Childcare Gap Fees Waived To Help With Cost-Of-Living Pressures

Families feeling the pressures of cost-of-living will be supported as childcare gap fees will be waived for another year. 

The measures were introduced during the pandemic and were set to expire next week but the Albanese Government have has extended that until June next year.

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Children with COVID-19 will also have their positions in childcare held, and it will remain that children can miss up to 52 days of childcare in a year, 10 days more than normal.

Education Minister Jason Clare said the extension was “common sense.”

"Keeping kids enrolled in childcare is good for them, good for families and good for the economy.”

- Jason Clare

With COVID-19 cases still high, and influenza circulating at higher rates than the last couple of years, around 19 childcares per day in Australia have to remain closed.

To receive the support, providers must use a government notice of a positive test as evidence for additional absences.

Gap fees can also be waived if children are absent from childcare because an immediate household member has Covid-19.

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