ACA Queensland President’s Report

Welcome to 2023. I hope you all had the opportunity to spend some quality time with your family and friends over the festive season. Time off is a great opportunity to reflect on the amazing work you do developing the young minds in your communities.

Since writing my President’s Report for the Spring edition it feels as though ACA Qld and the Committee have only been busier in advocacy and supporting members with their issues and concerns.

The committee has continued to lobby all sides of government to ensure the best outcomes for our children, to give them the best start in life.

I had the opportunity to attend the State Government’s Early Years Forum in November where the Minister for Education, Minister Grace Grace listened to the concerns of the sector and discussed the initiatives the Government were implementing. ACA Qld CEO, Paul Graham and I also had the opportunity to meet with Minister Grace to discuss, one on one, the issues concerning the sector, particularly the workforce shortages. It was pleasing to see that the Government has listened and extended the exceptional circumstances for a whole year which sees services not tied up in additional paperwork applications every 6 months.

We continue to work with Tania Porter, Deputy Director General of Early Childhood Education. ACA Qld Committee Member Brent Stokes, Paul Graham and I were invited to participate in the Workforce Forum. We even had several members attended including Anita Griffiths from Kids at the Beach, Bowen. In attendance were various Government departments and key stakeholders across the sector. All issues were put on the table including the workforce shortages and developing a 0-5 qualification with discussions on possible solutions following. We are looking forward to receiving the Department’s 5-year workforce plan that will come into effect in 2023.

Thank you to all our members who completed the many surveys that were forwarded to you in the last couple of months. The information gathered from these surveys has been vital. When speaking with Government they always go back to being able to produce facts and figures and give ‘real life’ evidence and these surveys are essential for us to continue our advocacy work with Government. Further surveys will be forwarded to you in the coming months, and we hope you can continue to support our advocacy work by completing these surveys.

ACA Qld has been actively working with the Department of Education to assist in the rollout of the Kindy for All funding for 2023. The rollout has involved working with the Department to deliver information sessions to Approved Providers regarding the funding and providing additional support through in-person meetings, telephone and email support. Thank you to Committee members Jae Fraser and Brent Stokes for delivering the information sessions in SouthEast Queensland. I have been actively meeting with members in the north of the state. We have made ourselves available to answer any of your queries or concerns and we encourage services to call the office if they have any concerns with the funding or would like to meet to discuss further.

The Committee has recently spent two days meeting to plan for 2023 and beyond. We discussed and planned ongoing advocacy work and how to continue to improve the service to our members. We had some very robust conversations about how we can meet our strategic visions and goals of our membership. Thank you to all the Committee for volunteering the time out of their own businesses to continue to develop ACA Qld.

Registrations for the 2023 Conference at The Star Gold Coast are now open. Make sure you save the date in your calendar, 16-18 June 2023 and register for the event. 2022 sold out and our numbers this year will be capped, so make sure you register by 31 March 2023 to secure your tickets.

A big thank you to the College for Australian Early Childhood Educators (CAECE) team. They went above and beyond our expectations of trainers so that our ACA Qld members who were affected by the recent closures of training organisations were still able to have their staff assisted to complete their qualification or transition over to a new Registered Training Organisation. I am very proud that as an association, we were able to support members through this disruption. It has been a very big couple of months for the College as they have also successfully worked with their students and services to help students to complete their studies under the old qualifications. I am looking forward to seeing CAECE continue to grow and provide high quality training to our members.

A massive thank you to our amazing office staff, Paul, Jen, Kaitlyn, Hayley and Ebony. They have done an amazing job and we thank them for their outstanding and tireless efforts.

As always, I must give thanks to the wonderful volunteer committee members that sit and answer all questions and concerns and give up their time to ensure the best start for all Queensland children.

Majella Fitzsimmons ACA Qld President