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FDCA’s 2025 Membership Survey is currently underway and we’re giving members that participate the chance to win 1 of 5 $200 gift cards.
The survey provides members the opportunity to help guide FDCA’s priorities and future direction.
As a member-driven organisation, your insights are vital to ensuring that our goals and initiatives continue to reflect the needs of our members and the broader family day care sector. By sharing your feedback, you’ll help shape how FDCA continues to represent, support and promote our members and the family day care sector across Australia.
Survey invitations and reminders have been sent by Survey Matters, an independent research firm, who is managing the survey on FDCA’s behalf.
If you have not received an email from Survey Matters about the survey, please check your spam/junk folders or contact marketing@fdca.com.au.
Members may be aware of the recall of a number of coloured sand products around the country due to them potentially containing asbestos.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a recall for several coloured sand products. For further information, members are encouraged to visit the ACCC website for details on the specific products and the safe removal and disposal of the products.
To visit the ACCC website, click here.
As the new year approaches, it’s a valuable time to pause and reflect on how digital practices in your family day care environment support children’s learning, safety, and wellbeing. Many educators use devices and apps to record learning, communicate updates with families, and meet service and regulatory requirements. While these tools offer efficiency and flexibility, they also require thoughtful and ethical use to uphold children’s rights to privacy, agency, and autonomy.
Digital documentation should always strengthen relationships, play, and learning. Clear policies and procedures that prioritise children’s safety and guide educators in using personal information responsibly are essential.
Key questions for reflection:
Approved providers must ensure policies and procedures address child safety and wellbeing in online environments. Tools such as the Checklist for Online Safety and Data Privacy Checklist can support services to assess risks and strengthen their digital practices.
By taking time now to reflect and refine your approach, services and educators can ensure digital documentation is intentional, meaningful, and safe, enhancing learning while keeping children’s wellbeing at the centre of practice.
From 19 January 2026, new mandatory safety standards for infant sleep products will come into effect across Australia. These standards apply to sleep products such as cots, as well as inclined non-sleep products (including bouncers, rockers and swings) purchased on or after this date.
The new requirements aim to reduce the risk of injury and help to ensure safer sleep environments for infants in care. Both approved providers and family day care educators are encouraged to review their current equipment and consider how any upcoming purchases will align with the new standards.
As part of your preparations, you may wish to refer to your safe sleep risk assessments (as required under regulation 84C). These will help you assess the safety and suitability of any sleep products in your environment, including identifying potential hazards in your sleep environment and how your practices can continue to support safe, supervised rest for all infants.
Further information, including detailed product standards is available on the Australian Government’s product safety website.
As more services complete their transition to Direct Gap Fee Collection (DGFC) ahead of the 1 January legislative requirement, many are now turning their attention to refining systems, supporting educators and strengthening processes post transition.
In the second story of our six-part DGFC series, we highlight how a large regional service, supporting many culturally and linguistically diverse educators and families, highlights clear, consistent systems and targeted educator support as key elements to success. This service strengthened their policies, provided one on one guidance to educators, and ensured everyone in the team had an understanding of payment systems and debt management processes. The post-transition refinement shows how you can build confidence, reduce concerns from families and return the focus to children’s learning and wellbeing.
The full story is available on the FDCA website.
FDCA’s DGFC resource suite includes tools to support services who are finalising their transition or refining their systems, including best practice guidance, communication tools and debt management processes, available on the FDCA website.
Additional support
If you have questions or need additional support, please contact FDCA’s Sector Support Team on 1800 658 699 or enquiries@fdca.com.au.
The Australian Government Department of Education has released information about Child Care Subsidy (CCS) payments, session reports, absences and service closures over the upcoming Christmas-New Year holiday period.
The information includes a handy table that outlines when a service that closes over the Christmas-New Year period may submit session reports and claim absences. This information is helpful for both approved service providers and family day care educators planning for the holiday period.
For more information visit the Department’s website here.
Please also note that the CCS Provider Helpdesk will close during this time. It will close at 12:30 pm AEDT on Wednesday 24 December 2025 and reopen at 9:00 am AEDT on Friday 2 January 2026.
If you need assistance while the helpdesk is closed, please refer to the resources on the Department’s Early Childhood page.
The Australian Government Department of Education is progressively adding more short courses to its online learning platform, Geccko. Geccko is tailored to the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. One of the available courses is ‘Family Assistance Law Notification Requirements’.
This course provides early childhood education and care providers who administer Child Care Subsidy (CCS) and Additional Child Care Subsidy (ACCS) with information about the requirement to keep records under Family Assistance Law.
In the course, participants will learn how to:
All Geccko courses are self-paced and can be accessed via tablet, computer, laptop or mobile phone. On completion of this course, you can download a certificate for your professional development records.
To access this course or to find out more about other free online courses provided by Geccko, you can register here.
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