FDCA lodges Pre-Budget Submission for 2022-2023

FDCA lodges Pre-Budget Submission for 2022-2023

In response to the Australian Government’s call for submissions regarding priorities for the 2022-2023 Federal Budget, Family Day Care Australia (FDCA) lodged a submission to Treasury on behalf of our members on Friday 28 January 2022.

The pre-budget submission outlines the case for four key funding priorities that are not only pivotal in ensuring the long-term viability of the family day care sector, but also represent an appropriate and equitable allocation of funding for the sector to support sustainable growth.

What have we called on the Government to do?

In our 2022-2023 pre-budget submission, we have called on the Australian Government to:

• raise the CCS cap rate for family day care to be on par with that of the centre-based day care sector;
• apply an additional loading of 20% to the recalculated CCS fee cap for non-standard hours care;
• initiate a direct funding support program (an “Approved Service Engagement Payment”) for family day care approved services to assist in the recruitment, induction and training of new family day care educators; and
• initiate a direct funding support program (an “Educator Start-up Grant”) for new family day care educators to assist in overcoming some of the financial barriers to entry into the sector in establishing their micro-business.

What challenges do we want to address?

In our submission we drew attention to the underlying factors contributing to four significant challenges affecting the future viability of the family day care sector, namely:

• the sustained downward trend in educator and service numbers occurring since 2016;
• an inappropriate hourly CCS fee cap rate for family day care, both for standard and non-standard hours care, which directly affects the capacity of both educators and services to be appropriately remunerated;
• services’ widespread and ongoing challenges in recruiting new family day care educators and growing their service; and
• barriers to entry into the sector for new educators.

The recommended investment measures seek to address these challenges. You can read FDCA’s pre-budget submission here.

We thank you, our members, for your  input and for sharing your  views on the key priorities for the 2022-23 Federal Budget. Your feedback was invaluable in developing the content of our submission and will assist us in ongoing discussions with relevant Ministers, Shadow Ministers, Senators and MPs over the coming months.

Should you have any questions about the pre-budget submission please contact us at enquiries@fdca.com.au.‍