Vacation Care and Holiday Child Care Fees

Vacation Care and Holiday Child
Care Fees
Two things that most incense parents about the holidays.

Child care services that close in the school holidays
Being made to pay fees for public holidays when your child's not even in child care!

The long summer holidays are not far away and 19 per cent of working mums would love more child care services to offer more vacation care, particularly when you don't have access to vacation care, a very accommodating employer or a large bank balance!!!

CareforKids.com.au has a unique Vacation Care tool though which will hopefully make life easier for some parents in this situation… enter your postcode and click on the search button and you will be given a list of child care services that offer vacation care.

The issue of fees during public holidays and vacations is not quite so easy to find a solution to…

66 per cent of parents polled in the working mums' poll said that they have to pay full rates when they're on holiday – even though most parents know that the child care centre will usually manage to fill their spots for the duration of their child's absence. 25 per cent pay half or portion of fees which is more acceptable, but still not ideal.

While it's not really viable for most child care services to offer a total fee refund for children on holidays and understandable they have to be paid something to keep a spot reserved for children while they're on "annual leave", a portion or at least half rate should be the norm in order to cover themselves if they can't pass on the fees to other parents – which is pretty unlikely.

Child care services that charge for public holidays when they're not even open for business may seem ridiculous, but as with all employers, most child care services with salaried staff will have to pay their staff's wages for public holidays which they have to pass on.

Unfortunately holiday fees are a necessary evil. But the best thing is to make sure you have discussed the issue with your child care provider at the outset and are comfortable with their policy or post your comment on CareforKids Social…