Long Day Care Fee Reporting

Good business administration aids reporting responsibilities

Are your administrative processes meeting your fee reporting obligations to the Department of Education, Skills and Employment? Recent communication from the Department signals child care infringement notices may soon be issued to Providers who breach Family Assistance Law obligations in relation to the Child Care Subsidy.

Infringements can be issued for:

  • Not correctly reporting your fee information
  • Not passing on or remitting a fee reduction amount
  • Failure to meet reporting requirements
  • Failure to keep records.

Providers and services must report fees and information as required by Family Assistance Law through the Provider Entry Point (PEP) or the relevant third-party software. It is essential that Providers and management staff understand their compliance obligations under law. When reporting your fees you must report:

  • current hourly or session fees before CCS, discounts or reductions
  • any changes to fees (within 14 days of the change).

If you have a range of fees (for example, per educator or age group), you can report a typical or average fee.

The communication acknowledges that while most ECEC providers comply with the law and do the right thing, the DESE has signalled that it will be focusing on “some specific contraventions”, but these are not elaborated further. From late November the DESE will issue a small number of infringements to providers who have not reported their fee information.

Further communication from DESE was issued on 10 November with information about the increased use of infringements to improve compliance with reporting obligations.