The 2023-2024 Federal Budget has brought significant changes to the childcare sector, aimed at providing greater support to families and the early childhood education and care workforce. The changes include adjustments to the childcare subsidy, combining parental leave and dad and partner pay, and increased funding for the skills development of early childhood educators.

A less confusing, more concise approach was certainly necessary.

One of the major changes in the budget is the revision of the childcare subsidy. This was announced in the 'Responsible budget' of October 2022 and raised again as a highlight in the 2023-2024 budget statement.

The government has announced an increase in the maximum subsidy rate, which will benefit families with multiple children in care. Families with a combined income of up to $189,390 will receive a maximum subsidy rate of 90% of their childcare costs, up from 85% in the current system.

This will come as a relief to many parents who have struggled to afford childcare, particularly those on lower incomes.

The subsidy rate will decrease gradually for families with a combined income over $189,390, but they will still receive a considerable amount of financial assistance.

The government has also removed the annual cap on the subsidy, which previously limited the amount of assistance families could receive each year. This has been designed to benefit families with higher early education costs and those who use childcare services for longer periods of time.

Another considerable change is the combining of parental leave and dad and partner pay into a single payment, called the Parental Leave Pay. This new payment will provide up to 26 weeks of leave at the national minimum wage, which currently sits at $772.60 gross per week. The payment will be available to both parents, who can choose to share the leave between them or take it separately.

This will provide more flexibility for families, allowing them to choose how they share care. It also aims to encourage more fathers to take parental leave, traditionally taken by mothers.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers also announced that the budget will provide increased support for the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce. He announced a $1.6 billion investment into the sector, which includes funding for professional development and training programs for educators.

With this investment, the government hopes to improve the quality of early childhood education and care, which we know is critical for children's development. By supporting the professional development of educators, the government hopes to attract and retain high-quality staff in the sector and promote better outcomes for children.

A win for a sector crippled by workforce shortages.

The funding will also support the implementation of the government's updated Quality Early Learning Framework, which aims to improve the consistency and quality of early childhood education and care across Australia.

Education Ministers endorsed the framework in December 2022 after an extensive consultation process stating that, "Throughout 2023, providers, services and educators can familiarise themselves with updated frameworks and begin incorporating them into program and practice. They will become mandatory in early 2024."

The changes to childcare in the federal budget 2023-2024 aim to provide greater support to families and the early childhood education and care workforce.

I would like to welcome our new families to the centre and look forward to building strong and lasting relationships with you all. We look forward to observing your children as they grow and develop here at Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest. We hope you are enjoying your time with us so far and that your children are settling nicely into their rooms and into the Kidi Kingdom family. We would also like to welcome Miss Kylie into our Kidi Kingdom family who has settled in the Early Years room as an assistant educator and has already formed warm relationships with the team and children.

At Kidi Kingdom Hillcrest, we have been busy with all our centre calendar events as well as expanding on the children's interests weekly. We have also been reaching out to the community and the children have shown much excitement as we were able to explore one of our community buses. We also sent a card of comfort and thanked our local Fire Fighter friends. We hope to continue this trend and invite other members of our community to come and visit. As the weather is getting cooler please remember to pack warm clothes for your children to keep them warm during the day if needed.

Please like our Facebook page and we always appreciate our loyal families helping our centre by sharing your positive experiences to the local community by writing a quick Google, CareForKids or Facebook review. Thank you for the families that have already taken to the time to write a review.

Kind Regards, Julie Hunter Centre Manager Christina Seuava Assistant Centre Manager	Click here to visit our pages at Facebook and Instagram

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our current and new families for choosing our services. We will ensure we develop a close liaison with families and the community to provide a service that acknowledges the need for the importance of early childhood education and care.

As an Educational Leader, I will ensure all our children are receiving the best high quality education and care. I will support our amazing educators in the development and implementation of the educational program, as well as the cycle of planning and assessment.

I will always collaborate with them and provide curriculum correction and guidance. We look forward to reaching new goals with the educators in the coming months.

Kind Regards, Miss Cheri.

Dear Families of the Early Learners Room,

I would love to welcome our new friends to the Early Learners family - Cooper, Taj, Oliver and SJ. It is great to see you all making new friends and exploring your new surroundings. The children have been very busy in the past few months celebrating various events and working towards their own milestones, skills and developing knowledge.

In March, April and May the children participated in a lot of different events. St Patrick's Day, Harmony day, Earth Day, Easter, Anzac Day, Super Hero Day and Mother's Day! We all took part in lots of different activities and experiences to celebrate these events. What a fun-filled few months it has been in our Early Learners Room.

In the Month of March we had fun exploring our five (5) senses, healthy eating, nature and all about life cycles. We created our own grass heads and watched these grow over time. Each one was unique.

In April we enjoyed learning and contributing to Easter celebrations through arts and crafts and also sensory play and an egg hunt. We investigated bugs and insects.

In the month of May we are focusing on our mothers and carers making special gifts as Mother's Day is nearing. We are also using our self help skills as using spoons to eat our food is a main focus. We have so many areas to explore including many sensory experiences, arts and crafts and hands-on activities.

Thank you, Miss Emily and Miss Alexis.

Welcome to The Junior Early years Room,

Firstly we would like to welcome our new friends Archie, Aleena, Jack and Eliza who have joined our growing Junior Early Years Family.

We have spent the month of March exploring the World of Colours with different coloured themed experiences. We celebrated St. Patrick's Day as we focused our learning on the colour green followed by wearing a splash of orange for Harmony Day. We also introduced our Class Pet "Lola" to our Junior Early Years Room. Lola has had amazing weekend adventures with some of our friends, and has more upcoming adventures to explore with the rest of our friends.

In the Month of April we learnt about Our Planet Earth as we celebrated Earth Day and the children showed excitement as we had our garden visits every week encouraging the children to become socially responsible in taking care of our environment. We celebrated Easter, where the children exhibited their own creation of Easter Hats during our Easter Bonnet Parade, ending with an exciting Easter Egg Hunt. We remembered and paid respect to our fallen heroes on ANZAC Day as we painted red poppies and offered a minute of silence for all their sacrifices and hardships.

In the coming months we will focus on communication, social skills, self help skills and independence. Please note that we have sent out Family Goal Sheets for you to complete. Your valuable parent input will help us to plan goals and support your children. As always, we encourage parent input and welcome all your suggestions to help with your child's development and learning.

As we approach cold mornings, a friendly reminder to our families to make sure jumpers and winter clothing are worn or packed inside their bags.

Kind Regards, Miss Jill, Miss Kara & Mr Hayden.

Dear Families of the Early Years Room,

We would like to firstly welcome our new friends Sofia, Alex, Mia and Ivy who have joined our growing Early Years family. We hope you are all enjoying your time with us so far. Thank you also to our current families for your continuous support.

During the month of March we have been learning about recycling and what items we could recycle. We have also been looking at composting and why it is good to compost. We had some special events during this month. We celebrated St Patrick's Day and Harmony Day where we got to wear the colour green and orange. We participated in Earth Hour, we talked about how we can save electricity and also participated by having the light off during the day.

During the month of April we started our first week by celebrating Easter as we decorated the room and engaged in Easter experiences. During the Easter activities the children started to take an interest in different colours. We used this to start looking at different science experiments involving colour mixing. We started with a walking water experiment involving the primary colours and watched what happened to the colours. We used skittles and watched what happened to the colours of the skittles when they hit water. For Earth Day we painted with the colours green and blue to assist in learning and remembering our planet earth. We talked about how blue represents water and green represents the land. We also paid our respects on Anzac Day and read a book about what Anzac Day represents. We listened to a story about the poppies that grew where the soldiers laid and created the flower using our hands and red paint.

For the last day of April we were all excited to participate in being a superhero as the children all got dressed up in their favourite superhero costumes and created their own superhero mask. In May we will continue to focus on learning colours and encourage the children to choose the next colour that we will focus on. International Firefighters Day the children participated in making a thank you card to the Firefighters at our local Fire Station. We will also participate in a Mother's Day morning tea, International Families Week, National Sorry Day, National Reconciliation Week ( be a voice for generation).

Kind Regards, Miss Tia, Miss Benita & Miss Kylie.

Welcome to the Kindergarten Room.

In the Kindergarten Room we would like to welcome our new friends Jackie, CJ and Levi. Thank you for choosing to be a part of our growing Kindergarten family. Thank you also to our loyal families who have continued to support us throughout the year so far.

In Kindergarten we celebrated St Patrick's Day with songs, rainbows and all things green and gold. We then explored diversity on Harmony Day with dress ups and learning about different clothing and cultures represented in our room. We also began our gardening projects in the room watching our seeds and yams grow. The children learnt about plant life cycles and all about helping our plants grow. We set up a station for children to observe the plants, take notes and keep track of their progress.

The month of April was a lot of fun with our Easter art and craft and our beautiful Easter Bonnet Parade. We then began our learning about Anzac and the significance of this important calendar date. We were so excited to have one of our parents come in and share with us Anzac artefacts and photos. We also made Anzac wreaths with rosemary which was a lovely sensory learning experience for the children. We extended this by planting rosemary in our garden for next year. We ended April by celebrating Superhero day with a lot of dress up fun. There was also a strong focus on literacy and numeracy learning with name recognition and using tape measures, rulers, scales and measuring cups to extend and revisit concepts.

We began the month of May exploring transportation with children's interest in the garbage truck and then we used a cardboard box to create a bus. We explored the concept of money and looked at job roles as we engaged a "bus driver" to drive our bus. This then led to our incursion visiting the big bus which was a highlight for all the children. We will move onto celebrating Mother's Day honouring our mothers, step mothers and carers and exploring diverse families for International Day of Families and then move towards exploring Indigenous cultures during National Reconciliation Week.

Kind Regards, Miss Nilusha & Miss Regina.