Intro­duc­ing the ear­ly years qual­i­ty fund — are you eli­gi­ble to receive funding?

This year the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment announced the Ear­ly Years Qual­i­ty Fund as part of its Nation­al Qual­i­ty Agen­da for ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion and care. There will be an addi­tion­al $300 mil­lion fund­ing to sup­port child­care ser­vice providers to pay a $3 per hour wage increase to Cer­tifi­cate III qual­i­fied edu­ca­tors. This offers a fan­tas­tic boost to the Child­care sec­tor and is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for child­care providers to raise the stan­dard of care pro­vid­ed with­out incur­ring busi­ness costs. To find out whether you are eli­gi­ble to receive this fund­ing, please see the Gov­ern­men­t’s defined set of eli­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria.

To access this fund­ing, wage increas­es must be includ­ed in an enter­prise agree­ment. Enter­prise agree­ments are work­place agree­ments made between employ­ers and employ­ees about the terms and con­di­tions of employ­ment. Changes made to these agree­ments must under­go an approval process with the Fair Work Commission.

At Swaab we are more than equipped to assist you with putting in place the right agree­ment to access this won­der­ful fund­ing ini­tia­tive. Employ­ment part­ner War­wick Ryan spe­cialis­es in enter­pris­es agree­ments. Because of our work in this indus­try with oth­er inde­pen­dent oper­a­tors else­where in the state we can assist you with imple­ment­ing such an agree­ment at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced fee.