Fee Relief for Aboriginal children

The Fee Relief for Aboriginal children program (Fee Relief) is designed to promote equitable access to preschool for Aboriginal children by reducing financial barriers that may impact participation.

This Funded Program Stream is an allowable third-party payment under Australian Government funding rules for the Child Care Subsidy (CCS). This means that it does not impact a family’s CCS entitlement, so Partner Services must apply Fee Relief to each eligible family’s fees after CCS has been applied. Partner Services must apply the funding to the families' fees in a timely and regular way, to ensure that fees are not a barrier to preschool participation.

Eligibility

Aboriginal children are eligible for Fee Relief where they are enrolled in either a 3- or 4-year-old preschool program.

If a child is eligible for both Fee Relief and Preschool Plus Fee Relief as a Preschool Plus program enrolment, they will not receive both subsidies; the OECD will provide the Partner Service with the fee relief that is the higher value to spend in alignment with the spending rules.

Partnership Plan inclusion

Not applicable.

Spending rules

Allowable expenditure

Fee Relief is to directly advantage the child to which the subsidy applies through a reduction in fees for the family. This funding must be used to reduce any out-of-pocket fees for families with eligible children.

Funding restrictions

Fee Relief funding cannot be used to provide cash directly to families.

Discretionary use of funding​

If a Service has unspent funds (this includes where there are no out-of-pocket costs for the family), the Service can use this funding to support:

• quality and participation initiatives for Aboriginal children in the service
• activities that further the Aboriginal Inclusion objectives.

There is no further discretionary use of funding for this Funded Program Stream. All funding must be spent in accordance with the above.

Program reporting

If a parent/guardian identifies a child as being of Aboriginal origin, this must be recorded on the child’s enrolment and the Partner Provider and/or Partner Service must retain the enrolment document for audit purposes.

Fee Relief will also need to be accounted for in the service-level annual financial acquittal.