Family Day Care Penrith: Understanding Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate
Family Day Care Penrith. When your child attends family day care or child care you may become eligible for government assistance to help with costs of the childcare fees.
This assistance comes in two forms – Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate. Each one works slightly differently and depending on your circumstances you may be eligible for one or for both types of assistance.
Child Care Benefit (CCB)
This type of assistance is means tested, therefore if your income falls below a certain threshold you will likely be eligible for this benefit. We say likely as there are other criteria such as your family day care scheme approval status, residency requirements, your child immunisation etc. For a full list of eligibility criteria, you can visit the Department of Human Services.
To understand how this benefit is applied we have created the following example or contact Collective Family Day Care Penrith:
John and Mary are married and want their daughter Sam to attend Family Day Care in Blacktown. That particular service currently charges fees of $10 per hour for 50 hours a week equalling $500 per week. John and Mary have received a letter from Centrelink advising them that they are eligible for the CCB and their current percentage is 38% and they are eligible for 50 hours of care. As a guide the maximum CCB hourly rate for approved care in 2016-17 is $4.24 per hour. This means that John and Mary will receive 38% of $4.24 x 50 hours as a reduction in Sam’s cost of Family Day Care. This equates to $4.24 x 50 hours x 38% = $80.5, hence the actual fee after the benefit is $500–$80.50 = $419.50 per week.
Child Care Rebate (CCR)
This type of assistance is not means tested which means that you can qualify for it even if your income is too high to receive CCB. Once again you must meet other criteria of CCB such as your family day care scheme approval status, immunisation etc. Ref Department of Human Services for a full list.
This benefit is much simpler to understand and we have provided below example to illustrate:
Continuing on from above example John and Mary had to pay $419.50 per week to their Family Day Care in Blacktown. As they are meeting all the requirements they are eligible for the CCR as well. CCR is applied as 50% rebate on out of pocket expenses up to an annual limit of $7500. What that means is that after CCB John and Mary had to pay $419.50 and now CCR 50% rebate will apply to that amount. 50% x $419.50 = $209.75. Hence their fee is now reduced as follows $419.50 – $209.75 = $209.75.
Even though in this example their Family Day Care in Blacktown was charging $500 after the government CCB and CCR assistance was applied they only needed to pay $209.75, which makes family day care a very affordable option.
If you would like to know more about affordable family day care or are looking to become an educator providing family day care feel free to contact us Collective Family Day Care Penrith. We’re always happy to help.
