At One Tree, we provide childcare in some of Australia’s most hard to service locations. We believe that all children deserve access to the same care, education and start in life – no matter where they live. We’re not afraid to venture to places other providers shy away from because of barriers like distance, housing, and staff availability. We like to see possibilities where others see only challenges. We value working with communities to bring these possibilities to life.
Improving access to childcare and workforce participation in regional, remote, and disadvantaged locations isn’t always easy. But nothing worth doing ever is. We’re very proud to deliver our services in these areas and we are committed to each community we serve.
Securing funding for years to come
As a not-for-profit, securing funding is vital to our success. We are very excited to announce that we’ve received $3,034,507 in funding from the Community Child Care Fund. There were only 716 successful applications from a total of 1194 submissions. This funding was awarded to ten services for use over the next three years. We’d like to a acknowledge the Australian Government and the Department of Education, Skills and Employment for supporting our services with grants from the Community Child Care Fund.
“In these locations, families rely on us to provide access to childcare. Without funding our services couldn’t stay open, early learning and care would be either unaffordable, unavailable or both. This funding has a massive impact, it allows us to support each community and each child based on their unique needs” says Coral Callan, Executive Director
How we’ll use the funding to support children and families
The Community Child Care Fund grants are given to childcare providers. However, the benefits of these grants are felt by the children and families in each community. At One Tree, we’re focused on using these grants to keep services open and improve access to consistent, high-quality childcare.
In some locations, we are the only childcare provider. The Community Child Care Fund offers vital support to keep these services running. It allows us to keep providing the community with high-quality childcare. For many parents, low fees make childcare affordable so they can work and enjoy the economic, social and wellbeing benefits of employment.
In other services, the Community Child Care Fund allows us to build workforce capacity in towns. We employ highly qualified non-local staff. These staff work in services while we train local people at the One Tree Registered Training Organisation. It’s our hope that local staff will step into the leadership positions at these services.
We will also use the funding to hire staff to cover unexpected leave, planned leave and non-contact planning time for our hard-working educators.
The One Tree Services that have received funding are One Tree Gurlu Gurlu Maya, One Tree Defence Childcare Unit Little Geckos, One Tree Defence Childcare Unit Puckapunyal, One Tree Derby, One Tree Onslow, One Tree Wickham, One Tree Bernice McLeod, One Tree Kambalda, One Tree Pannawonica and One Tree Paraburdoo. We’re very much looking forward to seeing the impact the Community Child Care Fund will have on each service.
