Celebrating Family Day Care
National Family Day Care Week 2024 runs from 6 to 12 May, and this form of early childhood education and care is definitely worth celebrating!
BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE
If you’re just starting your childcare journey, then you might not be totally au fait with family day care, but for more than 75,000 Australian children, ‘FDC’ is very familiar!
This kind of government-approved early childhood education and care happens in the educator’s home and it has a lot of upsides.
For starters, children enjoy a real home-away-from-home experience, and they also get a highly personalised educational program and the opportunity to form an incredibly tight bond with the person who’s looking after them (often for years on end).
Groups are very small, with educators caring for no more than four children under school age at any one time; and just because family day care feels intimate, this definitely doesn’t mean it’s inferior!
Family day care educators are early childhood professionals who are supported and monitored by their family day care service; and they operate under the same National Quality Framework as long day care, preschool/kindy and outside school hours care services.
This means family day care educators follow the Early Years Learning Framework when educating and caring for young children; and there are rules, regulations, assessments and ratings in place to keep standards up.
Family day care is particularly great for families who are looking for mixed aged grouping and/or flexible childcare hours.
It’s possible for educators to care for a younger child during the day and an older sibling after school, and FDC can be very helpful for parents who start work early, stay late, or even need weekend care (depending on the educator, of course).
Chief Executive Officer of Family Day Care Australia, Andrew Paterson, says, “A number of recent reports have highlighted the critical role that family day care can play for families across Australia, in particular for families needing care outside the usual 9 to 5. The flexibility and agility of family day care and its unique approach to early learning, makes it an essential part of the education and care landscape.”
It’s also very good to know that family day care is subsidised by the Australian government.
The Child Care Subsidy applies to approved family day care, which means CCS-eligible families get a helping hand with their FDC fees.
Running a family day care can also be really rewarding for educators.
Educators get to enrich children’s lives, set their own hours and skip the commute; and because an FDC is a small business, it’s personally and financially rewarding to be at the helm.
Many FDC educators also enjoy being able to care for their own child while caring for others’, and there are plenty of opportunities to be involved with the community, for example, by going along to playgroup.
All of this is worth celebrating, and National Family Day Care Week is one way to do it!
This annual event shines a light on the important role that family day care educators and services play in the lives of families, and the development and wellbeing of so many children.
Loads of family day cares around the country are hosting picnics this week (from 6 to 12 May) to celebrate all things FDC, and if you’re more at the childcare search stage than the sit-down-and-have-a-picnic stage, then it’s really easy to explore your family day care options via KindiCare.
Our App and Childcare Comparison Website have a dedicated ‘Family Day Care’ search category, and you’ll find FDC options all around Australia.
Good luck with your search, and if you’re off to a family day care picnic this week, we hope the weather is fine and the activities fun!
