That ICPA (Aust) advocate to the Federal Minister for Social Services to urgently commit to increasing the In-Home Care (IHC) Child Care Subsidy (CCS) Hourly Rate Cap, to ensure that families with no alternative child care options are not forced to shoulder inequitable financial burdens.
The current IHC Hourly Rate Cap is not only outdate, it is unjust. It is calculated using a base wage model suitable for standard centre-based care: full-time educators, working 38 hours a week, during standard business hours. This completely ignores the realities of In Home Care delivery, where educators regularly work up to 50 hours per week, across varied days and non standard hours, supporting children with complex needs in often isolated, high risk, or hard to staff environments.
Families who rely on In Home Care do so because there is no other option. These families include shift workers, sole carers, rural and remote households, and parents of children with additional needs. Yet they are being punished for their circumstances, paying up to four times the out of pocket costs of families in urban areas who can access standard childcare.
The IHC Hourly Rate Cap does not account for:
• The award wages required for a diploma qualified educator delivering care in sole charge, often high needs settings.
• Essential on costs such as penalty rates, superannuation, Workcover, payroll tax, and insurances.
• The cost of accommodation and board often required for remote placements.
• Nor the administrative, compliance and governance burden borne by IHC services themselves.
Worse still, families using IHC must self-fund all materials, excursions, incursions, and learning resources, costs that are included in centre-based care but are entirely out of pocket under the current IHC model.
National reviews, by the ACCC, PwC, the Productivity Commission and most recently ACECQA and Dandolo, have repeatedly acknowledged the structural and financial shortcomings of the IHC funding model. No further reviews are required. What is needed now is urgent action.
Every Australian child has the right to access high quality, affordable early education and care. This right should not be determined by their postcode, their parents’ work hours, or the complexity of their needs.
We therefore call upon the Minister for Social Services to immediately commit to increasing the IHC CCS Hourly Rate Cap to a level that reflects the true cost of delivering this essential program, before more families are forced to exit the workforce, educators leave the sector, and children are left behind.
