Sector Insights from Family Day Care Australia

In this episode of Learn Play Thrive, host Simone Brand sits down with Andrew Paterson, CEO of Family Day Care Australia (FDCA). With over a decade of leadership at the national peak body, Andrew pulls back the curtain on the unique strengths of the family day care (FDC) model and how it serves as a high-quality pillar of the early childhood sector. We dive into FDCA’s pivotal role as a fierce advocate for quality across the sector, discussing how they represent members in national forum to shape policy and elevate the professional identity of home-based educators across the country.

The conversation examines why both families and educators are increasingly drawn to the intimacy of the FDC environment. Andrew highlights how the model fosters the deep, consistent bonds that are crucial for early development, offering a "village" approach. For professionals, Andrew explains how this path is one of the most empowering in the industry, allowing educators to run their own businesses and reclaim their pedagogical autonomy. 

Whether you’re a parent seeking a natural learning environment or an educator ready to lead your own micro-community, this episode offers essential insights and practical advice on how to find a local FDC educator or kickstart your own career through the FDCA locator.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome to Learn Play and Thrive the podcast, the ultimate early learning podcast for educators and leaders in the sector. Let's learn, play, and thrive together.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The Learn Play Thrive podcast was recorded on the land with the dark and drunk people. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians, past, present, and emerging. Hands up, hands down, clear and dark and junk.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

Hello and welcome to Learn Play Thrive the podcast, where we dive deep into the heart of early childhood education and care and the people who make it happen. I'm your host, Simone Brand, and today we're pulling back the curtain on Family Daycare Model. We're talking about the magic of the micro-community, the power of close-knit bonds, and why Family Daycare Australia is championing a return to the village approach. Today we warmly welcome Andrew Patterson, Chief Executive Officer of Family Daycare Australia, FDCA, the national peak body for family daycare. During Andrew's 10 years as CEO at Family Daycare Australia, he has overseen the evolution of the organization into one that is member driven and one that supports, represents, and promotes its members and the family daycare sector. With over 20 years of experience in the non-for-profit sector, Andrew has held the role of FDCA general manager and previously worked across a number of operational, business development and executive roles with the YMCA of New South Wales. Andrew is passionate about the non-for-profit sector and in bringing an organization's vision to life through the mission of a centric approach to strategic planning and operational management. He believes strongly in the value of place-based learning and a commitment to his role in advocate for the family daycare and its unique strengths in leveraging the natural learning environment to deliver quality outcomes for children. Welcome, Andrew, to Learn Play Thrive the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Thank you, Simone. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

It's great to have you with us and to have your time to talk about such a passionate and valued place for families to choose and select for their children and have options for the care of their children at such a young age. So family daycare is vital and high quality pillar of the provision of early childhood education and care in Australia. For our listeners who may be more familiar with the long daycare or preschool environment, though, how would you describe family daycare model the difference?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I think a lot of people would be really surprised to know that family daycare has been a central part of the early childhood education care landscape for over 40 years now. We often describe family daycare as having almost pioneered the sharing economy. It is approved by the Commonwealth government for the purposes of childcare subsidy. So, in summary, what's the same is that it operates under the same quality regulatory and safety framework as your perhaps more obvious childcare centres. The big difference is that it happens in the home of a qualified early childhood educational care professional who is generally a sole trader and is registered with an approved family daycare service. So it's a it's as you said in your introduction, it's a really micro community. It's a very intimate, small, natural home-based learning environment for children under school age with one consistent educator. But again, just comes with the, I guess, the assurances and the confidence of knowing that it operates under the regulatory framework.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

Not only following law and regulation of long decade services and preschool services, but attuned to continuity of care, which is what we spoke about earlier.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah, that's right. You know, I think one of the key features of family daycare is the continuity of care. It's a single educator that works with you know a small group of children over a long period of time. So one of the core differentiators in family daycare, and one of the key reasons people choose family daycare, is the fact that those the strength of relationships between children, families, educators, they know each other intimately and they can build those relationships over time. And it what it does is it allows educators to work very closely with families and parents in you know where their children are at, how are they progressing, and you know, what's the plan for that for their child's early education going forward.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Some of the family daycare operators that I've known are some of the most passionate and incredibly talented educators that have come through, and I see their work all the time, and it's it's their environments that they provide for the children are really they've put out provocations that you can see that are really aligning with what the children's interests are, but also the stages of where they're at. And I think that's a beautiful way to also keep siblings together and going along with the same family interests as well. Let's go back to the question of how family daycare started and the peak body organization that you work for started and began. Can you tell us the story about where it all began?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, for sure. The National Peak Body has been in operation Family Daycare Australia for uh upwards of three decades now. Ironically, it actually began here on the Central Coast. At the time, it was sort of recognised that it was important for us to have a national peak body to engage with a sort of a unified single voice to the Commonwealth government. And it was just the passion on individual that said, you know, we need to make this happen for the sector. And so the rest is history. Our organisation's grown from that point. We remain here on the coast. All of our staff here are mostly on the coast. We do have some that remote work remotely. We do spend a bit of time up and back to Canberra and across the jurisdictions. But yeah, the organisation has evolved into what is a really highly respected voice, a key opinion leader in the early childhood education care space. We sit on all of the key stakeholder engagement forums that happen, you know, over the course of designing policy programs, you know, advocating around the future of childcare. We play an important, really important role in all of that.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Family Day Care Australia is a strong advocate for quality and safety, as you mentioned across the sector. Could you pull back the curtain on Family Day Care Australia's role in the national peak body beyond just representing its members? How does FDCA actively shape the policy, standards, and professional identity in the home base ECC sector? So what kind of, I guess, advocacy roles and what do you stand for the people that are with your peak body?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yeah, absolutely. As an organization, we have three core functions. We'd like to summarise those as being represent, support, and promote the sector. The represent function is really around that advocacy work that we spoke about, representing the interests of our sector to government. And that happens both at the Commonwealth and the state and territory level, obviously being, you know, the sort of the regulatory quality and assessment processes that happen at state-government level and policies and programs and funding at the Commonwealth level. You know, formally that happens through, you know, submissions to the myriad of inquiries that go on to go back to the Productivity Commission, the ACC. More recently, you know, Senate inquiry into quality and safety was only on a satisfy witness on the public hearing just the other week. I'm doing the same thing with the Victorian government next week. They're the sort of the formal process, I guess, that we take around advocating in regulatory and policy design.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

What are some of the items that are on topic at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Well, I mean, you would no doubt be aware of the fact that the last 12 months has been a period of the most dramatic and fast-paced regulatory reform that I think we've seen in this sector ever. You know, quality and safety reform is the number one item on the agenda. I don't think there is anyone in the sector that is against making childcare a higher quality or safer for children. But what's important is that services, regardless of care type, are able to keep pace with that regulatory reform, that the regulatory reform is designed to suit the variety of care types that we have in the sector. That's a big part of our role, is that often policy and program is designed from a long daycare or centre-based lens. And, you know, the family daycare context, the model is so structurally different that often it requires adaptation of regulatory reform. So we spend a lot of our time in that space.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

I think there are some policies and procedures that come across a little bit of a blanket rule that just would not suit the dynamics of a family daycare service.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

So yeah, that I mean that's structural. I can talk to some of that. I mean, the the structural nature of the hub and spoke model, you've got a central service, which is essentially a small head office, if you like. You've got all of your educators sort of geographically dispersed in their own homes. That alone creates a very different operating environment to what you would see in a centralized long daycare environment. In addition to that, family daycare educators are generally sole traders. So there's a lot of program and policy work that's done to support the workforce, but the focus is obviously on an employment model. And so trying to get adequate adaptation of those sorts of programs so that we can provide sort of equitable support, I guess, across the sector. And then obviously there's the funding piece and you know some inequities around, for example, childcare subsidy fee cap for family daycare. We have held the position since the introduction of the CCS that family daycare should have been at least on parity with the long daycare. Just because the model is different, it doesn't mean it's any cheaper to run, nor should it be any more expensive for parents. And if we sort of fast forward to now and we look at the environment, that that landscape's changed dramatically. We've got things like the worker retention payment for staff in early childhood educational care centres without an equivalent yet for family day care. So we need to prop up the workforce. It's important that parents have choice, and choice is only possible when you've got a strong and viable sector on the whole. So each of the various care types are supported adequately.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

And in terms of assessment and rating, is it the same is it a similar process as long-day care services with all quality standards? Yep. It's the same, the meeting, not meeting, meeting, exceeding excellence.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

It's the exact same model, that's the same, fundamentally the same process, but obviously the model itself is extremely different. So when an assessment rating happens in a family daycare context, there is variation across jurisdictions, even within jurisdictions, but you know, you'll have a sample of educators who are captured in the assessment and rating process. And often, you know, we do see some variations, I think, in assessment and rating performance in some areas, some quality areas where it's, I think, in my view, more difficult to demonstrate quality in that sort of hub and spoken, that micro-educated community than it is perhaps in a long day care centre where it's far more centralized. You can have sort of senior staff and management who engage with authorised officers in the assessment and rating process. So I think that structurally it presents some challenges. And we've done a lot of work over the years with regulators to try to ensure and advocate for a system that is able to view family day care through the through an appropriate lens and not trying to view it as a mini centre, because it's not a mini centre. It's a structurally very different care type.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

What would you say are some of the key points that educators are asking for for regulatory assessment and rating?

unknown 11:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

What would you say some of the things they're asking for to say it would be great if they were looking at this?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, sure. I think that one of the things that we would like to see happen is a more consistent approach to things like notification periods. So in some cases we see that the service, you know, will be notified ahead of assessment and rating, and the educator might find out on the day, and that they don't feel really well. Sometimes they're not as well prepared or supported as they might be if they were you know in a centre-based environment where they'd had more time to prepare.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

If you look at long day care structure models, there is usually uh potentially one person or a team of people that are consistently off the floor, yeah, focused on delivering content and ensuring the paperwork side of things is up to scratch. If you're one person and you're continuously looking after these children in family daycare scenario, you can imagine the children and everywhere, the children always come first. Yeah, that's right. So the pressure of having a day's notice or finding out on the day, it would be something I assume that would, you know, obviously they're always prepared, but that it does change the dynamics of the day.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

It comes with a lot of anxiety as well. That you know, without and look, this doesn't happen all the time. It does vary from you know across jurisdictions and within. But you know, the firm and daycare educator really wanting to represent themselves and their service as best they possibly can.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

And for their families. At the same time, yeah. This is this is you know, quality care and education.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

And you know, that comes it also educators they carry quite a burden of sort of responsibility to their other educators in their service when a ratings and assessment happens. Because if you're one of the five that's sort of chosen on the day, you're really sort of representing everybody else in that service as well. So, I mean, that's just one sort of small thing that that we feel could help to better represent the sector in its ratings and assessment processes that we've come a really long way in terms of the actual performance under ratings and assessment. There's a couple of areas where there's a little bit more to do around you know, governance and leadership, for example. And again, you know, if you look at the model and the structure of the model, you know, we've got quite a few small private services that just don't have the infrastructure of a much larger service. So supporting services and educators in that space is, I think, a you know an important, important service.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

For sure. I'd like to look at this next question from two sides of the same coin.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

First, from a parent's perspective, in an era of large long daycare centres, what is it about the intimacy and the micro-community of a family daycare that is drawing families in? And on the flip side, for an educator, why is this becoming such an empowering career path for early childhood professionals?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Sure, great question. Okay, from the parent perspective, you know, we touched on it a little bit earlier when we sort of spoke about what are those things that differentiate family daycare. And, you know, it's the small group, it's the natural home learning environment, and it's the relationships. Beyond those core drivers, you have obviously things like proximity, availability, you know, the secondary sort of decision-making drivers for parents. And we've actually just done a study, we engaged in external awareness and perception study to inform some of our strategic planning work that looked at why, you know, what are the key drivers for parents choosing family daycare? And it was those top three: it was the natural home learning environment, small groups, and those relationships with between educators and families. So they're the main things. I mean, there's other sort of other things that come into play. What we see in the very small group environment, really sort of, I guess, practical things is children less exposed to sort of sickness. Anyone who's had their children in any form of childcare knows that that can be an issue in the first sort of 12 months. So that's a that's something. So I think some people just sort of philosophically like the sort of less institutionalised, you know, smaller environment. A lot of children settle better into that small home environment than they do into a much larger, sort of more intense environment. They feel less stress, I guess, settling into that sort of environment.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

So less personalities to navigate in more of a community family.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, for sure. So they're some of the key drivers, I think, on the parent and family side. And then from an educator perspective, most of our educators, and again, we do a fair bit of research and capture a fair bit of data on this, but educators coming from long daycare into family daycare, and we certainly see it going the other way as well. There is there is sort of transition back and forth between the care types, and I'll just sort of take the opportunity to say that I think that's why it's so important when we talk about workforce, is that there are not only options for parents, but there are options for educators as well. Because I'd rather see an educator move from long daycare into family daycare or even vice versa than be lost to the sector on the whole. So, what we see with what attracts educators to family daycare are things like that sense of autonomy. It's their own business. They are literally a sole trader running a small business. So what that brings is the autonomy to design their own programs, their own environment.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

They get to live out their personal philosophy.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Correct, yeah, you know, and you know, educators, like you said, most family daycare educators I know are really extremely passionate about early education and care. And what they get to sort of, as you said, live out that their own view and their own philosophies around the way in which it should be or could be done and create an environment that that aligns with that. So that sense of autonomy.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

And flexibility surrounding their day. Do they have a fair bit of flexibility in terms of their working day in regards to their families and what their needs are and what that looks like?

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, for sure. I probably actually probably should flip back to the other side of the coin. You know, the issues around flexibility, non-standard hours care. Often we see that sessions of care align more closely to family needs. Family daycare is far and away the largest provider of non-standard hours care overnight weekends. When you talk about, say, you know, emergency services, people at work, shift work, whilst that population isn't huge, family daycare takes the lion's share of that. So back to your point around flexibility is that educators certainly do have flexibility. Educators negotiate their fees, their hours with their approved family daycare service and often work very closely, you know, in step with the needs of their parents and their community.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Going to the side of, I guess, the compliance surrounding the space, so setting up a service is is quite rigorous in terms of what the legislate legislation requires you to have in place. What does that look like for an educator setting up a service of their own?

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yeah, for sure. So the family daycare educator's home needs to be assessed and approved by the approved service. So there is a whole set of regulatory requirements around, you know, child safety space, supervision, etc., that apply to an educator's home. Often it will be the case that in the early stages an educator will need to go through a process of making some modifications to the home. Fencing. Yeah, things like you know, fencing, safety glass, you know, those types of things. Um they're generally not major sort of structural changes to the home, but things that underpin child safety latches on cupboards, and there may be certain areas of the home where the educator designates to for the purposes of running their family daycare service and others where it's not. But generally that's done in collaboration with their service.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

And the benefits for the children in a family daycare setting is quite a lot in terms of when we look at the quality area physical environment, one of the key aspects is to ensure that the space is a home-like environment for the child to feel safety belonging and experiencing that. I think that would come into a lot of families' perspective on choice for family daycare.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Like a home away from home.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, and again, I think that talks to just how some of those key drivers around why families choose family daycare, it feels home-like. And you know, children, as I said, often settle better and more quickly into that home-like environment in a smaller group. And it's sort of ironic, you know, you often see a lot of the big childcare centres are trying to almost replicate that home-like environment in a you know much bigger context. So that is one of the core differentiators of the care tot.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Absolutely. So at the end of our podcast, we have three takeaway messages: one theory-based, one practical, and one inspiring. What would be your theory-based takeaway for us today?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

I guess it loops back a little bit to again to some of those key drivers, why are parents choosing family daycare and why is family daycare good for children? We know that at a recent conference of ours, we had an early childhood neuroscience expert talk a little bit about, you know, the first thousand days, you know, how vital it is to a child's development and their future. And what we know that some of the key drivers of good outcomes for children are really strong relationships with primary caregivers and environments where they can grow and thrive without excessive stress and anxiety. So if we talk theory, there's a strong theoretical underpinning for why family daycare is such a good choice for children. And relationships. Yep. Really strong relationships with the primary caregiver, that continuity of care over you know, days, weeks, months, years, building relationships with families, and that sort of small, welcoming, natural home learning environment really underpinning those two. Two factors, a low stress, low anxiety environment where a child can grow and thrive, and that really strong relationship with the primary caregiver. So that would be my sort of theoretical. That's right. Hundred weeks are moving.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

At the moment, recently been to a summit pushing forward some quality aspects for long day care services. So they were very clear on making sure that they represented a certain dynamic and knew that family day care would require their own perspective on certain items. One of the pushes was to look at that younger age group to push for better ratios in long-ter coast services, which may have the number of children quite high, and look at the ratios put placed into those services to be lowered because of that aspect, because of that, how do you care for this amount of children with only this amount of educators in that space? What does that look like for family daycare? How many can one educator care for during a day?

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah. A family daycare educator will only ever have a maximum of four children under school age. Now they may vary in their ages from to five. So the group size is relatively small already. And we do see a bit of a skew to that younger age group in terms of it being an option of choice for parents for young children. And also trying to keep the same staff with those children over a long period of time. So yeah, we start you know from a baseline of a maximum of four children under school age.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

And does so for instance in long day care the ratios are one to four, zero to two, and then two to three, one to five, and then three to five, one to ten. Does that play into it at all?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Or is it just it's no it it remains underschool age remains four children. An educator can have school-aged children before and after school care. And what we often find, and this is one again, one of the great advantages for parents, is you can have siblings at the same place at the same time. So the younger children will the underschool-aged children there during the day. The siblings perhaps could be there before and after school, they go off to school, and then caregiver, mum, dad can pick them up from the same place in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

And what does that look like in terms of flexibility for families, sorry, for educators in regards to what they can do with the children during the day? Can they take them out to the park or can they have incursions?

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Absolutely. Yeah, all sorts of things. Obviously, there are strict protocols around you know risk assessments, parent permissions, a lot of that's coordinated through the family daycare service. But once all of those things are taken care of, educators often go take their children on excursions. It could be to the park, it could be to another educator's home, and they have a sort of a little mini play group. Yep. So there's a whole range of things that educators do. A lot of educators incorporate like nature play programs into their into their program, into their daily activities, so they might visit a you know a sort of a nature play environment. So yeah, it's a lot of flexibility, but obviously it exists within a really structured, you know, regulatory and approval.

SPEAKER_03 26:35

I can imagine that would be really attractive for a passionate educator if they had a variety of items, particularly nature play pedagogy, being able to do that with the children in your care. But there also there's a lot of theory surrounding mixed age groups.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

And the ability to interact with different ages. And what would be your practical takeaway?

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Oh, look, I think letting people know how to find family daycare, you know, for parents, whether a parent or a new educator, there's certainly a whole lot of information available on our website. So fdca.com.au or just Google Family Daycare Australia. We have an educator locator that helps parents to get a sense of where educators are in their community. They can put inquiries through expressions of interest for care. One of the big things that we know is that family daycare doesn't have the visibility of your, you know, your long day center. You've got a big facility on the corner with a sign. People drive past, they know it's there. A lot of people wouldn't have a clue. That might be a family daycare educator up the road. And if we look at things like you know, the starting blocks website, for example, it will show the family daycare service, the approved head office. Now, in our case, where we live here on the coast, that office could be in Gosford, for example, but you could have an educator up the road from you in Terregal.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

And so parents don't know that. If they go to starting blocks, they'll never get that representation of just how accessible family daycare is. So you can do that on our website, come to fdca.com.au as a parent, click find childcare, and you'll get a good sense of where the educators are, and you can get some inquiries. Equally, for those looking to find out more about becoming an educator, we have a dedicated recruitment manager that works for our organization that will step anyone who's interested in becoming an early childhood educator through the process of you know initially inquiring, getting pre-qualification checks, doing a home safety assessment, and eventually to the point where they can then be referred on to a family daycare service to look at becoming an educator. So practical takeaway, fdca.com.au, and you can find out everything you need to know.

SPEAKER_03 28:41

And just on that topic, when a family does look for an educator and a service in their area, what does that process look like? How do they meet and greet and find out if they're aligned?

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Yep. So I mean if they'll come to the locator, for example, and they put an expression of interest in about education and care in their area, that inquiry will go to the educator and to the service. Often the service will take responsibility for reaching out to the parent, have a conversation with them, understand what their needs are, where they are, what days of the week, talk about availability, and then there will be an introduction to the educator. The parent will get to meet the educator, they might meet a couple of educators, depending availability, of course, but they may meet a couple of educators, and then you know it's really around you know, where do they sort of form that bond and that relationship, and that's how things move forward.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

Nice. And what does the availability look like in family daycare? I mean, I can we can only talk to the coast really or not the areas.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

I would say nationally we have a we have a supply problem, not a demand problem.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

We could you there is room for, we know from our own research that we do with family daycare services that there's probably a deficit of around about 4,000 to 5,000 educators nationally. So if services could engage another 4,000 to 5,000 educators, they'd be full tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

And so I think like a lot of areas and the and the sector more broadly that you know, workforce challenges impacting supply. And so I would say, in answer to your question, there's certainly availability out there, but anyone who's interested in becoming an educator, it's a career that it's a really rewarding career that's you know ready to go. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

And even more so if they do bushcare as well.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

So inspiring, what would be your inspiring takeaway?

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Well, actually, that's a really good lead-in to the inspiring takeaway, and it's really around what it means to be a family daycare educator. And you know, you sort of touched on a little bit, and you actually reminded me of something that I had forgotten, but family daycare educators become part of the extended family. And I can't tell you the number of times where I've seen multi-generational care. So an educator looks after a child, that child grows, becomes an adult, has children, the educator looks after their children, they go to their wedding, you know, they go to birthdays, they're an extended part of the family. So that those relationships are genuine, they're long-term. And an educator, the work that they do early on, they get to see the results of that down the track. So as an educator, it is an incredibly rewarding career. There's a lot of autonomy, you get to run your own small business, and you get to build these meaningful, lasting relationships with families. I think that for me is both from what I observe anecdotally and what I know from the evidence, some of the key drivers and the things that really inspire family daycare educators.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

I know of a family actually, and an educator who was in family daycare the sector, and this family had four children. Beautiful little family had all of the children through her family daycare, and once they hit primary school, they actually changed, they moved away, they moved into a different state. And that family comes back into New South Wales Central Coast regularly, and almost every time they will come back and meet up with that family educator, and they're still part of their life. Yeah, and still check in and see how the children are going. So that that connection there is almost it's lifelong.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Yeah, that's exactly right. We hear that all the time, and you know, we've even seen examples where over time the educator maintains those relationships, and a child that was a child in family daycare becomes an educator, you know. So it's this really lifelong sort of connection and being able to see the fruits of your labour, I think, is a really nice, really special part of it.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Just in addition, yes, in terms of, and I think we almost touched on this side of things in regards to fees, CCS and attachments to that. Um, what does that look like? Because ratio is connected to that one to four.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

What does it look like and where is the movement for government? Are they supporting that aspect of family daycare at present with in regards to the worker retention, but also the other aspects that families and can reach? What does that look like for both the family and the educator at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, sure. So fundamentally the system itself works the same. You know, a a family will have a means tested level of childcare subsidy, they'll be subsidised up to the fee cap, and if the fee is above the fee cap, you know, they pay an out-of-pocket expense. The you know, the issue for us at the moment is that fee cap is lower than the long daycare fee cap. That goes back historically to a bunch of uh sort of rationales that have since been pro sort of proved to be flawed.

SPEAKER_03 33:46

It is an interesting take because you do think that ratio is so strict. Why would the CSES be capped at a lower degree?

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Yeah. When I think there was some misnomers around you know, overheads that the overheads are lower. But I guess if you look on a really sort of surface level, you might take a sort of a simplistic view of the model and say, well, there's a big building over here and that's in somebody's home. But you know, you've got to look a little bit deeper at the fact that you've almost got a dual layer of infrastructure in the family daycare context. You have the service and you have the educator, each of whom has their own operational costs. The educator is a small business, they've got to take care of small business things, uh, superannuation, annual leave, you know, those types of issues, insurances, costs of doing business in their home. So I think it was just a, you know, in the early stage, it was a superficial look at the costs and the cost structures involved with the different care types. But look, all that being said, we are certainly working with the Commonwealth Government around the funding structures. Childcare subsidy fee caps high on the agenda, has been for a long time. The worker retention payment equivalent for family daycare is high on our agenda. That's an active conversation that's happening at the moment. The other important project that's happening at the Commonwealth Government level now across the whole sector is what's called the service delivery price project, where the Commonwealth Government has engaged an external firm to look at more closely what does it actually cost to provide quality care and the ways in which that will influence funding and fee structures into the future. So that's uh it's a big project. Interesting times. Yeah, these things take a long time to come to fruition, but you know, I think it is uh it's certainly worthwhile exercise to understand what does quality actually cost? I think that's the big question that needs to be answered.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

And Family Daycare Australia, obviously, working alongside that and moving forward the best interest of the educators. Yeah, that's right. Oh well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Really appreciate all the information. One more thing that I was thinking about when you were talking about that. What does it look like if an educator is unwell?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Yeah, that's a good question. Most services will have what's called like a sort of a flexible. Yeah, well, no, like they they have educators that can stand in the shoes of an educator if they go on holidays or they're unwell. Often that we have the service has the capability to fill unused places at another educator's home if it's just a short-term thing, or they have uh like a relief educator that stands in the shoes of an educator if they're not available on any given day.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

So if an educator was going into opening up their own operation, they're very much well supported in a community. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they have people to reach out to and it's not just them doing it on their own.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

No, they're not out there on their own. They're part of a family daycare service. That service could have anywhere up to you know 20, 50, 100 educators. So there's a network within the network, if you like.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

Sharing ideas and support. Absolutely. Well, once again, thank you so much for coming on, Andrew. Really appreciate your time and talking about this beautiful arrangement of family daycare options for families and educators as well. Really appreciate it and the work that you're doing for them.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Great. My absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your journey in early childhood education. Remember the key to fostering learning, promoting play, and empowering young minds lies with your dedication and creativity. Stay connected between episodes by following us on Instagram at learnplaythrive underscore and join the conversation on Facebook at LearnPlaythrive Australia. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, rate or review our podcast on your favourite platform. Your feedback helps us to continue to deliver content that resonates with you. And don't forget to visit us at our website at learnplaythrive.com.au for additional resources, blog posts, and professional development opportunities. Until next time, keep learning, keep playing, and keep thriving. We'll see you in the next episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast.