Sessional Care in Childcare

The debate about whether to offer sessional care has been raging for some time.

The heart of the conversation lies at whether in offering sessional care, you can help retain families that are over utilising their CCS entitlements and potentially add enrolled days for families underutilising their CCS entitlements (for a small fee). Whilst benefiting families, the additional administration work should not be overlooked.

Here are a few things to think about before offering sessional care at your service:

1. If your daily fee is over $140 then sessional care is not something you should be looking into – the benefits just aren’t there for your families due to the CCS hourly rate cap
2. Do your families actually need sessional care options? Delve into your CCMS to thoroughly understand your families CCS entitlements and current use to see if it’s something that will benefit them
3. Will you offer fixed session times, or be flexible to allow them to use the hours that best suit their specific circumstances? Here is a great insight from G8 CEO Gary Carroll on why they decided to offer flexible sessions
4. If you’re going to offer sessional care, then you have to ensure that your families are adhering to their sessions. This has been made a lot easier in recent months with the requirement to digitally log actual sign in and sign out times, but continually keeping track, chasing families who are extending their sessions, having those conversations – it will add to the administrative workload of your team. Make sure you have a process in place to track session use before you offer sessional care
5. Can you still deliver your curriculum and promises to families even if they take on a 6/8/10-hour session? Many families will still expect the same offering despite their shorter session times
6. Do your team thoroughly understand CCS entitlements and how they are calculated? Your team will need a full understanding of CCS entitlements, how it works and how it is calculated to ensure sessional care is implemented properly – there will be questions and your team should be ready to answer them with authority
7. Ensure your staffing roster aligns with your sessional care offering. Sessional care may even assist you with staffing, ensuring that you have staff only when they are needed but it is something to consider properly before implementing sessional care

We have a lot of experience developing and implementing sessional care programs for your clients – why not get in touch as we can chat through your options and our learnings?

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