Despite a focus on successful transitions to school, transition to School Aged Care (SAC) has largely been overlooked. This paper shares insights into transition programs provided for children commencing in SAC, at or close to their transition to school. Educators working in SAC programs in Victoria, Australia, participated in an online survey…

This mixed-methods study explored (1) family day care (FDC) educators' confidence and capability to support children's mental health, and (2) assessed their own mental health and wellbeing. Descriptive analysis of the survey (n = 144) highlighted that most participants were in the normal range for mental health and wellbeing; however, identifying…

Emotions have received increasing attention in educational circles in the last decade. Drawing on Bourdieu, feminist scholars use emotional capital to illustrate the ways gendered inequalities can compound the disadvantages of social class. This paper examines relationships within childcare services in Australia, showing how emotional capital…

This report presents the findings from the third wave of a longitudinal study to investigate perceptions of administrative burden among providers of children's education and care services. The study reveals a number of positive findings including consistently high levels of support for the National Quality Framework (NQF) and a significant decline…

This paper presents baseline data from Thrive, a capacity-building program for family day care educators. Educators completed a self-report survey assessing knowledge and confidence in promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing. An in-home observation was used to assess care quality. Twenty-four educators responded to the survey (40 per…

This report is the second installment (Wave II) of the longitudinal study examining the perceptions and experiences of services under the National Quality Framework (NQF) with respect to their level of regulatory burden. The Wave II perception survey was conducted in February and March 2014. The findings in this report are divided into two themes:…

This article explores parents' and carers' experiences of accessing quality long day care in northern regional Australia. The data was gathered in 2009, after the collapse of ABC Developmental Learning Centres (herein referred to as ABC Learning) and before the implementation of the "National Quality Framework," and provides a snapshot…

Family day care in Australia is currently undergoing rapid "professionalisation" within a national reform agenda that seeks to raise and standardise early childhood service quality. Included within this reform is a requirement that all family day care workers obtain formal qualifications and that workers are referred to as…

The National Quality Framework (NQF) was introduced to improve the quality of Australia's early childhood education and care and outside school hours care services. One goal of the NQF was to reduce unnecessary compliance burden on children's education and care services through a jointly-governed system of regulation, replacing overlapping…

There is growing evidence that high-quality non-parental child care can contribute to children's learning, development and successful transition to school. Research examining the quality of child care and the effect on children's development is not well documented outside the USA. We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children to…

Family day-care (FDC) educators work autonomously to provide care and education for children of mixed ages, backgrounds and abilities. To meet the demands and opportunities of their work and regulatory requirements, educators need access to context-relevant and high quality information. No previous research has examined how and where these workers…

This article provides a synthesis of current theory and research in relation to attachment between infants/toddlers and their caregivers. Worldwide statistics show that there are a significant number of women working in the global labour market. In Australia, recent research also found that over 300,000 children aged 0-5 years are currently…

Background: The quality of child care is of social and economic significance worldwide. The beliefs that child care workers hold about knowing and knowledge (epistemological beliefs) influence the quality of their professional work. However, attention to epistemological beliefs is rarely a focus in vocational education programmes. Aim: The aim of…

While there has been extensive research exploring quality in childcare programs for children older than three years, less attention has been directed to the nature of infants' experiences in centre-based childcare programs. In this study, six childcare workers and six centre directors located in centre-based childcare programs in metropolitan…

Seventy-seven directors of childcare centres and 77 childcare staff were surveyed about their training to work with children with a disability, experience with these children, attitudes to disability, inclusive practices and barriers to inclusion. General support was expressed for the inclusion of children with a disability in child care,…