The following article is brought to you by ACA Partner Child Care Centre Desktop:
Once upon a time your early learning service's Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) could be put together on a weekend over a glass of red. Not ideal and for the most part - not useful.
Turn the clock forward a few years and it is now an integral component of the assessment and rating process. Self-assessment provides your service with a clear picture of current practice of where you are now and provides opportunities for where you need to go for continuous improvement.
When you join your local ACA State Body, you also become a member of the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) nationally.
This means that in addition to the practical guidance and support you receive from your ACA State Body, you also reap the benefits of ACA's important national work.
How does ACA National support ACA members?
We support our state bodies and their members via the following ongoing activities:
What’s this about?
In December 2019, Education Ministers endorsed the development of a new national workforce strategy as a joint partnership between all governments, the children’s education and care sector, and other key stakeholders.
The Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), on behalf of all governments, is coordinating the development of the new strategy, including stakeholder and public consultation. ACECQA has undertaken extensive consultations with national sector stakeholders and government representatives. These two groups have informed the potential actions and initiatives included in the consultation paper, published at the start of May 2021.
Throughout May 2021, you are invited to provide feedback through the online survey.
ACECQA will analyse all feedback and use it to inform the development of the ten year workforce strategy (2021–30), which is scheduled to be considered by national sector stakeholders, government representatives and EducationMinisters in the second half of this year.
As the task of recruiting new staff is an ongoing challenge for all early learning service providers, we'd like to make sure that you are aware of all of the Federal Government support programs available to you.
There may also be similar programs at the state-level which you could also benefit from. You may like to talk to your ACA State Body if you have any questions about the State Government-level programs.
We recommend that you consider each of the national initiatives listed below:
1/ Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements
To assist with the recovery from the impact of COVID-19 and help build a pipeline of skilled candidates, the Australian Government is providing support to all employers who take on trainees and apprentices.
(You may like to read our blog article - Five reasons your service should support a trainee early childhood educator.)