Grants
The Office for Early Childhood Development offers a range of grants to support the roll-out of the Flying Start 3-year-old preschool program in South Australia.
Open grants
To be notified of any future grant opportunities, subscribe to our newsletter.
For answers to frequently asked questions, see our Flying Start Grants FAQs page,
Grant opportunities are now open to support early childhood services and organisations in regional, rural and hard-to-staff areas address workforce challenges.
Applications are now open for round 3 of the Flying Start Workforce Grants program. Applications will remain open until funding is expended.
About the grants
The Flying Start Workforce Grants program provides early childhood workforce attraction and retention grants for regional, rural, and hard-to-staff communities in South Australia.
Funding is available for projects that foster collaboration between early childhood services, provide development and training opportunities and/or to conduct local workforce attraction and retention campaigns.
Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) offering or preparing to offer in-person early childhood training in outer-regional, remote or very-remote locations of South Australia can also seek funding,
12-month grants of up to $150,000 are available in round 3.
Find out more in the Flying Start Workforce Grants Application Guidelines.
Information about what to include in your application and the application questions can be found in the grant application checklist.
Grant opportunities are now open to support early childhood services to help increase Aboriginal participation in the early childhood workforce.
Applications for round 2 of Flying Start Aboriginal Workforce Grants program are now open. Applications will remain open until funding is expended.
About the grants
The Flying Start Aboriginal Workforce Grants program provides grants to services to embed Aboriginal cultural safety and support the professional development of Aboriginal staff. These grants have been established as part of the Aboriginal Workforce Strategy.
Grants of up to $20,000 are available under this program.
Find out more in the Flying Start Aboriginal Workforce Grants Application Guidelines.
Information about what to include in your application and the application questions can be found in the grant application checklist.
The Flying Start Infrastructure Grants program provides co-investment to support building new or expanded facilities where they are needed. This is to achieve the additional preschool capacity needed for the roll-out of 3-year-old preschool in South Australia.
The Flying Start Infrastructure Grants are always open for application via SmartyGrants.
Find out more information on the Flying Start Infrastructure Grants page.
Closed grants
View the successful recipients of grants on our Grant recipients page.
In early 2026 opened the OECD Child Safety Grants to support child safety across the state, with $2.2 million in grant funding available to strengthen existing child safety practices in long day care services and non-government preschools.
Department for Education preschools also received support to prepare for changes required under the National Law, separate to these grants.
The Child Safety Grants were available to all long day care services and non-government sessional preschool services, including Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations currently operating in South Australia.
Alongside the Child Safety Grants, the Australian Government is providing a professional development subsidy to support providers and their staff undertake new national mandatory child safety training during or outside work hours.
Services who received a Child Safety Grant are still eligible to apply for this subsidy.
Learn more on the Australian Department of Education website.
About the grants
The Child Safety Grants will help services to strengthen their existing child safety practices.
The funding a provider can receive depends on the number and size of the services they operate:
- Small services (up to 50 maximum total places) - $3000
- Medium services (between 50-99 maximum total places) - $4000
- Large services (100+ maximum total places) - $5000
- Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) - $5000
Applications closed Friday, 10 April 2026.
Services will have until 30 June 2027 to spend the grant funds.
What can the grants be used for?
Services can use the grant funding to:
- audit or review site policies and procedures for compliance
- review policies, procedures and practices to support active supervision of children
- engage staff to further embed child safety practices in their work
- address common safety issues such as minor physical site improvements.
See the Child Safety Grant Guidelines and the FAQs for more details.
Flying Start Workforce Grants will support the establishment of workforce attraction initiatives in regional rural and hard-to-staff areas.
The OECD awarded round 1 grants in June 2025, and round 2 in January 2026. These initiatives will help grow and develop South Australia's early childhood workforce.
The Flying Start Workforce Grants guidelines (PDF) and Flying Start Workforce Grants Guidelines Round 2 (PDF) outline the details of the programs.
You can see the successful recipients on our Grant Recipients page.
The Flying Start Aboriginal Workforce Grants will embed Aboriginal cultural safety and support the professional development of Aboriginal staff.
The OECD awarded round 1 grants in January 2026. These grants have been established as part of the new Aboriginal Workforce Strategy.
The Flying Start Aboriginal Workforce Grants Guidelines outline the program details.
You can see the successful recipients on our Grant Recipients page.
The Flying Start Professional Network Grants provide funds to support local community services across early childhood education and care, allied health and community services to collaborate to identify areas where they can unite to deliver high quality preschool services and reduce child developmental vulnerability in their community.
Across South Australia, 26 Flying Start Professional Networks - including a state-wide Aboriginal Professionals Network - have now been awarded grant funding.
Visit the Flying Start Professional Networks page to learn more and find your local network.
The Multi-Disciplinary Localised Capacity Building Grants program provides targeted local grants to increase the supply and capacity of allied health workforces to address developmental vulnerability in 3- and 4-year-old children across South Australia.
These grants were available to Preschool Boost suppliers, Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisations, Department for Education (Student Support Services) and Local Health Networks servicing very remote, remote, outer regional, SEIFA 1 or SEIFA 2 areas of South Australia.
Applications closed 22 April 2026.
Successful recipients have now been announced. Visit the Grant Recipients page to view funded organisations, project descriptions, communities supported and funding allocations.
The Localised Capacity Building Grants Guidelines provide more information about the grants.
To be notified of any future grant opportunities, subscribe to our newsletter.
For answers to frequently asked questions, see our Flying Start Grants FAQs page,