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New educator recruitment is often hard, expensive and resource intensive.
It’s also consistently identified as the single biggest viability concern expressed to FDCA by our service members.
And it’s not just family day care; sector wide Australia is in the midst of a national workforce crisis, evidenced by the recent release of the ‘Shaping Our Future’ Workforce Strategy and FDCA’s latest Sector Profile.
‘Your Business, Their Future’ seeks to join forces with our service members to attract, screen and place the next generation of family day care educators.
With more educators entering the sector, we can continue to drive growth and secure the long-term viability of our industry.
That means greater workforce participation, wider recognition of family day care as a vital part of the early childhood education and care landscape, and increased availability of education and care to areas and families in need.
That’s okay! ‘Your Business, Their Future’ is designed to provide support to those services in need, by handling initial document collection and pre-referral assessments.
It’s also designed to promote family day care as a career option of choice to those who are looking for a job, or a job change, via direct and digital marketing on major job websites.
Services are absolutely free to conduct their own recruitment processes independently of ‘Your Business, Their Future’.
FDCA’s pre-referral process is not designed to replace the role of services in recruitment.
Our pre-referral process simply reduces the need for duplication in gathering evidence to assess the applicant’s fitness and propriety, and ensures that applicants have some basic prerequisites to thrive as a family day care educator.
Services will still have the freedom to conduct their own recruitment processes and decide whether or not they wish to engage the applicant.
If you wish to run your own recruitment process, we encourage you to do so!
Our aim is to increase applications into the sector overall, complement (not replace) the recruitment efforts of services, and provide you with a trusted screening process to save valuable time and administration when it comes to hiring prospective educators.
We understand that services don’t always have capacity to take on new educators.
If that’s the case, you may wish to place interested applicants on a waitlist.
For services that have reached their educator cap but are interested in taking on new educators, you may wish to make an application to your local Regulatory Authority to increase your educator cap.
If you’d like any assistance or advice on the process to increase your educator cap, feel free to reach out to FDCA.
You can also advise us if you do not wish to be recommended to applicants who have completed the pre-referral process.
The educator will make the decision, based on the local family day care services available in their area.
FDCA will provide educators with guidance on selecting a service and additional information and support.
FDCA will not choose or promote any individual service; this will be entirely the educator’s decision.
Through the ‘Your Business, Their Future’ Recruitment Program, FDCA is joining forces with our service members to attract, screen and place the next generation of family day care educators.
‘Your Business, Their Future’ is a new, full-service recruitment support program. Through our recently appointed National Recruitment Manager, the program will leverage close to 20 years of recruitment and talent acquisition expertise, along with market leading recruitment platforms and technology, to connect service members with prospective educators like never before!
When a prospective educator is ready to take the first step in their journey to a new family day care business, they can register their interest through the FDCA Careers Hub and enter the pre-referral recruitment pipeline.
From here, candidates undertake an initial screening process with our National Recruitment Manager aimed at understanding their knowledge, skills, ability and potential to become a family day care educator. Candidates will be asked to submit their relevant qualifications, checks, and complete a preliminary home suitability/safety checklist.
The final stage of the pre-referral recruitment process is for the educator to complete a short video interview.
Once the applicant is ready to be referred to a service, FDCA will supply a list of all operational service members in their area, along with guidance around selecting a service and where to find more information.
With the pre-referral process is complete, FDCA will send all the documents, checks, video interview link and resume to the service for consideration.
We know that all services have specific nuances in their educator recruitment needs and objectives, so of course, there is no obligation or expectation on any party that every referral will result in a new educator engagement. This is simply one way to attract new, quality educators to your service with additional peace of mind knowing that you’re supported by our recruitment process.
As the national peak body for family day care, we will take care of the initial process of screening and assessing a prospective educator who provides an expression of interest, including a screening interview, collecting the relevant documents needed for the role, and checking the educator is aware of the role requirements and what is involved as part of an initial assessment.
However, we understand the engaging educators involves more than just ticking boxes!
Once referred, you are free to undertake further assessment to determine whether the prospective educator is the right fit for your service.
FDCA will place all advertising and marketing under the FDCA banner and branding nationally, with the aim of increasing overall applications into the sector.
If you are looking to engage new educators and would like to be assisted by our streamlined recruitment process, feel free to reach out to FDCA at damon.somerfield@fdca.com.au.
Alternatively, if a service wishes to advertise locally under their own name, they are of course free to do so under their own process.
If an applicant applies to, or approaches a service directly, the service runs their process as normal! If your service is not recruiting at the time, you may want to refer the applicant to FDCA.
FDCA will do our best to ensure an applicant is working with one service at a time.
Please inform FDCA and advise us of the most appropriate response and desired next steps.
If the initial introduction is not successful or the service is not recruiting at that time, we encourage services to inform FDCA as soon as possible so they can inform the applicant.
Once the applicant has started the service process to become an educator, we ask the service to communicate directly with the educator as their applicant and inform FDCA of the outcome once complete.
The service with whom they are registered.
Should you have further questions not answered here please contact our National Recruitment Manager Damon Somerfield on damon.somerfield@fdca.com.au or 0499 207 801.
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