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The 14th edition of National Family Day Care Week is underway with celebrations taking place across Australia this week!
National Family Day Care Week is an opportunity to highlight what makes family day care so special. It offers rich learning in a home environment, small group settings that support strong, genuine connections, tailored educational programs, and the flexibility that families rely on. These strengths continue to make family day care a trusted and valued option of choice for Australian families.
FDCA joined in the celebrations by hosting a Nature Play Picnic at Mukanthi Nature Play Space in South Australia on Tuesday, where we were lucky enough to be joined by Senator for South Australia, Marielle Smith. Senator Smith also shared some kind words for the sector, which can be seen on FDCA’s Facebook page.
To celebrate the week, FDCA was also given the opportunity to publish an article in the ACECQA website that explores the unique strengths of family day care. A copy of this article can be viewed on the ACECQA website.
To help shine a light on family day care during the week, we encourage everyone to share their celebrations on social media* using the hashtag #fdcweek26.
We hope everyone across the family day care sector is having and continues to have an amazing National Family Day Care Week!
*Please ensure that any images shared on social media align with your service's policies.
Courtesy of our friends at Litter Buddy, we’re giving you the chance to win one of 10 Litter Buddy packs for your family day care.
Each pack includes collector cards, activity pages with Litter Buddy missions, magnets and more!
To win, all you need to do is reply to this email with your name and address, it’s that easy!
The Tidy-Hi and Litter Buddy is a simple way to introduce children to positive community and environmental behaviours.
The Tidy-Hi is an easy first step. It encourages children and the adults with them to notice people doing good things, the helpers, the quiet champions — and respond with a wave, a smile, or a thank you. It’s a simple way to build confidence through connection.
As children grow, they will learn about more complex environmental challenges. The Tidy-Hi helps lay that foundation in a way that feels positive, age-appropriate, and easy to take part in.
Litter Buddy builds on this by creating a sense of identity. It’s not a one-off event, it’s something children and families can be part of every day. Children who cheer on others or pick up a piece of litter are Litter Buddies, and the adults around them can be part of that too.
A free digital platform is already live, offering more than 30 fun, family-based Missions, along with songs, colouring, posters, and simple guides for families and educators.
To find out more about the Tidy-Hi and Litter Buddy, click here.
Be You will be hosting a webinar, ‘Secure, responsive educator-infant relationships to support mental health’ on Thursday 21 May 2026 at 4:00pm (AEST).
Warm, responsive relationships between educators and infants play a critical role in supporting children’s mental health by fostering a sense of safety, trust and predictability in everyday experiences.
Join a conversation facilitated by Sara Richardson, with Robyn Dolby and Belinda Friezer, psychologists and co-founders of Secure Beginnings. They will share insights from their work into educators’ secure, respectful and responsive relationships with infants, and explore opportunities at the service level to support these practices.
Be You is the national mental health in education initiative delivered by Beyond Blue, in collaboration with Early Childhood Australia and Headspace. Be You supports educators and services to promote the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people from birth to 18 years. You may also wish to explore related Be You resources on infant and toddler wellbeing ahead of the session.
For more information and to register, visit Be You’s early learning events page. A recording of the webinar will be available if you are unable to attend.
Early Childhood Australia (ECA) is launching a series of free webinars focusing on safeguarding children in early childhood education and care settings. The series, titled Strengthening Child Safeguarding in Early Childhood, consists of six webinars commencing Tuesday 12th May.
Designed to support educators and service leaders navigating increasingly complex environments, the practice-based sessions extend beyond compliance requirements to encourage deep reflection, innovative practice design and stronger child safeguarding approaches.
The topics covered include:
Recordings will be available to registered participants.
For more information and to register, visit the Early Childhood Australia website.
The Australian Government Department of Education offers a range of courses through its online learning platform, Geccko.
Geccko is tailored to the early childhood education and care sector. Among the available courses is ‘Working With Children Checks’.
This course will help you understand your Working With Children Check (WWCC) obligations under Family Assistance Law. At the end of the course, you will be able to:
The course takes around 20 minutes to complete. 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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