Family Day Care Top Up

The Family Day Care (FDC) Top Up supports approved FDC services to include a child or children with additional and ongoing high support needs alongside their typically developing peers. The child would therefore require significant additional support from the educator, which is over and above what would be expected for children from a similar age in the care environment. Where the inclusion of a child results in a significant impact on the educator, and the educator is then unable to enrol the maximum number of children as allowed under the National Law, the FDC Top Up provides an additional payment to the educator.

A FDC service may have less than the maximum number of children allowed under the National Law due to a variety of reasons such as low demand for places, variance in attendance patterns of children, the requirements of families and/or educator choice. To be eligible for the IDF FDC Top Up a service must clearly demonstrate that the need to continue to limit enrolments is solely due to the impact of including the child with ongoing high support needs.

Approved FDC Services are eligible to apply for one payment per FDC educator.

IDF Family Day Care Top Up subsidy cannot be used for non-approved purposes such as:

• Assistance for which funding is the responsibility of a state or territory government, other Australian Government programmes or other bodies (including school education).

• Assistance to meet licensing requirements outlined in the national regulations.
• To engage an Additional Educator in a home based care environment.