What is family day care?

Family day care is a unique, home-based childcare service that enables children to grow and learn in a small group environment with one primary carer. Carers work with no more than five pre-school aged children and no more than seven children in total including school-aged children and their own children at any one time.

  
Children from six weeks to 12 years can attend family day care and the hours of care can be negotiated to suit the families and the carers. As well as core hours (8am – 6pm Monday to Friday), care can be arranged before and after school, in the evening, during school holidays, overnight and on weekends to accommodate shift working parents. Family day care is the most flexible formal childcare service available to families.

Carers are self-employed and work in partnership with a local family day care scheme. Staff in the scheme office provide carers with a range of services including:

• interviewing parents and referring families to carers with vacancies
  
• monitoring the standard of care and working to achieve accreditation standards
  
• administering childcare fee subsidies on behalf of parents
  
• providing support services such as playgroups, toy libraries, professional development and advice.

Schemes and carers collaborate on scheme policies, marketing and promotion and together ensure that family day care is a well known and respected childcare service in their local area.

This partnership between individual carer and scheme staff is unique to family day care and sets it apart from nannies and other home-based carers who generally work in isolation.

Family day care has been around in Australia for over 30 years. There are more than 12,000 individual carers and 340 family day care schemes in almost every suburb across the nation. New South Wales has the largest number of carers (4,000) and schemes (121).

However because family day care takes place at home, we have struggled to be as visible to the public as childcare centres are. In 2006 the national association, Family Day Care Australia, launched a national logo for family day care so that our fantastic but little known childcare service can be more easily recognised. The Family Day Care Carers’ Association of NSW is proud to co-brand with the national logo, incorporating it with our own Waratah logo on our website and publications.

Find a scheme near you

Looking for a home-based career in childcare?

If you are interested in operating a childcare business from home with resources, support and training provided through a partnership with a local scheme, then family day care may be the career you're looking for.
Family day care carers work with small groups of children and plan for each day with the individual needs and preferences of the children in mind - creating experiences that help them to grow and learn through play in a secure, family-friendly home environment. If you are energetic, reliable and capable … and enjoy the company of children, your own and others, this may be the opportunity you've been looking for.

Interested? Click here for more information