Deadline: 22-Feb-21
The Australian Government on behalf of Department of Education, Skills and Employment is seeking applications for its competitive Round 3 Community Child Care Fund (CCCF) to improve early learning, schooling, student educational outcomes and transitions to and from school through access to quality child care, support, parent engagement, quality teaching and learning environments.
The objective of the CCS is to help families participate in the social and economic life of the community by promoting and supporting quality and affordable child care. The objective of the Child Care Safety Net is to give the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, as well as those from regional and remote communities, a strong start through access to quality early childhood education and care.
Funding Elements
Funding is available under three elements:
- Sustainability Support: helping services operating in areas of limited supply improve the viability and sustainability of their service.
- Community Support: helping services to work with other organisations and families to identify and address community level barriers to child care participation. The engagement must ultimately result in increased child care participation.
- Capital Support: helping services with the cost of modifying, renovating, extending or building child care facilities. These capital works must result in more child care places in areas where there is unmet demand.
Funding Information
The Australian Government has approved funding up to approximately $117.4 million (GST exclusive) for this CCCF OC grant opportunity over three years.
- Sustainability Support: Min $2,000 and Max $200,000, 2021-22 $36.7 million
- Community Support: Min $5,000 and Max $100,000, 2022-23 $37.6 million
- Capital Support Min: $50,000 and Max $150,000, 2023-24 $43.1 million
Outcomes
Intended outcomes are:
- Child care services operating in disadvantaged and vulnerable communities are able to address (or have increased capacity to address) community level barriers to child care participation;
- Increased number of children from vulnerable or disadvantaged families and communities accessing child care;
- Increased sustainability of child care services operating in disadvantaged communities experiencing viability issues, including in areas with fluctuating and/or low short-term demand;
- Increased availability of child care places in disadvantaged communities with high unmet demand through capital works projects.
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible for this grant opportunity, at the date of application lodgement, applicant must be:
- A CCS approved operator of an approved ECEC service; and
- Located in, or servicing families from a CCCF priority area; or
- Servicing regional, remote or very remote areas; or
- Providing specialised child care services to a vulnerable or disadvantaged sector of its community, or
- The operator of the service previously funded under the CCCF Round 1 or 2 Open Competitive processes (to which the application relates).
- The provider can apply for funding with respect to a single approved child care service or a number of approved child care services that the approved provider operates.
- While both for-profit and not-for-profit services are eligible to apply, funding preference will be given to not-for-profit services.
- Applications from consortia are acceptable, as long as applicant have a lead applicant who is themselves an eligible provider under the Family Assistance Law. The lead applicant is solely accountable to the Commonwealth for the delivery of grant activities.
- All applicants must also meet the additional eligibility requirements for the relevant CCCF element:
- Applicants applying for funding under the Capital Support element must be operating in an area of high unmet demand, that is, an area where there is a shortage of child care places because of higher demand/need for child care places than supply.
- Applicants applying for funding under the Capital Support element are required to make a capital contribution of at least 50% of the total cost of the project. In-kind contributions may be considered.
- Applicants may be required to provide letters of support or other forms of evidence to demonstrate their eligibility under this requirement. This requirement may be relaxed or waived in certain circumstances, at the discretion of the department.
For more information, visit https://www.communitygrants.gov.au/grants/community-child-care-fund-round-3