Existing licensees (licensed prior to 1 January 2012) are declared Approved Providers and licensed services are declared Approved Services from 1 January 2012. An online transition pack was emailed to services in December 2011 and Approved Providers must provide the Department of Education and Training (the Department) with the required information by 10 February 2012. The Department will issue Provider and Service Approvals by 30 June 2012.
The approval process for family day care educators remains the responsibility of the service provider. There are also requirements outlined in the National Regulations in section 116 requiring approved providers to conduct an assessment (including a risk assessment) of each family day care residence before care commences and at least annually to ensure the health, safety and well-being of children being cared and educated are protected..
Services with a 'Temporary Guideline for flood or cyclone affected areas'
If a service is operating under a Department approved 'Temporary Guideline for flood or cyclone affected areas', they have until 31 March 2012 to apply for a waiver. The fee will be waived for this application.
Family day care services will be required to designate:
For many services both roles may be met by one or more of the coordinators of the service. The Nominated Supervisor or another responsible person needs to be accessible to provide support to the family day care educator at all times education and care are being provided. This could be addressed through on call arrangements.
There must be sufficient coordinators available at any time the service is being offered. This is different from requirements under the Child Care Act 2002 where coordinator hours are based on the functions that are required to be completed.
No change. From 1 January 2012, the previous ratios under the Child Care Act 2002 apply with each family day care educator able to educate and care for up to seven children with a maximum of four children not yet attending school. This limit includes the educator's own children who are under school age. Refer to the Educator to child ratio page for changes from 2016.
No change for qualifications, however from 1 January 2014, all FDC educators will be required to hold, or be working towards, an approved Certificate III level qualification in early childhood education and care and coordinators will be required to hold an approved diploma level qualification.
A key change is that there is no explicit ratio for educators coming together to run an excursion included in the National Regulations 
. Rather, services are required to undertake a risk assessment prior to an excursion to identify any risks and how these will be managed and minimised.
The risk assessment must consider:
While an increased educator to child ratio for excursions is not specified in the National Regulations, there is a requirement to adequately supervise children at all times. A thorough risk assessment should determine whether minimum ratios are sufficient to provide adequate supervision of children while attending an excursion.
If the excursion is a regular excursion (e.g. a weekly visit to the library or playtime in the park) and a risk assessment has been conducted in relation to that regular excursion in the last 12 months, a further risk assessment would not be conducted unless the circumstances have changed (e.g. taking a different route).
For an optional template for this risk assessment, refer to page 173 of the Guide to the National Law and Regulations .
No change. Conditions on existing licences will continue in force on service approvals where required under the Education and Care Services National Law 2010 (National Law).
Under section 172 of the National Law and section 173 of the National Regulations, existing services must continue to display:
In addition, existing services must display:
Services and educators must continue to keep a range of records similar to the requirements under the Child Care Act 2002. Pages 117 - 118 of the Guide to the National Law and National Regulations lists the records and documents that the family day care educator must keep and the timeframes to be kept.
Records required to be kept at the family day care residence include:
Information to be provided to the Department
As noted above, the Approved Provider has until 10 February 2012 to complete the online transition pack including:
Commence planning for quality improvement
Services should be actively planning for the commencement of the assessment and rating process in mid 2012. This may include:
that are now available on the ACECQ website (in particular the Guide to the National Quality Standard which includes reflective questions for each of the seven Quality Areas)
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© The State of Queensland (Department of Education, Training and Employment) 2011.
