Cutting Red Tape For Child Care Services

Minister for Community Services Larry Anthony today announced changes to the Child Care Benefit to cut bureaucratic red tape for child care services.

Speaking at the New South Wales Country Children’s Services Association Annual Conference in Sydney, Mr Anthony said the changes would mean improvements for services and parents.

“These changes remove unnecessary bureaucratic administration work. They should also make things much simpler for parents,” said Mr Anthony.

Mr Anthony said the four changes covered:

• Axing the complex Parent Statement form. Although it is advisable for parents to tell the service of changes to their family circumstances, child care services will no longer need to keep these details;
• Services will not necessarily have to get parents to sign attendance records for school children for before and/or after school care. If the service has other procedures to confirm attendance details that will suffice for CCB purposes. For example, services can now provide parents with a regular statement confirming sessions attended and charged;
• Parent signatures will only need to be obtained once for school age children attending vacation care, generally in the last week of the vacation period;
• Parents do not need to sign for an allowable absence if the service advises parents when an allowable absence is claimed on their behalf.

Mr Anthony stressed that the changes are for Child Care Benefit purposes only. Some state regulations or insurance provisions may have different signing requirements.

“This Government’s policies have cut child care costs by 15 per cent and made child care more affordable and accessible. We will continue to work to streamline the system and give more families easier access to child care,” Mr Anthony said.