YMCA WA has been made aware that from 2 July 2018 ‘hour entitlements’ for families receiving childcare subsidy and additional childcare subsidy will be used over a two-week period and accrued fortnightly. These fortnightly hours will be 24 hours, 36 hours, 72 hours or 100 hours per fortnight.
Currently, all Government subsidies for childcare benefit and childcare rebate accrue weekly. They are either 24 hours or 50 hours per week.
This means from 2 July 2018, parents will have their entire subsidy allocated to the first week of care and the left-over hours shall remain allocated for the second week. This will not be split in half evenly.
Example:
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Sally has a four-day per week booking at a service that is open for 12 hours per day.
Sally’s parent is approved for 72 hours of the new Child Care Subsidy (CCS) per fortnight
Week one: Four days (48 hours) – covered by CCS
Week two: Two days (the remaining 24 hours) covered by CCS. The third and fourth day will be paid at the full rate.
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This means the ‘gap’ (parent’s out of pocket expense) will be higher in week 2
This may cause some issues for billing. If a child uses extra days or is attending more than their allocated hours, the system will make the first week have a lower GAP payment and the second week may have full fees allocated (if no hours left), or a significantly higher GAP payment (to use up the remaining smaller number of hours).
Notably, any family that pays weekly from direct debit/credit card may have inconsistencies in their accounts week by week as one week will be a higher GAP than the next week. For example, one week they may have deducted $50, the next week deducted $80 (because less hours of entitlement are available in the second week of care).
To ease the impact on all families at the YMCA, the following changes will begin from 2nd July 2018:
- Statements will be issued fortnightly.
As the Government system and Child Care Subsidy payments will be allocated fortnightly, it makes sense to match our statements to this new system.
- Moving weekly families to fortnightly for direct debit/credit card (Ezidebit) payments.
This will allow for more consistency for all. Rather than a low payment in week one and a high payment in week two, one payment for all attendances with the full allocation of subsidy applying across the fortnight will be more consistent for all families.
What will this change look like for you?
Families currently on fortnightly payments
- If your current fortnight payment falls within week 2 to 6 July - you will have no change.
- If your current fortnight payment falls within week 9 to 13 July - we would highly recommend changing your fortnightly payment to fall within 2 to 6 July. This would match your fee payments with your Child Care Subsidy allocation.
Families currently on weekly payments
Moving to the new fortnightly system will mean being 2 weeks in advance rather than the 1 week in advance your account is sitting in currently.
Options to move to two weeks in advance:
- Option one: make a one-off payment of one week’s fees between now and 30th June 2018 to take your account to two weeks in advance.
- Option two: make a few partial payments between now and 30th June 2018 to take your account to two weeks in advance.
- Option three: wait until your account changes to fortnightly on week beginning 2nd July (with new Child Care Subsidy applying) and have the extra payment debited with your first fortnightly payment, to take your account to two weeks in advance.
If you would like an extra payment to be generated (option one or two above) please contact us to discuss.
If we do not hear from you, all weekly families will automatically have option 3 applied from week beginning 2nd July 2018.
Please click on the link below for some great FAQs regarding the new Child Care Package
https://www.education.gov.au/new-child-care-package-frequently-asked-questions