Childcare eligibility/costs

[Guest TH82]

My son will be 3.5 and my daughter 8 when we arrive in Oz (hopefully!). I am wanting to be able to work straight away for financial as well as social reasons but have some questions about childcare as Charlie would have to go to nursery and Olivia After School Care. In Scotland kids are entitled to a free part time childcare space at nursery when they are 3 and we top up the costs if we need full time (sometimes helped by child care tax credits depending on income).

 

In Australia, how does the system work? Would I have to get him a full time nursery space and all of the pay the costs ourselves? Is childcare expensive compared to UK? I currently pay £32 for a full day in nursery and £11 for a 3hr ASC session

 

Any info much appreciated

T x

[Guest shella_n]

I think it depends from kindy to kindy. For example our kindy only does single sessions and wont do double sessions. Our daughter therefore goes to Childcare and they then take her to kindy fir the single session. We still have to pay a full days Childcare though which is $ 70 a day. We are not entitled to any rebate cause of our visa but if u have pr I believe u can get unto 50% of your childcare costs back.

 

Osch costs us $41 a day in school holidays and about $22 a day for before and after school osch

 

Hope that helps a bit

[Guest TH82]

Thank you very much, it really does help. We will be on a PR visa so hopefully we will be able to claim some of the costs back. I can also be flexible with my hours if I work mobile so could maybe arrange to only put him in for one session and work evening appointments. Thanks again,

 

T x

[Guest shella_n]

I think it totally depends on thd kindy/ childcare though. My friend son goes to a double kindy session and Childcare before and after - she pays about half of what I do. Also, remember they can't go to kindy until they r 4 here.

 

Michelle

[Guest Fran x]

Thank you very much, it really does help. We will be on a PR visa so hopefully we will be able to claim some of the costs back. I can also be flexible with my hours if I work mobile so could maybe arrange to only put him in for one session and work evening appointments. Thanks again,

 

T x

This is good to know we should hopefully be on a pr visa, Dylan will be nearly 12(scary) when we hopefully arrive so he will still need some sort of after school care at least a couple of days a week, although I have heard that lots of schools have after school sports which he would love, so will see how it goes. X