Summary of findings - Family Day Care services

Family Day Care (FDC) services provide a network of caregivers who provide care and developmental activities in their own homes for other people's children.

The following summarises the key findings of the 2001 Census, relating to FDC services. Unlike previous years, the 2001 Census included only those FDC services that used the "Harmony" computer package ("Harmony" is the brand name given to software produced and marketed by Harmony Software Pty Ltd, for use in the child care industry. Around 92% of FDC services use the "Harmony" software package). This was done as "Harmony" includes an option to complete a very large part of the Census automatically, thus reducing the demand on services. It was felt that to request the Census be returned from other (non-automated) FDC services would be placing an unacceptable load on them at a time when services were becoming familiar with the administrative arrangements for Child Care Benefit (introduced in July 2000).

As only fully automated FDC services were surveyed, comparisons between FDC data from this Census and other Censuses (previous or future) should not be attempted. While fully automated FDC services make up the great majority of FDC services, and thus may be thought to be a representative sample, in a number of important respects (especially service size) they are not representative of all services.

Services

The total number of FDC services participating in the 2001 Census was 311 (97% of Harmony services and around 91% of all FDC services).

Children

In May 2001, 87188 children from 63741 families were reported to attend an FDC service.
The majority of children (66%) in FDC in 2001 were aged between 1 and 4 years. A small proportion of children in FDC were aged less than 1 year (5%) and 28% were aged 5 or more years.
The proportion of children whose parents were using FDC for work related purposes in 2001 was 88%. There were more two-parent families (74%) than sole parent families (26%) using FDC.

Attendance

The majority of children (63%) in FDC in 2001 attended for 19 or fewer hours per week. The largest proportion of children in FDC attended for fewer than 10 hours per week (34%) and the smallest proportion of children in FDC attended for 50 or more hours per week (3%).
The average number of hours of care paid for in 2001 was 19.2 hours per week, slightly higher than the average number of hours attended, of 18.6 hours per week.
Approximately three quarters (75%) of children in FDC did not attend school in 2001.

Staff

In May 2001, 1582 paid staff were reported to be employed by FDC services.
The proportion of FDC staff with formal qualifications or relevant experience was 91% in 2001. The most frequently reported qualification was a 2-year childcare qualification (28%).
Almost one fifth (17%) of FDC staff spent all of their time on administration. A further quarter (25%) spent between 10-29% of their time on administration, while 8% of staff spent no time on administrative duties.

Caregivers

In 2001, there were 11882 caregivers in FDC services.
The majority (71%) of caregivers were regular caregivers, while the remaining 29% worked on a part-time basis.
The majority (69%) of caregivers had relevant qualifications or experience. Of these, 40% had no qualifications but had relevant work experience, 26% had relevant qualifications and 5% were currently undertaking relevant qualifications.
The majority (78%) of caregivers had undertaken in-service training in the 12 months prior to the 2001 Census. Child care related training was undertaken by 65% of caregivers, management/financial training was undertaken by 29% of caregivers and 49% of caregivers undertook other relevant training.
The average number of hours caregivers worked during the 2001 reference period was 47 hours 7 minutes. In South Australia the average number of hours worked by caregivers was the highest of the states at 53 hours and 22 minutes.