Family day care or family based childcare refers to providing childcare in the carer’s own home.
Award coverage for employees involved in family day care or family based childcare depends on:
- the industry their employer operates in
- the specific role and responsibilities of the employee, including whether the employee is caring for children or not.
Employees caring for children
The Miscellaneous Award covers an employee:
- working for a service providing family day care or family based childcare
- caring for children in the carers own home.
They'll be classified based on their duties and qualifications.
They’re not covered by the Children’s Services Award or the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award because there's no classification for them in these awards.
Employees not caring for children
Children’s Services Award
The Children’s Services Award covers employers in the children’s services industry. This includes family based childcare.
The Children’s Services Award covers employees who don’t provide the actual care of the children such as:
- family day care coordinators
- family day care trainee supervisors
- directors of family day care services.
Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award
The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award covers employers operating a family day care scheme for the provision of family day care services.
The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award covers employees who don’t provide the actual care of the children but who have roles such as:
- registering family day care centres
- providing administrative support for centres
- assisting centres to access child care subsidies for families.
References
Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award
Australian Industrial Relations Commission Statement - [2009] AIRCFB 865 (25 September 2009) - says that the Full Bench didn’t include family day care workers in the draft Children’s Services Award during award modernisation.
Fair Work Australia Decision - [2012] FWA 10367 (18 December 2012) - dismissed an application to include family day care workers in the Children’s Services Award.
What to do next
- Find out about Awards & agreements
- Find out more about Employment contracts
- Test your knowledge about awards and agreements with our Workplace Basics quiz
- Find out about the Award classifications
- Find out about Other workplace relations help