The Morrison Government will provide additional targeted support for thousands of child care providers impacted by extended COVID-19 lockdowns, through new fortnightly payments.
\nChild care services in Commonwealth-declared hotspots will be eligible for payments of 25 per cent of their pre-lockdown revenue. Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) services will be eligible for payments of 40 per cent.
\nThis will apply to services seven days after the hotspot is declared, where states have directed families to keep their kids at home.
\nWhere kids are still allowed to attend, the supports will kick in four weeks after the hotspot declaration.
\nThe measure is in addition to the existing Commonwealth supports, including gap fee waivers which allow Commonwealth Child Care Subsidy to continue even when children are not attending.
\nThe new payments will immediately benefit child care services in affected areas of Sydney and the ACT and OSHC services in Metropolitan Melbourne.
\nAll other services in Metropolitan Melbourne, regional Victoria and regional NSW will become eligible after seven days of lockdown, and payments will be backdated to today.
\nThe supports will also be available for services who meet the criteria in any future extended lockdowns.
\nPrime Minister Scott Morrison said the payments would immediately help around 3,600 services caring for almost 300,000 children in Greater Sydney, as well as nearly 900 OSHC services in Metropolitan Melbourne and nearly 300 services in the ACT.
\n\u201cThe child care and early education sector is critically important for Australian families and our economy, and these payments will help keep services open and staff employed,\u201d Prime Minister Morrison said.
\n\u201cThe sector has been doing an incredible job to provide essential care for Australian kids during the pandemic and we are backing them in while attendance rates are down.
\n\u201cThese payments will ensure our high quality child care and early education centres are there on the other side of these lockdowns.\u201d
\nMinister for Education and Youth Alan Tudge said the payments build on the support already being provided to the sector through the Child Care Subsidy and broader economic supports.
\n\u201cGiving families additional absence days and allowing gap fee waivers has kept many children enrolled and means services have still been able to receive the Child Care Subsidy even if kids haven\u2019t attended,\u201d Minister Tudge said.
\n\u201cImportantly the new payments are targeted to services that have seen attendance levels fall by at least 50 per cent and are conditional on centres keeping staff in work and passing on support for families.
\n\u201cThe measures will encourage services to pass on gap fee waivers to parents, meaning those keeping their kids home during lockdown won\u2019t be paying out\u2011of\u2011pocket costs when they aren\u2019t using the service.
\n\u201cThe package recognises the impact extended lockdowns are having on the sector.\u201d
\nPayments will be contingent on services:
\nStreamlined payments will be available to services in around two weeks.
\nFamilies in affected areas are not required to do anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Morrison Government will provide additional targeted support for thousands of child care providers impacted by extended COVID-19 lockdowns, through new fortnightly payments. Child care services in Commonwealth-declared hotspots will be eligible for payments of 25 per cent of their pre-lockdown revenue. Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) services will be eligible for payments of 40 … Continue reading “Targeted assistance for child care services during COVID lockdown”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}