# How would you rate childcare services in Australia?



## Editor (Oct 30, 2012)

A number of members have been discussing childcare issues in Australia so we thought it would be interesting to beginning a new thread on the subject. 

How do you find child care facilities in Australia? 

Are they high quality? 

Are they readily available? 

Are they affordable? 

Do you get any kind of financial assistance from the state or your employer?

We would welcome your views and comments.


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## Dexter (May 5, 2010)

You are asking this question too early... My son is too young to go to childcare center. I want to wait until he is at least 2 years old.


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## Editor (Oct 30, 2012)

Hi Dexter

This thread should prove very useful for people in your situation as those who have used child care facilities in Australia add to the thread.

Mark


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## louiseb (Dec 22, 2012)

This thread is useful to me as i will use this info on the thread i wish to start on comparing prices from UK to Australia.


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## randomwally (Mar 18, 2013)

I don't have any personal experience with child care services but I do a lot of reading about them for my job.

mychild.gov.au is the go-to resource for child care in Australia.

Australian child care services are, overall, meant to be very good. We introduced a new National Quality Framework (NQF) for child care that improved carer:child ratios, increased training requirements for carers (all carers need to do at least one or both of these child care courses), introduced the requirement for a degree qualified early childhood teacher in care facilities for a certain number of hours each week, etc

Full details on the NQF

Demand for child care services has been increasing, while the changes introduced by the NQF, and general economic pressures, have made it more difficult to provide child care services, so it can be a challenge to find a child care place in some areas.

You can use the Find a Child Care Service tool to search for services in your local area.

That tool will also show you the price of each and many services have also been rated by the government. They are generally quite expensive, often $75+ per child, per day. Anecdotally, I've heard that the non-chain child care centres (ones run by local governments, charities, an owner operated small business etc, ie not a large company) generally rate much better and provide better care.

There is government assistance available in the form of a child care rebate, however not sure whether you can access it as a non-citizen/PR (someone else might know?)


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