Tenterfield Child Care Centre (TCCC) will be receiving almost $40,000 for staff training over the next three years under the federal government’s long day care professional development program, New England MP Barnaby Joyce announced last weekend.
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Under the funding model the long day-care centre has been allocated just over $39,592 to be spent on staff training and improvement services to meet national quality benchmarks.
TCCC director Nicole Foster said staff are currently developing plans to have the funds meet training needs.
She said the extra funding will mean local educators will be able to access training resources they would have otherwise missed out on.
“We find most training seminars are a minimum of two hours away,” she said.
The funds will mean the centre will be able to appoint causal replacement staff and help fund educators in meeting their training needs.
“It means we will be able to access a lot more opportunities,” Nicole said.
Though the majority of more than $1 million, allocated to the New England electorate, has been divided between eight long day-care centres in Armidale and a further nine in Tamworth, centres in Tenterfield, Glen Innes, Guyra and Inverell among others will also benefit.
The federal plan to roll out $200 million for long day-care centres is said to replace the previous Labor government’s commitment to raise wages through its early years quality fund.
The early years fund was eventually scrapped and criticised as a vehicle for union recruitment that would have benefited around 33 per cent of long dare care educators, according to independent assessment.
Mr Joyce welcomed the funding last week.
“I’m delighted our local child care operators have embraced this program, which was set up to ensure a fairer go after the previous Labor fund would have seen 70 per cent of long day care educators miss out,” he said.
