ACA National President’s Report

ACA President’s Report

The ushering in of the New Year always brings with it hopes for stability and balance, but with the highly transmissible Omicron variant now spreading across the nation, we’re certainly off to a colourful start!

The management of positive COVID-19 cases in early learning services has now become a familiar process for many, with service providers doing a commendable job of keeping their teams of staff and families informed of the latest protocols. We hope that the Federal Government’s changes to isolation requirements for Close Contacts in our sector (with strict conditions to self-test daily for 5-7 days) have removed some of the pressure for service providers struggling with staff numbers under these conditions.

Following our ongoing engagement with the Department of Education, Skills & Employment (DESE) we were gratified by the late January announcement about additional support to our sector from the government around COVID-19 measures.

This includes more reasons to waive the gap fee, unlimited allowable absences throughout January and February 2022, exceptions to enrolments in the context of CCS absences and support for service closures via the Community Child Care Fund (CCCF) Special Circumstances grant. On another note, we were all a little surprised that the Queensland Government’s Back To School plan announcement didn’t include any guidance or policy settings for the early learning sector in 2022. We know that the recent protocols in New South Wales and Victoria, which include rapid antigen tests for staff, have strengthened the confidence of families in the safety of early learning settings. We have also submitted a detailed pre-budget submission to the Federal Government, which supports our long-held belief that the health and developmental advantages of early learning to all of Australia’s young children are now needed more than ever, and the long-term benefit back to our economy is exactly what our policy makers need to focus on. Our key recommendations include upgrading the Child Care Subsidy by extending the exemption to the activity test for the two years before school, and also reviewing the hourly cap rate, which hasn’t been increased beyond minor CPI increases since its introduction in 2018. In the COVID-19 context we’re also asking for viability support payments to cover those scenarios when services are dealing with unusually high absence rates due to isolation requirements or parental choice. We will continue monitoring the impact of COVID safety measures on our sector and feeding this information back into government. ACA is extremely proud of our work in supporting the early learning sector through the COVID-19 pandemic and we will continue to work with the Australian Government to ensure a viable sector and that all Australian families, including those who are essential workers and/or from disadvantaged and vulnerable backgrounds, can continue to access our ECEC services. With the right policy in place at the Federal and State levels, we can all ensure that every child in Australia has access to high-quality, affordable and sustainable early learning services, and therefore, every child will have the best start in life.

Paul Mondo ACA President