Technology changes under the Jobs for Families Child Care Package

Implementation of the Jobs for Families Package and new Child Care Subsidy is due to be complete by 2 July this year and with such a significant change just around the corner, most of the 17,000 early childhood education and care providers affected by the reforms will have already started preparing.

As you already know, the single Child Care Subsidy (CCS) is a new payment that will replace the Child Care Rebate and Child Care Benefit for families using a variety of early childhood services including centre based care, family day care, outside school hours and vacation care, in home care and occasional care. The CCS will be paid directly to providers, and families will pay the difference between the fee charged by the provider and the subsidy.

A key change for providers is introduction of the new IT platform being implemented to administer payment of the CCS. The Child Care Subsidy System (CCSS) will replace the current Child Care Management System (CCMS).

The Government says the new CCSS will include:

• reduced administrative and regulatory burden for early childhood services
• enhanced access to information for families and early childhood services
• improved compliance functionality, including identifying providers engaging in high risk behaviours, to reduce incidences of overpayment and non-compliance.

By now all approved early childhood services will have been contacted by the Department of Education and requested to confirm and update their CCMS details and register their child care personnel. Under the new system Key Personnel working in centre based services have been renamed Persons with Management or Control of the Provider and Authorised Persons are Persons Responsible for the Day to Day Operation of the Service. However, there have been no changes to the titles of Service Contacts or Family Day Care Educators.

All personnel in a service must individually register for the CCSS using PRODA or Provider Digital Access. Staff members require identify documents to register with PRODA and at the end of the process will receive a Registration Authority (RA), which will be used for the transition. Once all personnel have registered a child care provider’s authorised person must log in to the CCSS and complete an online transition form. Successful completion of this form results in generation of a service's CCS numbers.

Importantly all early childhood services will still access the CCSS via a third party software provider as they do now. Once you have received your CCS you can contact your software provider to confirm their platform will be compliant with the CCSS and that the interface is set up and ready to go.

If you have any concerns about the capacity of your current provider to meet the 2 July deadline or have made the decision to switch to another software provider for other reasons, you can click here to view the Department of Education's list of registered software providers.

The final stage of the transition, in terms of technology, will be to create new enrolments for each child who will be in care in your service from 2 July, which providers can do from April. Registration under the new system is necessary because the Child Care Package requires different information and has different criteria for calculating the Child Care Subsidy.

The Australian Department of Education has developed a Transitioning to the new Child Care Package page, which is updated regularly to reflect progress of the rollout and to keep providers informed about where they should be up to in terms of transitioning to the new system. This page also offers a range of useful information and resources for providers and parents and is a great place to start if you are feeling a little overwhelmed.