Starting next month, Australia`s largest provider of childcare services will no longer charge all parents for 12 hours a day. At present, parents have to pay for 12 hours a day, no matter how long a child actually stays in a nursery.
However, as of July 2, when the federal government`s new childcare system comes into effect, Goodstart Early Learning will begin providing parents with a "short-term" program of 9 or 10 hours a day.
At present, long-day care centers charge families a fixed fee from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
But Julia Davidson (Julia Davidson), chief executive of Goodstart, said the non-profit early education agency had decided that a flat fee was not appropriate for all families. "not all families need 12 hours of care a day." She said.
The new childcare system, which will see existing child-care benefits and benefits merged into a single income-and-property-assessed subsidy, is expected to exacerbate the situation of 1/4 families.
Ms. Davidson said she hopes to ease the economic pressure on more families by offering shorter childcare options.
Federal Education Secretary Simon Birmingham (Simon Birmingham) said he wants to see more nursery service providers learn from Goodstart and offer services that suit the needs of families.
"for a long time, families have had to arrange jobs, training or studies around the services provided by their child care providers." He said。
Senator Birmingham says nearly 1 million Australian families will be better off under the new childcare system.
But he called on families to make sure they switched to the new system through MyGov by the end of the month to ensure that their benefits were not interrupted during the transition.
According to government, a family can save about $1300 a year if it uses an average of 28.5 hours of child care a week.
812000 families have moved to the new system-but three hundred and fifty thousand have yet to sign up, potentially losing benefits.
Under the new system, families with the lowest incomes would receive the highest level of subsidies, covering 85 per cent of child care costs, while those with the highest incomes would receive only 20 per cent.
Government will also assess how long couples spend working, studying, interning, looking for work or volunteering in two weeks. The longer these times go, the more government pays for child care-but the subsidy is calculated on the basis of a spouse who has less time to work and study.
If one of the parents has less than eight hours of activity, the family is not eligible for the subsidy.
But families with a gross income of less than 67000 yuan still receive a 24-hour weekly benchmark subsidy for paid child care.
