6 August 2025

Road Safety in Family Day Care: Creating Safe Habits

Promoting road safety is a key aspect of keeping children safe in family day care, particularly during arrivals, departures, and when out on local excursions.

Children often arrive and leave via residential streets and driveways. It’s important that educators establish and clearly communicate safe arrival and departure procedures. Encourage families to:

• Park safely and legally.
• Avoid blocking driveways.
• Actively supervise children at drop-off and pick-up.
• Use the kerbside door for getting in and out of vehicles.
• Keep toddlers secured in the car while removing babies.

Ongoing engagement with families through reminders, newsletters or road safety checklists can help build a shared commitment to safe travel.

Educators also play a vital role in modelling and teaching safe pedestrian behaviour. Reinforce key messages with children, including:

• Stop, look, listen, and think before crossing.
• Hold an adult’s hand.
• Cross at the safest place, such as traffic lights or pedestrian crossings.
• Recognise and talk about traffic signs.
• Keep phones and devices away near roads.

Integrating road safety into everyday activities - such as local walks or play-based learning – also helps make these lessons memorable and meaningful.

Regularly reviewing environmental and excursion risk assessments, including driveways, fencing, and visibility, can also help identify and address potential risks.

By embedding road safety into daily practice, educators can equip children with lifelong safety habits while ensuring their environment remains a safe place to learn and grow.

Kidsafe offers a number of free resources to support road safety education including:

• ‍Car and Road Safety‍
• Elmo Stays Safe‍
• Driveway Safety

Clarifying the CCS Rule on Parents/Guardians Remaining Present During Care

FDCA is aware that some clarification may be required following our recent newsletter item about when Child Care Subsidy (CCS) is not payable – particularly around the rule stating that CCS cannot be claimed when a parent or guardian remains present while care is being provided. 

To clarify, the key factor is whether the parent or guardian remains present for the entire session of care. If the parent or guardian is only partially present, CCS can still apply. 

Section 8(b)(ii) of the Child Care Subsidy Minister’s Rules 2017 states that when an individual for whom the child is an FTB child or a regular care child (including a parent of the child) remains present at the location where the care is being provided, whilst the care is taking place, there is no eligibility for that session of care. 

What This Means in Practice 

• If a parent or guardian attends a family day care educators’ premise or venue briefly (e.g. to settle or breastfeed a child, for a handover, or to participate in a short event), CCS remains payable, provided they do not stay for the full duration of the session. 

• However, if a parent remains present for the entire session (e.g. all 10 hours of a booked session), that session is not CCS eligible. Similarly, if an educator has a shorter session (e.g. a 2-hour afternoon booking) and the parent stays for the entire 2 hours, that session is not eligible for CCS.  

 We hope this provides greater clarity and supports educators and services to apply the CCS rules with confidence.

Direct Gap Fee Collection - New Resources Now Available

To assist our members in preparing for the change to Direct Gap Fee Collection (DGFC), FDCA has developed a suite of free resources accessible on our website.

Our resources are designed to support services at all stages of the transition to DGFC – whether you’re just getting started, already partway through, or already collecting the gap fee. The resources are intended to support critical reflection and can help refine your existing systems, practices, policies, and procedures.

The following resources are now live and ready to use:

• ‍Family Day Care Provider Checklist – Transitioning to DGFC
  A practical guide for services outlining key stages for planning, implementation, and evaluation.
• Business Implementation Plan – Template and Example
  A resource to help you plan, document actions, assign responsibilities, define timeframes, and track progress.
• Communications Plan – Template and Example
  ‍A framework for identifying key audiences, messaging, channels, timing, and responsibilities to support consistent communication with educators, families, and staff.‍
• Case Study: Reducing the Administrative Load
  Insights into how one service successfully streamlined its operations while transitioning to DGFC.‍
• Case Study: Getting Debt Management Right
  ‍The story of how one service approached debt management as part of DGFC implementation.‍
• Information Sheet for Families
  ‍Explains the CCS gap fee payment changes from 1 January and what they mean for families.‍
• Information Sheet for Educators
  ‍Outlines what the changes mean for family day care educators, including shifting responsibilities and how to support families during the transition.‍
• Educator and Family Communication Scripts
  ‍Ready-to-use scripts to help educators feel confident, clear, and supported in conversations with families.

The full suite of resources can be accessed here. 

Dental Health Week

August 4 - 11, 2025 is Australian Dental Health Week, focusing on the importance of children’s oral health milestones, educating parents and caregivers about what they need to do to help their kids reach every "S-milestone", from birth, through their initial teeth and beyond. 

The campaign explores key messaging, such as: 

• Brushing twice per day using a fluoride toothpaste. 
• Cleaning in between teeth daily using floss or interdental brushes. 
• Eating a nutritious diet, low in sugar. 
• Seeing your dentist regularly. 

You can find out more by clicking here.

Managing your Family Day Care Locator

Did you know that so far in 2025 our Family Day Care Locator has generated over 7,500 child care enquiries for FDCA members!

With numbers like this, ensuring your Family Day Care Locator listing is up to date is crucial if you want to attract new families to your family day care business, and with every FDCA member having access to a FREE listing there’s no excuse not to get moving.

To help you add some sparkle and polish to your listing, we’ve got some easy to understand, short video guides to set you on your way.

Managing your listing

To get your Family Day Care Locator listing standing out from the crowd, you’ll need to add a little shimmer and shine! This means adding your business name, updating your profile picture and telling your story.

To view a short video on how to manage your listing, click here.

Checking your enquiries

Once your listing is glistening, you’ll need to be ready to respond to care enquiries when they start coming in.

Click here to see how you can access your Family Day Care Locator enquiries inbox to check, manage and respond to enquiries.

Level up your listing

Once your listing is in tip top shape, we have a range of marketing packages that can help you get your listing to the top of the pops!

There’s too many exciting features to list here, so we’ve created a quick video below that will guide you through all the benefits available across each package that can help you level up your listing!

‍Click here to find out how you can level up your listing.