.
It's also a chance to showcase the many and unique benefits of the nurturing, natural approach to early education and care that family day care provides to more than 85,000 Australian children.
Over its 11-year history, the awards have seen over 38,000 nominations.
By placing a nomination and spreading the word, you’ll help raise the profile of the family day care community as a whole.
If you would like to place a nomination for an educator, service or coordinator please, click here.
FDCA's highly anticipated resource, ‘Changes to Child Care Subsidy Gap Fee Payments: A Guide for Approved Family Day Care Services’, is now available.
Designed to support family day care providers as they transition to the new requirement for CCS gap fees to be paid via EFT from 1 July 2023, this resource offers broad guidance to support services in their decision making and practice.**
The content for this guide was developed in collaboration with the Department of Education as well as from insights and experiences shared by FDCA service members, obtained through a national survey and in one-to-one interviews.
Key features of our guidance resource include:·
You can access the Guide for Approved Services on our dedicated EFT Transitions Resources webpage. Also on this page are other valuable resources we have developed to assist the family day care sector, including:
As part of the development of the guidance, due to potential changes to services’ gap fee collection and educator remuneration processes (and also due to a relevant recent High Court decision), FDCA engaged expert legal advice to update our template educator contracts. As part of your service’s review and transition process to the new EFT gap fee collection model, FDCA implores you to review your educator contracts in line with the updated version to protect your service and strengthen the independent contractor model. To access the updated educator agreement template and the independent contractor guidance fact sheets, simply log in to the FDCA Member Zone and navigate to the subheading “Resources and Factsheets”.
** Please note that the content in this resource is intended to provide broad guidance only to support family day care services in their decision-making and practice. Services are encouraged to seek relevant professional and/or legal advice specific to their situation and context, as needed.
As the national peak body of family day care in Australia we recognise the vital role educational leaders play in the family day care space and understand the importance of quality leadership in the sector.
To assist educational leaders in connecting and sharing insights, we are creating a private Facebook support group for FDCA members.
As part of this process, we are calling for expressions of interest from educational leaders who would like to volunteer as group moderators, monitoring discussion within the group and ensuring group rules are upheld.
If you are interested in putting your name forward, please click here.
FDCA members are invited to attend a special end of financial year Family Day Care Tax Tips Webinar that will take place on Thursday 15 June at 6.30pm AEST.
The webinar will feature Ben Mueller, Director and Principal Accountant with FDC Tax. Ben will be discussing a number of changes for the upcoming financial year, along with general tax tips for family day care educators.
The webinar will be available to view via the following links:
FDCA members are invited to submit questions prior to the webinar for Ben to answer on the night. Those viewing the session live will also have the chance to submit questions in real-time via Facebook and YouTube comments.
If you would like to submit a question for Ben in advance, please click here.
Bella’s Footprints Foundation is a community driven, non-profit organisation dedicated to providing education and awareness surrounding the dangers of button batteries. Founded by Allison Burns in 2015 after 14 month old Isabella Rees passed away from ingesting a button battery. Isabella (Bella) was the first child in Victoria to die from a button battery ingestion and the 2nd child in Australia.
Sadly, there have been three confirmed fatalities due to button battery ingestion and each week across the country, 20 children present to emergency departments with button battery related injuries.
On June 12th 2023 they invite you to get involved in Button Battery Awareness Day, educating parents, caregivers and childhood educators so together we can ensure all schools, early childhood centres, homes and workplaces are button battery safe.
Click here to find out more about the amazing work Bella’s Footprints Foundation is doing, and access downloadable resources to help with educating those around you.
Connecting the Dots is a national nutrition service funded by the Australian Government and delivered by Karitane in partnership with the Healthy Beginnings research team, who will be delivering early childhood nutrition webinars for parents, carers, and professionals supporting families and young children.
A series of free early childhood nutrition webinars that have been developed for early childhood educators and teachers with the following webinars being streamed in June:
To find out more about other webinars available through Karitane, click here.
We are looking for educators and services to be profiled for our Grab a Cuppa series in the upcoming Spring edition of JiGSAW Magazine. If you are interested in contributing to Australia's only family day care focused magazine, please reach out to marketing@fdca.com.au
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