The Government is investing $4.7 billion over 4 years from 2022-23 to make early childhood education and care more affordable for Australian families. The Government's reforms will mean 96 per cent of families with children in care are better off and no family is worse off.

From July 2023, Child Care Subsidy rates will increase up to 90 per cent for eligible families earning less than $530,000. Families will continue to receive existing higher subsidy rates of up to 95 per cent for any additional children in care aged 5 and under.

The significant cost of early childhood education and care can prevent parents, particularly women, from working as much as they want. It is estimated these reforms will increase the hours worked by women with young children by up to 1.4 million hours per week in 2023-24. This is equivalent to an extra 37,000 full‑time workers.

The reforms will also support children's learning and development and their readiness for school.

The Government is investing $531.6 million over 4 years from 2022-23 to expand the Paid Parental Leave scheme and provide greater support to families. In 2026, families will be able to access up to 26 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.

This expansion is the biggest reform to the scheme since its introduction in 2011. It will enhance economic security, improve gender equality and increase participation and productivity. It will support parents to spend more time with their children and share caring responsibilities more equally.

The modernised scheme will include reserved 'use it or lose it' weeks for each parent, to encourage both parents to take parental leave. Either parent will be able to claim Paid Parental Leave first and both parents can receive the payment at the same time as any employer‑funded parental leave. The reforms also improve flexibility, with parents able to take leave in blocks as small as a day at a time, with periods of work in between.

The Women's Economic Equality Taskforce will examine the optimal model for 26 weeks of Paid Parental Leave including the number of weeks that parents can access at the same time and the mix of 'use it or lose it' weeks. This will ensure it delivers the best outcomes for families and encourage more shared parenting.

Australia is facing acute housing pressures and too many Australians do not have access to affordable housing. At the same time Australia has a low level of institutional housing investment and the world's third largest pool of capital in our superannuation system which is hungry for investments that will deliver stable returns over the long term.

A target of one million new homes under a national Housing Accord

The Government is bringing states and territories, the Australian Local Government Association, investors, and representatives from the construction sector together under a new national Housing Accord. The Accord sets an aspirational target of one million new, well-located homes to be delivered over 5 years from mid‑2024 as capacity constraints are expected to ease.

Under the Accord, the Government will provide $350 million over 5 years, with ongoing availability payments over the longer term, to deliver an additional 10,000 affordable dwellings. States and territories will also support up to an additional 10,000 affordable homes, increasing the dwellings that can be delivered under the Accord to 20,000.

Planning for the future of Australia's housing

Beyond the Accord, the Government will develop a National Housing and Homelessness Plan to set out other actions and longer-term reforms. The Plan will be developed in close consultation with the states and territories and other stakeholders.

Investing in social and affordable housing

The Accord builds on the Government's $10 billion investment to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund. Returns from the Fund will be used to build 30,000 new social and affordable dwellings over 5 years.

The Government is expanding the remit of the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to allow it to more flexibly use $575 million of existing funds. This will help unlock a projected 5,500 new dwellings.

Helping more Australians to realise their dream of home ownership

Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee

The Government is helping 10,000 eligible first home buyers a year in regional Australia to buy a home by guaranteeing up to 15 per cent of the purchase price.

Supporting veterans to purchase a home

The Government is committing $46.2 million to expand the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme. This will support veterans and Australian Defence Force members to purchase a home through monthly subsidies on mortgage interest payments.

Help to Buy

Under Help to Buy, eligible home buyers will have access to an equity contribution to buy a home with a smaller deposit and a smaller mortgage.

Helping older Australians who want to downsize

The Government is extending the exemption of home sale proceeds from pension asset testing by 12 months and is expanding access to make downsizer contributions to superannuation for people aged 55 to 59.

The PBS general co‑payment will be lowered to $30

The maximum cost to general patients for PBS medications has doubled since 2000. These high costs meant that close to one million people delayed or did not fill their medications in 2019-20. Some Australians are having to choose between filling prescriptions for potentially life‑saving medicines and providing other essentials for their families.

In this Budget, the Government is cutting the cost of medicines to ease cost‑of‑living pressures. From 1 January 2023, the Government will decrease the maximum co‑payment under the PBS from $42.50 to $30 per script, a 29 per cent reduction. Each year, this will save around 3.6 million Australians more than $190 million in out‑of‑pocket costs.

More cost‑effective medicines

The Government is providing an additional $1.4 billion for new and amended listings on the PBS and other medicines programs. This will allow greater access to affordable and life‑saving essential medicines and includes treatments for various types of cancer and growth hormone deficiency in children.

Greetings to all our Families, Friends and Caregivers.

Welcome to our first edition of the Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest Newsletter for 2023!

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all our new families to the centre. I look forward to building strong and lasting relationships with you all as your children grow and develop. I would also like to welcome back all our existing families to 2023.

Your support during 2022 was very welcomed and greatly appreciated. I would also like to welcome Miss Tia who has joined our team as the Lead Educator in our busy Early Years Room. If you would like to come in and meet Miss Tia or any of the Educators and view your child's artwork, discuss any questions you may have regarding your child's progress, both myself and our dedicated team at Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest are always available and willing to assist in any way we can.

We invite our families to please feel free to contribute to our Quality Improvement Plan, this is available for our families at reception. We value your contribution and feedback.

We would also like to wish all our Kindergarten children who graduated in 2022 all the best in their transition to school! We hope to see you in our After School and Before School Care program!

As we look forward to another exciting year of exploring, enhancing, strengthening, creating and roleplaying with our children, we also look forward to making positive relationships with our families and hearing your input and feedback.

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

Welcome families to another year of adventure and observing our children grow through exploring and creating each day.

In the past few months all educators have had various activities and arts in their rooms to celebrate the different events that have occurred, as well as continuing to encourage growth, creativity and independence in the children. This is through exploring their curiosity, widening their imagination and observing their interests.

We have been focusing on extending each child's interest, making sure the room routines continue, updating the Hubhello daily, making sure the weekly programmes are prepared and followed.

As we enter into the year we will continue to observe the children as they engage in play with others and form great relationships with their peers and educators, while expanding on their learning and growing milestones.

Kind Regards, Miss Cheri, Educational Program Leader.

Dear Valued Families of the Early Learners Room.

I would love to welcome our new friends to the Early Learners family- Everleigh, Colby, Ariya, Donnie, Mackenzie and Katarina! I hope you all are enjoying making new friendships and it's very evident that you all are developing new skills everyday. The children have been very busy these past few months celebrating different events and working towards their own milestones and their skills and knowledge. In the Month of December we had fun learning about the alphabet and numbers as well as celebrating Christmas time with one another.

Whilst in January we enjoyed learning about all the different animals in the week, from farm animals, zoo animals to arctic animals!

In the month of February we are going to be focusing on the beautiful world around us throughout learning about space, the weather and how to look after the world. We had so many fun activities to explore, from fun sensory activities, arts and crafts to hands-on activities. Our Early Learners learn new things every day!

In December and January the children participated in a lot of different events from Christmas, Chinese New Years, Australia Day, Waitangi Day, Valentine's Day and Pyjama Day! We all took part in lots of fun activities to celebrate these events.What a fun-filled few months it has been in our Early Learners Room.

Kind Regards, Miss Emily and Miss Alexis.

Dear Valued Families of the Junior Early Years Room.

After the Christmas festivities we are now into the New Year, we wish all our families a happy and prosperous 2023.

We would like to welcome our new families and children as well as Miss Anthya who has joined Miss Jill and Miss Kara in the Junior Early Years room.

In January we celebrated Chinese New Year with a lot of cultural activities and experiences. Creating unique pieces of artwork. Australia Day was also celebrated by the group with art and craft and a cooking experience.

Throughout January we have focused on transportation, exploring all the different modes of transport. We made a crossing and had traffic lights promoting road safety. We also have recorded the progress of our sunflower seeds that have now fully grown into big beautiful sunflowers.

In February we created some salt dough hearts to give to the special people in our lives, painting and decorating them as our unique piece of artwork in preparation for Valentines Day.

We will be focusing on our self help skills throughout the year, encouraging eating with our spoons, hygiene practices - washing hands and encouraging toilet training.

Kind Regards, Miss Jill, Miss Kara and Miss Anthya.

Welcome to our Early Years Room.

I would like to introduce myself as your new Early Years Lead Educator. My name is Miss Tia and I have just started working at Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest with your amazing children this year.

Over the next few months ahead we will be very busy extending the children's learning in different cultures around the world as a follow on from the various cultural days we have had so far this year such as Australia Day, Chinese New Year and Waitangi Day.

We will be exploring where these different countries are found on the world map, how they dress, different types of dances and entertainment they do and the types of food they eat.

We will also be extending on the children's learning of the alphabet as they will be learning each letter both visually and in sign language each week.The children have already shown great progress in such a short period of time.

Kind Regards, Miss Tia, Miss Benita, and Miss Shantel.

Welcome Valued Families to our Kindergarten Room.

I would like to welcome a number of amazing children into the kindergarten program - Allirah, Romona, Ezekiel, Macy and Rory.

The children have been building new bonds and creating relationships with their peers and educators in the Kindergarten Room. During the month of December, we prepared our children for the beginning of the formal school journey. This month was a busy month for us as we participated in art and craft activities to celebrate Christmas. The children showed great participation in it. We also recapped letters, numbers, shapes and colour recognition for our children who were ready for school.

At the beginning of January, we focused heavily on self-help skills with the children packing away their own plates during meal times, applying sunscreen, and picking up the toys after play as these fundamental skills will help children to build their confidence. The children also participated in group talking and group discussions where they talked about what they had for breakfast and what they did over the weekend. This is a fantastic way to build verbal communication skills.

Australia Day was also an important event for our children to participate in. In the month of February, we celebrated our centre event Waitangi Day. We are focusing on name recognition and practicing line tracing. The children have also been learning about numbers, alphabets and shapes through various activities. We will cover many different topics and child initiated play based learning experiences for very important lifelong development skills.

Kind Regards, Miss Cheri and Miss Regina.