13 October 2015 | General Interest
SNAICC is inviting all Aboriginal Child and Family Centres and Budget Based Funded services to participate in a survey of the impacts of the Child Care Assistance Package on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services. We’ll be asking questions about the characteristics of your service and the families using your service to determine how the changes will impact your funding, and access for your families.
We’ll use the information gathered to tell government how the changes will impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and together seek improvements to make sure the reforms are fair for our services, our kids, and our families.
To register your interest please fill out the form below with your contact details and we will be in touch soon.
Deloitte Access Economics is supporting SNAICC to design the survey and analyse the information, and together we’ll be able to share the results of the analysis with you when it’s completed later this year.
If you’re busy caring for kids and families, that’s probably all you need to know right now, so register your details in the form above and you can get back to your important work. If you want some more information about the reforms and SNAICC’s concerns, we’ve included some details below – or feel free to give us a call on 03 9489 8099.
Early Years Policy Reform
Early years learning and childcare plays an important role in the successful transition to school and overall improvements in development, education and employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The Government’s pending reforms to early learning and childcare funding may threaten the current progress being made by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early years services.
From 1 July 2017, the Government plans to introduce the Child Care Assistance Package which includes a new Child Care Subsidy and Child Care Safety Net. Despite the promises to improve access, flexibility and affordability of childcare services with the new reforms, SNAICC is concerned that the proposed frameworks could further disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
With the Additional Child Care Subsidy reducing access to services from 24 hours to 12 hours per week if families do not meet the work, training or study requirements, SNAICC is concerned that the Child Care Safety Net will provide inadequate support to lower income families, and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children will suffer from reduced access to key services.
Many invaluable services in disadvantaged areas with weak markets and high levels of unemployment could be forced to close if an inflexible, mainstream approach is introduced through the reforms. This will affect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families and communities that are most vulnerable, only widening the existing 15,000 place gap in early learning and childcare placements.
SNAICC believes that these issues need to be addressed so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families will not be excluded from the potential benefits of the Child Care Assistance Package. However, this can only be done through partnership and consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
