EP89: Thinking About Family Day Care? Everything I Wish Educators Knew Before Making the Leap
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Hello, and welcome to this week's podcast episode. I am thrilled to be able to record this episode. It has been on my list of episodes to record for quite a while, uh, but I just haven't got [00:01:00] around to it until now, and I thought what better time than now to record this topic, which is you're an educator and you are wanting to look at joining family daycare, but you don't know where to start, you don't know what to do, you don't know the ins and outs.
Well, my friend, buckle up, take some notes. I am going to help you with that question today. So firstly, what family daycare is and what family daycare isn't is a really great question because I'm hoping that we'll see a lot of educators come over from long daycare where they're maybe feeling burnt out, unfulfilled, they're just not feeling like they're fitting in with the team.
They can't provide for the children what they know in their hearts the children need. Guess what? You get to do that in family daycare, and it is so rewarding, but there are some massive myths out there. [00:02:00] So firstly, I wanna touch on the fact that family daycare is a legitimate, regulated, professional early childhood setting.
It is not babysitting. You have to operate under the same framework, and we'll talk about that in a few points' time. You are a self-employed registered educator operating under a service approval. So my service is Rainbow Bridge Family Day Care, and we operate across both Queensland and New South Wales.
We are capped with the amount of educators we can have in our service, as are all services. Once you get to a point, you can apply to have more, uh, educators in your team. That's not something I'm interested in. Uh, I just feel like when you start getting over 100 people in your service, it's really, really difficult to maintain those, uh, required connections.
Uh, that becomes a really [00:03:00] big logistical job and, uh, I think you have to have some serious HR and business structures within the, um, service. So when I'm talking service or scheme, they're the same thing. Those words are a bit interchangeable You have to have really, really incredible systems in the service so that you can manage and monitor that amount of people because there are so many moving parts to running a family daycare service, and you can't muck around with compliance now in this particular climate.
Uh, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, it was a whole lot different and educators were earning $2 an hour per child. Uh, it's a very different kettle of fish, and, uh, it's a different climate and landscape right now. So, um, yeah, y- you have to operate with the service, uh, or underneath the service. You still must deliver an EYLF-based program, uh, in your own home to [00:04:00] a small group of children.
So for center-based educators, I actually want you to look at this as a career move and not a step down. I feel like family daycare education gets a bit of a negative rap when I've worked in all aspects of early childhood education, never again will I go back to working in a long daycare setting, um, now that I've tasted the, the grass on this side of the fence, and my friends, it's way, way, way greener.
Let me just tell you that quietly for free . Uh, it's, it's for me, working in family daycare as an educator was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in early childhood education because I got to develop my programs specifically for those children, and I'm working with four children a day. I'm not working with 24 children a day or, or 12 toddlers a day.
That is just bonkers. Um, you know, e- so [00:05:00] you're working with four children, and we get the opportunity to have multi ages through family daycare, which is so beneficial for the children and for you as an educator as well because it gives you a lot of variety. It's not always easy, but working in a long daycare set- setting is not always easy either.
So at least you get to be in your home, you get to do the things you need to do in your home, and you get to run the program that you, the educator, know is best for the children in your care. You don't get to do that in a long daycare setting. You've got to work in with other people, and they may have different perspectives and different pedagogy and all that kind of stuff.
So working in family daycare on your own means that you have so much more autonomy over what you do and how you do it So the intimacy of family daycare is actually a feature and it's not a limitation. And I think that's really worth noting [00:06:00] because it's so fulfilling. Like, it just ticked so many boxes for me and, and filled my cup on so many different occasions.
I'm, I'm not gonna lie, there were days that was really tr- challenging. Uh, and I, I remember having to cease care with a little fellow because he just wasn't settling in, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and it just wasn't working. And so that was a really hard process to, uh, come at, but I, I had a lot of support in my team.
Um, I was the AP at the same time, but I had a really fantastic coordinator working with me who helped me through that process of what should I do, what should I say, how should I word this, how does that look, I feel like I'm giving up, blah, blah, blah. And they were able to just go through all of those things with me, uh, and, and help me realize that some children are just not ready for care yet, and some children you just don't gel with, and they don't gel with you, and that's [00:07:00] okay.
It's not personal. The thing with family daycare is you really get to work through that, whereas in a long daycare setting, pardon me. Oh, excuse me. In a long daycare setting, children Can get lost. They can fly under the radar, uh, or they can take over all of your energy and all of the, um, the, the air in the room sometimes, and that can be really, really challenging.
So it's a lot... I found it a lot easier to balance in family day care, and the trick is to getting your interview questions really down pat and really asking a lot of questions in that process of interviewing families. Um, so the regulatory framework, who's actually in charge? So family day care operates under the Education and Care Services National Law and National Quality Frameworks, and we operate under the same regulations [00:08:00] as long day care.
If you've ever looked at the regulations, you'll sometimes see that there are specific things, uh, for family day care written into the regs, which is really great to see. Um, so the service, uh, or the scheme holds the provider approval, and you operate under their umbrella. So for example, and I can speak to my own service, and I will say this, that every service is different.
Every service is different. It's like walking into a classroom and knowing that all children are different. Yes, there may be some similarities. They may have shared, uh, values, um, family values. They may have shared interests, but they're all individual, and that is the same with service providers as well.
In fact, I put a poll up in, uh, my stories today asking for feedback on what educators wish they knew when they started their service, and some of the feedback came back that you can also interview services the same as they are [00:09:00] interviewing you, so make sure you shop around. Uh, I highly recommend doing that, uh, because I haven't taken on every educator that has requested to join our service because they, they haven't met my standards.
Uh, so... And that's not to say that my standards are sky high. My standards are not sky high. My standards are fair and equitable, but they require you to be engaged in your business And we'll talk a little bit more about that, uh, further down in my points to talk about that I've written for you. Um, so the service holds the provider approval.
In my business, that's me, and I have the service approval for both Queensland and New South Wales, and the CCS approvals. Uh, and I am responsible for writing all of the policies and procedures that happen within my business. Now, ACECQA sets up the national standards, so they are the national or the federal body, so to [00:10:00] speak, and, uh, then you have specific state or territory regulatory authority to oversee compliance in each individual state.
And just to make that even more fun, they're all different. So you can't operate in, uh, WA, you can't be a new educator if you have a pool, for example. Um, there's other things that I can't think of off the top of my head, uh, right now, but there are differences in each state, so you need to be aware of how to, um, look at those differences yourself.
Please don't ever get on the Facebook pages and, and ask a really vague question about something that's completely related to compliance, because what will happen is you'll get 500 people responding to you based on the knowledge that they have of their state, and it's not clear that it's different in, uh, across different jurisdictions.
So it's really important that you, uh, ask those questions to your service provider, [00:11:00] because you have to operate under their policies. So if you get all this feedback from other people, uh, quite often it's incorrect . It doesn't take into consideration the law or the regulations, and often it's in contravention to th- your current service's policies.
So you might go and do something based on feedback that you got on a Facebook group and actually put yourself in trouble. So you always want to avoid that and just understand when you're a family daycare educator, you are in charge of running that business, and you have to follow under the umbrella of the service that you are registered with, which means you follow their policies and their procedures.
So it's up to you to make sure you un- you know how to read the regs, you know how to look for the law and CCS compliance and things like that, because it's not just up to your service to provide that information. You are a sole trader, a [00:12:00] contractor- And it's up to you to understand and know how to find that information for yourself.
So knowing this structure protects you, and it helps you to ask the right questions from day one. Okay, so your home is your workplace. What needs to change? That is quite often the biggest thing. Yes, you can operate from a rental premises. You just have to have permission from the landlord because sometimes it impacts their insurance, and one way that you can get around that is to offer to pay the difference from what they're paying currently to what they would need to pay to allow you to run family daycare from there.
I highly recommend that you, uh, consult with a service because sometimes they have information that they can provide to you to provide to a landlord so that it, uh, comes from a professional background, and their-- it might answer a lot of their questions. So , pardon me. Under Regulation 103, your [00:13:00] environment must be safe, clean, and suitable for education and care.
So when you're-- when I'm looking at a premises, I am not-- like, we're mandated now to look at every room of the house. We have to look at sheds on the property, and we have to assess the suitability and the safety, and we have to be looking at, yes, that may be outside of the pr- approved environment, but what are the chances of the children getting out and getting access to near that shed that's got cans of petrol and fireworks and I don't know, cages and cages of wild animals in there.
I don't know what you're doing on your farm, but hey, each to their own. But as an approved provider, it's my responsibility to ensure that I am taking into account all kinds of risks. So for me, in that instance, if that was an open shed and you were not willing to, uh, move that stuff, my recommendation would be making the shed inaccessible [00:14:00] to the children.
So putting some doors on it that you could lock. That would be mitigating that risk, that if the children got out, they couldn't get access to the fireworks, which then exploded into the cans of petrol and caused an explosion, right? So this is what we've got to look at. We've also got to look at all the rooms in the house to make sure that there's nothing nefarious going on there.
Um, there were some cases where drug, um, paraphernalia had been found in houses where children were, uh, being cared for. So this is a m- major concern, and so approved providers are now mandated to ensure that the entire premises, whilst it may not be approved for care, it's safe enough, and we've got risk management in place to prevent children from getting into those spaces.
So a thorough risk assessment is going to be your best friend for both the indoor and the outdoor spaces. Um, it's totally required, and it's going to get you thinking from perhaps a [00:15:00] different perspective to what you do when you're in your home. There is such a thing called domestic blindness, and that's where you don't see things because you see them every day.
It just doesn't register for you any longer. This is where it's really important that you have a service that comes regularly to look at your environment and to provide feedback and guidance around, uh, things that may be questionable in terms of compliance. So you do-- you are required to have hazardous materials and medications stored safely and out of reach of children.
That relates to Regulation 88 to 90 Regulations 88 to 90, I should say. Uh, because if, if things go wrong, they go drastically wrong, and they can go wrong in long daycare settings too, but you're in a home, you may have your own children or your partner who don't treat closing the locks on cupboards as pedantically as you might because it's just not their, it's not their job.
It's not their, in their [00:16:00] reality. They're just in their home, and "I don't have to remember to do all that stuff in my home," can be their mentality. So as a family daycare educator, we need to do that kind of risk assessment that makes sure that whenever you open your doors, before you have opened your doors, you've completed a safety checklist.
So a good quality service will provide this information for you and provide you training and, uh, and help you understand why this is so vitally important. Um, and yes, I'm recording. I just had a sudden panic that I wasn't recording. Trust me, I've done that before Recorded an entire episode and I wasn't recording it.
Okay, so safe, safe sleeping arrangements must meet regulatory requirements, that's Regulation 168. You have the same requirements in a long day care setting. Uh, quite often a family day care educator will set up their sleep space in their play space, or sometimes they may have a separate sleep room. That again can be up [00:17:00] to your approved provider because the safe sleep stuff that we meet and the, the compliance that we meet around that, um, some services will take a different perspective on that and require you to have a specific designated zone, uh, where you stay there with the children the whole time.
W- Like, whatever, not everybody does. Um, a lot of educators will sleep the children in the indoor play space. Sometimes in beautiful weather they'll sleep outside as well. Uh, so there's, there's, uh, rules and things in place, compliance around that which you have in long day care anyway as well, so it's quite helpful to know that these same things apply in a family day care setting.
You also are required to have, uh, up to date all the time first aid qualifications, and a compliant first aid kit must also be in place. So a good quality service again will give you a list of the things that they want you to have in their, in your first aid kit, and they will remind you that you need to check that every so often, uh, [00:18:00] because sometimes what can happen is that things go out of date.
Like, who knew Band-Aids would expire? But why a Band-Aid expires is because the stickiness of it becomes less, and when you've got a Band-Aid that doesn't really stick, it's prone to being able to fall off, and children will then have open wounds, leaning all over everything. So these are the reasons why we need to have these things checked quite consistently and regularly.
Most homes don't need a renovation either, um, but they do need an honest and thorough assessment. So this is where it's really important that you meet with a service that aligns with your values, because some services, uh ... And, and it can be because there's been an incident in the past in their, um, in, in their business, in their service, and so as a result there's certain policies and procedures that are in place and, and you must meet those.
So if one of those might be a deal breaker, perhaps you have acreage and you want to take the children out exploring, and the [00:19:00] service you're looking at is saying hard no to that, you stay in the fenced area, well, that's- That's going to pose issues right from the very beginning, and ongoing issues too because you're going to be frustrated because you can't run the kind of program that you want to run.
Uh, and if they're not allowing you that freedom, then that's not a good mix. So you really need to find services that are going to have similar values to you and work professionally with you to, um, get those, you know, across the line so that everybody's on the same page. So things that absolutely need to be done.
Uh, you need to, if you have an outdoor area, you need to have a fenced area so that if you ... And it doesn't have to be attached to the house, it could be separate, it could be part of a veranda, it could be an undercover area that you fence off. It could be that you block off half of your backyard because that makes it simple so that, you know, your own children have space or [00:20:00] you might have animals, they can be in that space whilst you are providing family daycare.
Um, it, sometimes educators will do that because it means then they feel like they have space that's not directly affected by work. Other people have their whole entire yard, um, available for their family daycare. Uh, so you definitely need a fenced area if you have an outdoor space. Some educators, if they're in inner city, run from a unit and they don't have access to an outdoor space.
And so in order to do that, you would do an excursion to a park or maybe the unit complex you have has a lovely grassed area that you can access and you and the children can go and explore through there There's a variety of ways of meeting that requirement. There is no space requirement though. So in long day care you must have X amount of space per child, both indoors and outdoors.
That doesn't apply in a family day care setting. You can operate from a one-bedroom [00:21:00] unit if you wanted to, uh, which was 10 stories up, and then you might have an incredible excursion program because you're in the city. You can go on the RiverCat, you could go on bus excursions, you could go walking to your, uh, myriad of local parks that are around you.
Just because you're operating from an apartment does not mean that the children are not going to get this wonderful experience of getting out and about amongst the community and being able to play. Yes, that would be more difficult, but it's absolutely not impossible. Um, the other thing you need to consider is glass.
So your glass needs to either be safety glass already or you have a safety film attached to it. Now, our particular service only accepts professionally applied safety film because there are differences in the film quality that you need to use depending on, [00:22:00] for example, if, uh, the window gets all day sun on it.
So if that window gets all day sun, that is going to over time, uh, reduce the ef- efficacy of that, um, uh, what's the stuff we're talking about? Oh my goodness, my brain just switched off like pling, a light went off. Um, the film, so that safety film, and you'll, you've probably seen it before where you see it in cars where it bubbles.
So when it's bubbled, that means it's no longer compliant. So safety film will prevent the glass from m- Breaking into big shards and it will, um, hold it all together so that, you know, if, if a ball goes through it and someone's running after the ball, uh, they're, they're not going to get, um, you know, a, a, a, a, a terrible injury, um, to their neck because of big shards of glass.
So that's, uh, a really big thing and something that, uh, a lot of family daycare educators end up having to [00:23:00] do, uh, if they're in an older style home. Most modern homes or all modern homes are built with safety glass, um, in them. So you just need to look to see if there's a little sticker on the bottom that says it meets the Australian standards.
If so, then happy days, you don't have to do anything for that. Um, if you are renting, uh, most landlords have no issues whatsoever about you putting on a safety film because it's not even visible once it's on. You can't even tell. So, um, what else? There might be locks that you may need to put on certain cupboards.
You may need to put some gates up to prevent children accessing spaces. You can put, um, the little handles that go over door handles so that the children can't turn them to access spaces. Basically, you're toddler-proofing your house when you're coming to family daycare, and that would meet the requirement.
And again, every service is different. Some services won't allow children to have access to a kitchen, for example. [00:24:00] However, in saying that, in my house, the children had to walk through my kitchen to get into my playroom, so that was not never an option for me. So I had to have locks on my cupboards and put my knives up high and things like that.
Um, you also need blank screens in all of your unused power points. That's to prevent children putting knives and forks in them and electrocuting themselves. So again, it's coming down to that idea around toddler-proofing your home, TVs being, you know, uh, anchored to the wall, any kind of, uh, bookshelf or something that could potentially be used as a ladder and then tip over needs to be anchored to the wall.
Um, just basic stuff really, but a service should have a checklist that they go through room by room to assist you. Blinds and curtains, you can't have choking hazards on those, so any, um, blind material, uh, like the, the pull chains and things like that need to be [00:25:00] connected to the wall so they can never become a choking hazard.
Um, so it's things like that, and it's pretty straightforward and pretty standard, but a really good service will give you supreme guidance around that so that they can ensure they're me- that you're meeting compliance and that your environment is meeting their values that they have. Uh, so approved provider versus a coordinator versus a registered educator.
You need to know this structure So the service or scheme, the coordination unit, holds the provider approval under the national law. So they are answerable to the government. Now you are answerable too if you do something and a parent, uh, complains or an injury or an incident happens and you, uh, need to go through, you need to do a report to the department, you might need to do an NIO 1, a notification, uh, incident of an
Sorry, the notification of an incident to the [00:26:00] department, then, uh, y- your service provider does that on your behalf, and then they get grilled by the government. It's great. It's so much fun, uh, because we have told you not to do that, and then that happened, and then there's an investigation that happens.
We could have all the policies in the world in place, but you are a human, my friend, and you may do human things, which is do something without thinking, which then has negative consequences usually for the poor person in the office who is the person that's responsible for ensuring that, uh, educators follow policies and procedures.
And this is why it's really important that you shop around and you speak to services who are going to be committed to telling you how they meet com- they meet compliance, and how they manage and handle things when things go wrong. These are really important questions. Uh, and a good service will be really open with that.
I've had many instances that [00:27:00] I have shared with, uh, my team and with educators moving into my service, uh, and that explain why we do things. Um, so Please listen to them. They have these things in place for a reason, and you need to decide whether you can comply with that or not. So your coordination unit is, they're basically middle, middle managers.
Um, they're in between you and the government. So you're a registered educator working under the service. You are not an employee in most cases. There may be some services that employ educators, uh, but it's not very, very often. So this means you're self-employed, which means that, um, has real implications on your tax, super and insurance, which means you are responsible for those.
So you need to make sure that you have set your fee at a, at a fee that's fair and equitable to you, that you're not working for below minimum wage, uh, that you are covering the [00:28:00] costs of professional development. You are covering the costs of super, tax, uh, and other, like, insurances and things that you are responsible for.
Now, some of the feedback that I got to my poll today too, was to, um, know that you don't need to have the most expensive stuff in order to set up a really high quality family day care service. It's absolutely not essential to go and spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every year. In fact, I advocate against that purely because you, my friend, do not need to spend $10,000 in resources for your family day care ever Ever.
I'm just gonna let that land. Go back and listen to last week's podcast, uh, with the beautiful Shannon from Ledger Management, where we talked a little bit about having resources and a budget for your resource, because it's far more beneficial for you to maybe [00:29:00] spend $2,000 on resources and put that other 8 to $9,000 on your super.
The families you're caring for now are not going to be around when you're 70 and 80, and having to choose between turning the lights on or off in your home or putting food on the table because by the time we get to retirement age, there's probably not gonna be a pension for us, and you have to be self-sufficient.
If you're spending tens of thousands of dollars on buying resources to justify your job as a family daycare educator, you are completely missing the mark, my friend. Now, no one's probably coming out and saying that, or maybe they're saying it far more eloquently, eloquently than me, but my friends, I don't have the time.
You have to get real with this process and understand that you're a small business owner and you are responsible for your super. Women are always behind because they stay and have their own children and they, they stay at home for their own children and they [00:30:00] lose all of that super. They use, lose years and years and years worth of super, and you never get that back, right?
So you've got to be really clever about this and utilize the processes that are available to you where you can top up your super from previous years as well. I would much rather see family daycare educators putting their money into their super than buying thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of resources.
It's absolutely not needed It's absolutely not. So, I, I just get on my high horse about that, and I'm sorry. Well, no, I'm not sorry. I'm gonna keep banging on about that. So if you don't like listening to that, please stop commenting that you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on the Facebook pages on your resources because it grinds my gears, unless you're an educator that's also putting away the maximum amount for super, and annual leave, and sick leave, and all that kind of stuff.
So anyway, [00:31:00] understanding this structure from the beginning helps to avoid confusion, and it protects you because it will help you to ask the right questions. So you have ACECQA, then you have each state and territory has their own reg authority, uh, and then you have your approved provider. Then you will have...
And it may be that they're the coordinator as well, but then you have coordinators. So the approved provider is ov- responsible for the overall running of the entire service and what happens within it. They may have staff members, which might be admin people and, uh, coordinators who go and visit the educators, and those coordinators ensure compliance while they're on the ground, meaning that they will look at your house and en- ensure that things are where they need to be, or things are not where they are, and help you through that process.
And then there is you, who delivers the care itself to the families. So understanding that structure is really important. Uh, it's the foundation that everything else [00:32:00] for family day care is built upon. So choosing the right service, questions you must ask: How often will I receive educator visits, and what do they look like?
Your service should be visiting you regularly. Now, some educators will be like, "I wish they would only come once every three months, it's such a distraction," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But let me tell you friend, uh, anybody that has gone into that kind of, uh, mindset will probably not last too long in family day care because it gets, like, boring.
You're in a silo. Some people will really enjoy that, but guess what? You've just gotta suck up those monthly visits because it's really important for that service to be able to demonstrate to the department how they're supporting you. And now, unfortunately, the difference between a good service and a bad service is that a good service will come and do that visit.
They'll engage you in that visit. They'll include you in that process. They'll let you know what's coming. You... They must do [00:33:00] announced and unannounced visits. You cannot get away from that. It's legislated. It's written in the regulations. Please don't ask your service, "Only come at this time on this day."
Absolutely not. We need to be able to look at your program in its entirety across all times of days and times of the day as well, and all days of the week. Because your- Your ability to provide a program is going to be very dependent upon the cohort of children that you have in. So if we always visited at 9:00 AM on a Tuesday, we're always seeing the same children at the same point of the day.
We need to visit across all days of the week that you operate and across all hours. And sometimes that will be at rest time, and it's unavoidable because you have a coordinator who may be responsible for 25 other educators, and she has to get through that list of visiting educators, plus she's got an enormous amount of admin work that she needs to complete [00:34:00] as well So you may get the occasional visit at a rest time.
If a service is visiting you at the same time every day, the same day, absolutely ask them to come on another day at another time. Uh, but please don't get annoyed if they visit you at lunchtime or rest time. You just have to work with that because we don't get to, um, to choose that. It- we, we are mandated to look at all parts of your program.
So that's a really important question to ask and to understand, what insurance does service, um, does the service provide, and what am I responsible for for myself? So some services are mandated in certain states to have work cover insurance for their educators, some are not. So it's dependent upon what state you're in, and your service should be telling you that, uh, and i- if, if it's required or not required.
If they're not having that conversation with you, you can pretty well guess that it's not [00:35:00] required. However, if they are having that conversation with you, then they're telling you that that's what they've got to provide for you. But you are responsible for your own public liability insurance. There are several places you can get that.
You can get that from Amalia does that insurance. There's Nanny Share I think does family daycare insurance. Family Day Care Australia does family day care insurance. There's several options available out there. You don't just have to go with the one that everybody else is going with. Um, it may not suit your needs.
Uh, how is the-- Sorry, what software or platform do you use for documentation and family communication? Um, so I think there's several, uh, that, uh, third pa- third party providers, um, that you can choose to use in family day care. And it's not you choosing, it's your service choosing. So our service uses Hubworks.
We were with another service provider. We didn't like it. Uh, we moved from them because they were supposed to be going online, and they took forever for that to [00:36:00] happen. And so we just moved across to another service, to Hubworks, which we love. It's anyone that's come from other services have all come to Hubworks, including the families, and said, "Oh, this is so much easier, so much better.
The interface is really good to look at." And this isn't a plug for Hubworks, by the way. Um, I've had my issues with them in the past as well. Um, but w- that's who we use. So you have to use that same provider, um, third party software provider that your service uses, um, because they are linked in. They have their CCS linked into that, so you must link into that as well because it's all connected.
I'm not even gonna go into all of the PRODA stuff, um, because that's just a f- Freaking nightmare, and you don't need to know that, and I will save you boring you to death from that. Okay, so how is childcare subsidy processed and when do I actually get paid? Now, that's going to be extremely dependent on your service.
[00:37:00] Some services will submit weekly, others will submit fortnightly. So we in Rainbow Bridge will submit fortnightly, but we pay weekly. So week one of the pay cycle, we will pay you the CCS minus your educator levy, and week two of the pay cycle we will pay you the family gap fee. Uh, but you only have to submit attendances once a fortnight.
So each service is going to be different, so it's really clear that you... It's, it's a really good idea that you ask that question and get clarity around that so that you know. Another good question is: how do you deal with families that are late with their payments? So, uh, it's only been a recent change into family daycare that service providers are actually now required to collect the gap fee from the families and to pay educators that.
Previously, educators could collect the gap fee, but there had been instances where only f- um, the CCS was getting charged and there was no gap fee getting collected, and that's illegal in terms of the CCS [00:38:00] law. So now it's moved to all services are responsible for collecting the gap fee. So it's really important that you ask, uh, your service how they manage, uh, late payments from families, because that's your bread and butter.
You can't have 10 of your 12 families be four weeks behind in paying their fees. Like, how are you going to survive? It's just not gonna work. So this is a really important question, and you need to be okay with what that service says, how they manage it. Um, so and that's different for every service because it's, again, it's based on the experience that they've had and how they operate and their policies and procedures.
So another great question to ask is what support is available for programming, planning, and professional development? If you're a Rainbow Bridge educator, you get access to everything that I do in Big-Hearted Education, all the master classes, the Q&A sessions, all of the courses that I do. You actually also get paid for, uh, attendance to our [00:39:00] confer- well, not paid for, but we cover the tickets, the cost of your conference.
Uh, you just need to get your accommodation if you're traveling down, and you also need to maybe pay for your breakfast and dinner. We cover morning tea, afternoon tea, and lunch on th- at those events. So, um, that's what we do in our service. Plus, you're always able to email us, to ring us, um, to send us a text message, to messenger message us.
Um, there's a variety of ways you can contact us in the office, uh, and we really pride ourselves on communication, so getting straight back to you as soon as we humanly possibly can. Sometimes we might be on the road and visiting educators, and so, you know, you might ring, and we'll answer and say, "Is this an emergency?"
And if you say no, then my response to that is, "Great. Can you please send me a text when I get into the car? I'll respond to you when I finish this visit." Of course, if it is an emergency, I will drop everything and deal with that right then and there and help you. [00:40:00] So, uh, not all services are equal when it comes to communication, and I've had a number of educators come to our service over the, you know, course of our business and have said that they've come from a service where they've waited weeks and weeks and weeks for a response to an email.
In my opinion, and it's just my opinion, that's not good enough That service absolutely needs to look at its communication. You can't have educators who are sole operators asking questions that take weeks to get answers to. Not on. Educators need answers straight away, preferably that day, if not the next day, uh, so that they can get on and do what they need to do.
So that would be another really important question to ask. I would also ask what the ratio of coordinators to educators. Will I actually get support when I need it? So when a service first starts, they are capped to having one coordinator to every 15 educators for the first 12 months, then that can move to [00:41:00] one coordinator to every 25 educators.
Now, how their service sets that up is different. It's gonna be different across the board for each service dependent on what their systems are and how they run things. So I don't like to swap coordinators a lot with educators. I know there's some services that will send a different coordinator, um, on a different month depending on what's happening in the office.
I kinda wonder how that works for, um, educators though, because it's, it's hard to have someone come into your home. Like, and, and this is where I think some s- sometimes services may forget that you're actually walking into someone's home. You're walking into their safe space, and so you really wanna have the utmost, uh, respect for educators and their home and their family when you're going in and doing visits.
And sometimes it can be a little bit Fraught might be too big of a word, but it can be fraught with, [00:42:00] um, frustration in, with different family members if they resent the family daycare happening, uh, and that kind of thing. It can make it a little bit difficult. So it's really important that you get a rapport with your coordinator so that they can also get a rapport with your own family and make sure that they're able to offer you the best support that they possibly can.
So when I see services chopping and changing their coordinator all the time, I kind of just go, "Ooh, is that, is that the best approach? I, I don't know." And as an educator, I like to be able to build a relationship with my coordinator so I don't have to keep explaining things. I mean, I get this as a service provider.
When I ring New South Wales Department of Education, I have no idea who I'm talking to. I speak to someone on a switchbilt- switchboard. Sometimes I have to tell them what my question is so that they can direct me maybe to the right person, or they may go away and talk to somebody and then come back and give me an answer.
[00:43:00] That infuriates me. I want to talk to the person that they're talking to because clearly that person knows more than the first person. Because what happens often is when you ask a question and you get an answer, it creates more questions, and I don't want to have this ridiculous backwards and forwards, and I don't want to have to keep explaining my business and my business model to a different person every time I need to talk to someone at the Early Learning Commission in New South Wales Queensland is all over it.
Queensland has, in our, uh, regional department, we're in the Gold Coast Regional Department, South East Region Department, we have Amy, who is our go-to person, and she does all of our, uh, compliance visits, our spot checks, and things like that. She won't do the A&R, I don't think, but she does all of the spot checks.
If I have any questions, I can ring to the South East Department and say, "Hey, it's Victoria from Rainbow Bridge. I re- I, I need to chat with Amy, please." And they'll put me through to her. [00:44:00] So because she's done spot checks with us, she understands our processes. She understands how we do things, why we do things, and she can give us tailored feedback based on what she knows of our service.
And I so appreciate and respect that, and I just give praise to the Queensland Department of Education for setting that system up, because it works so beautifully. It saves time for Amy. It saves time for me. I get a better quality response than what I would if I was just talking to some rando on, on the end of a phone.
So I've built a relationship with Amy, uh, and, and I just so value that. So it's really important that educators can, can see that as well in their relationship with their coordinator that they're building. So not all services are created equal. I'm sure you're getting that picture now, and this is one of the most important decisions you'll make.
And please know, too, that if you start up and you start with somewhere, and [00:45:00] you maybe, I hear it all the time, I hear it all the time, like, "I didn't know there were other options available to me." Sister, there's so many options available to you that, uh, it just requires you doing a little bit of homework and asking w- who to go with.
And don't always take on board absolutely everything that everybody says about a service. I know that educators have left my service and have bagged me out because we have fundamentally not been on the same page, and because of that, I've had to hold a line because I hold our company or our, our service, uh, philosophy or our shared values.
It's my job to hold those, and if an educator is stepping outside of that, it's my job to investigate why and have a look at that and try to work out how we can come to commonality and be on the same page. However, [00:46:00] not everybody takes that kind of feedback or those kinds of instances on the chest.
Sometimes they will take that personally and go out and, and, you know, complain and carry on and, uh, you know. I mean, I... There's an educator that joined our service who didn't read anything, didn't read anything that we suggested that she read, didn't read the code of conduct, which clearly stated in there that we have a forced closure over Christmas period.
She's never closed over Christmas period. She wanted to work over the Christmas period. I, as the approved provider and responsible person, don't wanna work over the Christmas period. I never get a break otherwise. And so I also recognize that educators sometimes don't take time off during the year at all, and so they're working 52 weeks of the year without a break.
Now, that is a recipe for disaster, and part of my responsibilities for the psychosocial hazards that I have to meet in law, like for, like working law, [00:47:00] uh, is that I have to ensure educator wellbeing and im- and, and wellbeing of the people who I engage. And so that's one way that I do that. This educator didn't read any of that.
And when it came up to us saying, "Now remember everybody..." And it was on our website, it's on our educator portal, the back end of our portal. It's in policies and procedures. Like, it's everywhere. It's, it's in the application form. She didn't read it. She didn't pay any attention to it. She just needed to move from where she was.
She came over to us. She was an okay educator, like obviously I took her on board. However, when that process came about, she decided to move on because it didn't fit her values. Fine. Totally great. I totally understand it. Sh- that was taken personally and, uh, from her because I wasn't going to allow her to work, 'cause I wasn't working over Christmas.
And then, uh, I see her frequently saying that, you know, we don't allow educators to work at Christmas. And, um, you know, and it's said with a really negative [00:48:00] connotation. And people may look at that and go, "Oh, that's terrible." Yet you're only getting part of the story. The rest of the story was that- That was written in so many places, and had she done her due diligence and read that information properly, she would've been aware of it and would've gone, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, no, that doesn't work," and wouldn't have decided to come on board.
As it was, she then moved services really quickly because she was annoyed that that had come up. And when I suggested, "Look, take your time. You don't have to exit straight away. Take your time. Make sure you find the next place." "Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope." She needed to move on. So whatever. Go on your way, friend, um, but don't bag me because that's you not taking responsibility for something that was entirely in your hands.
So be aware that when you're hearing things or reading things online, there is absolutely always two sides to every story, and it's really important that you can have these conversations [00:49:00] with your service to, uh, make sure that you're on the same page. Okay, so qualifications, working with, um, children's, uh, checks and state-specific requirements.
So Family Day Care educators must have qualification requirements under-- sorry, must meet the qualification requirements under Regulation 137, and that is you must have completed your Cert III at a bare minimum before you can start working in family day care. That also includes your first aid, asthma, anaphylaxis, all of those kinds of qualifications that are needed across the board in every part of early childhood education anyway.
So, um, every state and territory has its own working with children's check or equivalent. You need to check what yours is. You will need to complete a police check, a criminal history check that must be less than six months old. So, um, that's what your service must ask for. Now, of course, we have the GECCO training that will be coming into play as well that needs to be completed before you can start working, [00:50:00] uh, once that, uh, end date happens for that where everyone has to have it completed by.
Um, and first aid, asthma, anaphylaxis, they're all non-negotiables according to Regulation 136. Some states have additional requirements beyond the national minimum, so you just must check and be guided by the service you're looking to go with. And always check directly with your state and, uh, reg authority.
Do not assume what applies to a colleague in another state applies to you. This is where I wish we'd just get on the same page and have statewide requirements. It would just stop so many inconsistencies and confusions within early childhood education. But there we have it Oh, I'm so sorry for coughing on you.
I hope my princess can delete these coughs out for you. Okay, so the business reality that no one talks about. Trust me, I'm gonna talk about it. If you've followed me for a little while, and maybe you haven't, this might be your first podcast you're listening to, but I am talking about the stuff that no one wants to [00:51:00] talk about for some stupid reason.
Um, I'll be the person that puts my mug in front of your face to talk about it. So as a registered educator, you are running a s- a small business, full stop. When you run a small business, you are responsible for your tax obligations, for your superannuation, for making sure that all of your home meets compliance requirements, making sure that your public liability insurance is, um, up to date and in place, uh, because it's protection for you.
It's absolute protection for you, all of that. Record keeping, understanding your income structure are all part of your role. So you must keep a record of all of your expenses and be able to claim that. If you listened to last week's podcast, Shannon was saying that it's really imperative that you register yourself for the, for the BAS, because you get money back from the, uh, GST requirements, because we're GST exempt on some things.
So you can get that money back, which is a [00:52:00] savings. It's way better off in your pocket than it is in the ATO's. Let's be real about that. Uh, you have to have systems in place. You have to be organized. There's no two ways around that. If you are a chaotic person, maybe ask someone to come and help you set up some systems that are gonna, that you're gonna be able to follow and keep on top of.
Our s- pers- my personal, um, business, we send reminders to our team, and we follow up. Um, but at the end of the day, it's not our responsibility to make sure that you get your, um, first aid and all of these things up to date. It's our... it's my responsibility to make sure you don't work without it. So if I've sent you a reminder, I send six weeks reminders out s- reminders out six weeks in advance to say, "Hey, your first aid is due.
Please book it in." The expectation is that you will book it in with two weeks to spare. The reason being is that you never know when you're gonna come down with the flu. I've been crook for [00:53:00] nearly two weeks now with this cold, flu. If I had to go and do my first aid, I couldn't have done it in the last two weeks, which means that if I'd left it to the last minute, I couldn't operate until I was, uh, r- you know, re- had redone my first aid.
And sometimes it's not because you're sick or you might be sick with gastro or something, so it's just one day, and of course, that will be on the weekend. We all know how that works. So if you miss that one day and you, you booked it in for the Saturday and it expired on the Friday, right? Expired 12:00 PM Friday night.
You booked it in for the Saturday. You get gastro. You're better by Tuesday when you're working again. You can't work until you get your first aid done. So we send these out, and our expectation is that you will book it in with enough time so that if something goes wrong, you can reschedule. I've had first aid courses canceled on me before, which is great.
Not. It's so annoying. So you've gotta give yourself a little bit of leeway. Um, you [00:54:00] don't need to be an accountant, but you do need to have a business owner mindset, and that is, the reality is, is that sometimes you're gonna have to work outside your work hours. But if you are smart You and you follow me and you go and do my profitable FDC course, which is available on the website, you will know how to set your fees so that you're covered for those hours that you have to work outside your hands-on time with the children.
You can include that and incorporate that in your hourly rate so that all of the hours that you work are covered for. Uh, getting advice from an accountant who understands the family daycare sector is one of the best investments you can make early on. Now, I worked with Shannon from, uh, Ledger Management, and she's fabulous, and she understands.
She's been a family daycare educator herself. Highly recommend her. Ben from FDC Tax, he's quite busy, um, but you know, he's also a family daycare specialist, um, tax agent as well. So child [00:55:00] and to educator ratio and approved capacity. So under Regulation 123, family daycare educators can care for a maximum of four children under school age at any one time.
This includes your own children under school age. They count in your numbers. So school age children can be included in your care group under specific conditions, so your approved number directly affects your income potential, and understanding that before you start makes a huge difference. The smaller group size in family daycare is also one of family daycare's greatest strengths.
Deep, consistent relationships with children and family happen because we're such an intimate setting. You have agency over your own hours, your care group composition, and how you structure your days. So if you know that you've already got one particular child four days a week and you work five days a week who's got additional needs, and it's quite...
You know, it's, it's taxing on [00:56:00] you, you have the right to say, "No, I can't take another child on with additional needs because I'm at capacity already. I don't want to... I, I don't have the energy to expend to take another child on." You can say that. Um, obviously you need to talk to your service about that first.
Some services will say you can't, and I would say, "Well, you need to check if your values align then." Because to me, supporting my educator to ensure that they are not burning themselves out, they're not burning the candle at both ends, that they're managing the hours that they're choosing to work is essential for educator wellbeing, and if I fail in that It's, it's not a good outcome because the amount of time that I invest in my educators, getting them up and running and getting them to where I want them to be, is significant.
N- what's the point of doing that if I'm gonna let people work 14-hour days and burn out and then quit? It's not worth it. I'd rather someone did nine-hour days or eight-hour days [00:57:00] and had been with me for five or six years than working 14 hours for a year and then cooking themselves. Just doesn't make sense.
So, uh, yeah, you just need to be aware of that approved capacity. Um, you can take after-school care children as well, so you can take an additional three after-school care children. So this is where ratios differ a little bit in family day care. So you can only have ... You can have seven children in total at any one time in your family day care.
However, no more than four of those children can be under school age. So if, for example, you had, uh, particularly in the school holidays, you had four ... three of your family day care families go away, so you only had one, uh, uh, before school age child in your care, you could then take six vacation care children in.
So, uh, and just have that one littlie and then the six big children. Uh, you can, you know, maximize some of your income making potential through that [00:58:00] process as well. So documentation, programming in the EYLF in a home setting, what does that look like? So in a long day care or an out of hours school care programming is a team effort, and in family day care it sits with you.
It's up to you because you're working with those particular children. You know what their goals are. You know what the goals you have for them are. Uh, this is all the beauty of family day care is that you get to run a program that meets your needs and your capacity and meets the needs and the capacity of the children too.
So the approved learning framework is the EYLF. Um, your existing knowledge applies to this. Uh, documentation expectations vary between services, so make sure you ask about that when you sign on. So our service has a planner, and we require our team to use the planner so that ... The reason being is that we It's really difficult to give feedback if we don't understand what your planning cycle looks [00:59:00] like and we don't understand how your planning and programming works.
If we don't understand that, we've got to spend a long time uncovering that and working out how that looks to be able to then give you tailored feedback. Whereas, if you, for example, use our planner and everyone in the service uses the planner, we don't tell you what to put in there, we just tell you where to put it.
So, observations go here, uh, reflections go here, your planning cycle goes here, uh, y- you know, daily compliance gets ticked here, your program that needs to be on display for families and available is here. So, we then can come in and look and get a really holistic view of what you're doing, why you're doing it, when you're doing it, where you're doing it, and how you're doing it, and then provide feedback based on that.
So, not all services will do that. Some services will be like, "Just go for, go for your life. Do whatever you want." But are you really getting adequate support and feedback and mentorship around your programming [01:00:00] if that's the case? You may be, you may be. You may have a really incredible coordinator who has this incredible ability to just understand what people are doing.
Um, that's not me. It was never me. So, I created the planner, the Big-Hearted Education Planner, which then helps educators to be able to keep on top of their documentation. In fact, uh, educators around Australia use that planner, and, uh, the feed- feedback is overwhelmingly positive for the fact that educators go, "Oh my God, my documentation is so much easy now.
I, I know how to do it. I'm on top of it. I'm all over it and, and I'm good to go. I love the planner. I'll never use anything else." Where ours is not the only planner on the market, there are a variety of other planners as well, so you can try and see what suits you best. Um, but you must work within the policies and procedures that your service has.
Um, so most services provide software to support observations, programming, and family [01:01:00] communication. Well, not most services, but there are options out there. Often educators need to pay for those themselves. Um, Hubworks has that ab- ability to be able to have programming and documentation, uh, in there, so your service may be happy to use that, uh, or happy for you to use Harmony or FDC3 or whatever that...
C, FDC, like, I don't know, whatever that one is. Um, but you, you can sometimes, if your service is happy for you to use online. Now, I prefer the paper-based because I feel like you take it in and you have more of a connection when you're physically writing it. That is not me making that up. That is scientifically proven.
I read about it in the brain and behavior part of my psychology degree that I've started. So, that is a really intrinsic Process that we as humans use is that physical act of writing things down gives us a greater connection to whatever we're writing. Uh, so yeah. So [01:02:00] many, many educators find that autonomy over their program is deeply satisfying.
Okay, so is family day care right for you? An honest self-assessment must happen. Family day care suits educators who are self-motivated, comfortable with autonomy, and ready to run small businesses. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to be, yeah, 10 out of 10 on all of those. It could be that you go, "Look, I know that I'm probably gonna need a little bit of help with the programming.
Like, I know I'm going to struggle with that." So really assessing and evaluating and critiquing yourself on that is going to help you to be able to be clear when you're talking to services to say, "I already identified a, a, a flaw or a gap in my skillset, and that is around programming. What can you provide me as levels of support for that?"
So being really clear and honest about what's your wheelhouse, uh, ha- and what's not is vitally [01:03:00] important. So it suits those who love intimate mixed-age care and want to build deeper relationships with small groups of children and families I'm still friends with some of my families. I waited till after I finished being an educator before I pursued those, those friendships on a deeper level.
But when I went and got my bike license, one of my old family daycare dads rides a motorbike, and so he was a supervisor for me on a number of rides that I did, and I'll be forever eternally grateful for that. In fact, I was talking to my daughter, we were at a, um, an event last night, yesterday afternoon, um, in our local community, and she had run into one of my old daycare children who's now 14, and she just was like, "What on earth?"
That has blown me away. I still think of that child as a baby. You know? So these are wonderful relationships that form and grow over time, and they can be deeply honoring and deeply nourishing to [01:04:00] both you, the children, and those families. So you d- I, I never really got to experience that in a long daycare setting because it was just always so busy, and there was just so many people there, and it's more of a handover than cr- creating a relationship, which is what was one of the massive benefits of family daycare.
Um, it's not for everyone. It's really not, and being honest about that builds trust, um, you know, with, with yourself, and as you move forward, going into that process, uh, you need to trust yourself as an educator. You need to trust yourself that you can actually do this. If you are really not confident, I think maybe you've got a little bit of soul-searching to do, uh, and really to be able to look at what you can improve now or work on now to help you be able to be more confident in those particular areas.
Um, so questions to sit with. Are you comfortable working largely [01:05:00] independently? For some people coming out of a long daycare environment, it's freaking traumatic in those environments, some of them. So for some of you, you'll be going, "Ah, heck to the yes, please. Get me on my own. I don't wanna deal with adults."
That's me. Give me children or dogs any day of the week and I'm in my element. But sometimes having to... And don't get me wrong, I, I do enjoy that mentorship with other adults, but see, I curate who I spend time with. I only take educators who are really passionate and involved and engaged in their businesses.
I don't take people who don't take feedback on, who aren't open to new ideas and hearing things. So I don't have to work with those people, and I choose that, and that's how I, uh, have such a fantastic and phenomenal team. Uh, are you ready to wo- wear both hats? Um, oh, sorry, do you have a suitable home environment first?
Um, y- you know, are y- a- is your family gonna be on board with this? Um, is that gonna work for them? [01:06:00] Maybe not. Maybe, maybe that's not going to. But i- if you're a mum needing to come into, um, you know, doing a different workforce because the thought of putting your child in daycare when you've just had your own baby, the thought of putting them in care with somebody else so you can go back to work is, like, just diabolical to you, then m- maybe y- you, this is the decision to make.
But you have to check that it's gonna work with everybody. Do you have that suitable home environment, or are you living in a pole home that's 50 meters off the ground and you don't have really adequate protection to stop children from falling over your veranda? Like, you've gotta be honest and real about that.
How are you, how are you gonna manage that kind of thing? So are you ready to wo- wear both hats as educator and business owner? Uh, it can take a little bit of time to get used to those two things together, and it can feel overwhelming at times. I'm not gonna lie. This is the [01:07:00] reason why a lot of family daycare educators close down, but it's purely coming down to the fact that they don't have adequate systems in place That's all it is.
It's needing to have systems, and it's needing to have the support from your service that's going to really help you to be able to answer yes to all of those questions. So if the answer is yes to those questions, family day care might just be the best career move you will ever make. It's so rewarding, and when you look at really good quality family day care educators, they are smashing all of their goals.
They love working with the children. They have great rapport and relationships with the children and the families that they work with. They have a really symbiotic relationship with their service provider, so they're just ticking all the boxes. And then the last but not the least is the income that you can generate from working in family day care.
Now, you have so much autonomy over what you spend in your business and what you charge. Now, a family day care [01:08:00] service will have a fee schedule, so you'll be able to charge between X, Y, and Z, uh, and you must fit in with that because they have agreements with the government, um, around that. But what you can do is you can talk to them and be really realistic about the environment you provide, the program you provide, your personal experience, what you bring to the table, and sometimes your experience is going to be from different professions as well.
I was talking to a lady the other day who's looking to move out of child protection and come into family day care. Yes, please. I want her eyes on my policies. I want her to look from a child pros- pers- protection perspective to see if there's any gaps in anything that we have. Absolutely. That is a incredible skill to come to family day care with.
Imagine being able to say, "Oh, yes, I was a child protection officer for 12 years." Your families are gonna feel safe in care with you, knowing that you're gonna know all of the ins and outs around what happens when things go wrong and how to manage [01:09:00] things as a child protection officer. So you might have been a nurse in a past life.
You might have been a primary school teacher and be able to bring those skills into family day care. All of these skills are transferable, so just because you've got a Cert III doesn't mean that you need to charge just the Cert III award rate. It means that you can look at other things and other things that you bring to the table.
I've got educators that run the most incredible nature play programs, and so therefore, they've invested a lot in training. They've invested a lot in risk assessment, in providing that space and making sure that it's safe and usable for the children in care. They should be re- remunerated for that. Um, we've got other educators who, uh, have s- child psychology degrees.
Like, you should be remunerated for that too. That all crosses over. So you then get to choose how much you spend on resources and the things that you do within your service, which [01:10:00] can help you to really maximize your earning potential And then of course, you've got all of the expenses that you can claim throughout the year as well, which will also help maximize your earning potential.
So I hope that, uh, helps you to be able to, um, get some ideas around whether family day care is going to be for you or not. If you have further questions, please let me know. I'm always available to answer your questions. Uh, and yeah, I hope that gives you some, uh, direction and some insight, and will help you as you move forward in deciding is- if you're going to level up your career in early childhood education and come to the fabulous family day care side.
All right, my beautiful friends, thank you so much for listening today. I hope you get a lot out of this podcast episode, and, uh, I'd love to hear your thoughts and your feedback. Thank you so much. Big love from my heart to yours
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