by Tanya Steele
Three year old kinder is off to a promising start for the year with the introduction of the free services provided by the government coming into effect for Yarra Ranges facilities.
Families can now access up to 15 hours of free childcare in both sessional and long day length services at participating centres.
Not for profit chain, Kinderlink, in Healesville, runs three services in Badger Creek, Haig Avenue and Queens Park.
The long running organisation has always recognised the need for quality services for three year old children, with bachelor qualified teachers running their three year old sessions.
Kinderlink officer manager Emma Newsome said it’s beneficial to parents and children.
“It’s great for children that need to be out of the home and for those parents who are wanting to go back to work and wanting their children to be taken care of full time,” Ms Newsome said.
The introduced funding has allowed more options for parents to enrol their children in social kindergarten sessions and still also access daycare.
“We’ve got more enrollments this year than we have been looking at previous years in terms of the fact that it made it viable,” she said.
The announcement for the funding came last year but the staff at Kinderlink had to hold off until details were finalised, despite a lot of enquiries.
“There was a lot of interest around as well, with parents asking is this actually going to be free? Specifically, some of our vulnerable families in the community who sometimes probably may not have access to three year old programs just for the cost factor.”
Children attending quality services of a three and four year old kindergarten have been shown to have an overall advantage when it comes to starting school.
This is in areas such as thinking and social skills, which can help with language and skill development and in turn assist with academic outcomes later in life.
Kinderlink had been asking the community for interest in more days and sessions and newly qualified kindergarten teacher Nicole Arnup said a whole new class could be a possibility.
“We have looked for expressions of interest to start a whole new class and the difference with this one would be seven and a half hours. Our sessions are either normally three, five or six hours.”
Ms Arnup said overall the funding has been positive for the Kinderlink childcare centres.
“Four year old care is actually free this year. There’s families that are accessing four year old Kinder that would probably not usually, they would normally just send their children to school because it’s expensive,” she said.
“So previously they just waited and kept them at home until school came along. We’re full with waitlists this year.”
The future of childcare in Victoria will be a complex landscape in years to come, with the recent announcement of the Best Life, Best Start Program by the government.
This release documented a pre-prep kindergarten program which would fund further care for children in the early development years.
“There is actually a demand from our sessional kinder families for those longer days. A lot of them do work and have to pick up their children early or family members and it is quite a struggle,” Ms Arnup said.
Further planning is required due to the need for space and infrastructure to accommodate the new government funding and waitlists for services.
