Menu
The Child Care Subsidy (CCS) is the largest form of child care assistance in Australia and is provided by the Federal Government. Primarily, this subsidy reduces the childcare costs for families with children attending long day care.
The purpose of providing child care assistance and reducing costs is to:
It takes less than 30 seconds to find out how much Child Care Subsidy your family could claim, and estimate your out-of-pocket child care costs.
The Child Care Subsidy (CCS) is the largest form of child care assistance in Australia and is provided by the Federal Government. Primarily, this subsidy reduces the childcare costs for families with children attending long day care.
The purpose of providing child care assistance and reducing costs is to:
It takes less than 30 seconds to find out how much Child Care Subsidy your family could claim, and estimate your out-of-pocket child care costs.
Prior to calculating the amount of subsidy your family can claim, you must first assess your family’s eligibility. To be eligible for the CCS, you or your partner must meet all of the following four (4) eligibility criteria:
If the fourth criteria is not met, you may seek an exemption if you or your partner are a student sponsored by the Australian Government, are experiencing hardship or have special circumstances.
In addition to you or your partner meeting the eligibility criteria, your child must also meet two (2) eligibility criteria in order for your family to be eligible for child care support. Your child must be:
Exemptions to these criteria may apply (click here for more information).
The type of childcare your child is attending determines the ‘Maximum Hourly Rate’ that your family can claim for the CCS. If the hourly rate used by your childcare provider to calculate your childcare fees is less than the ‘Maximum Hourly Rate’ for that type of childcare, then the hourly rate charged by your childcare provider will be used when calculating your subsidy.
Therefore, when using our Child Care Subsidy calculator you will be asked to provide information that we can use to determine the hourly rate charged by your childcare provider.
The CCS is means-tested, meaning that the amount of subsidy each family receives depends upon their income (i.e. their ‘means’). The Child Care Subsidy estimator therefore requires you to provide an estimate of your family’s ‘Combined Household Income’. You need to include all sources of income including wages and salary, superannuation, Government benefits, net returns from investments and child support. From this amount, subtract any tax deductions you are entitled to receive. This will give you your family’s annual ‘Combined Household Income’.
Your family’s ‘Combined Household Income’ is also used to determine the annual cap on your family’s subsidy entitlement. For families with an annual ‘Combined Household Income’ of $186,958 or less, there is no annual cap on how much you can claim towards your childcare costs. In contrast, families with $351,248 or more of annual ‘Combined Household Income’ will have an annual cap of $0. This means that those families will not receive any funding child care assistance from the Government and will be required to pay the full amount of their childcare fees. For families with an annual ‘Combined Household Income’ of more than $186,958 and less than $351,248 the annual cap on the funding they receive will be $10,190 per child. The Child Care Subsidy estimator will automatically apply the annual cap that applies to your family.
The number of hours of childcare that your family can claim financial support for depends on the ‘Activity Hours’ your family conducts each fortnight. ‘Activity Hours’ are the number of hours your family performs working, studying, volunteering, job seeking and on parental leave. To understand your family’s ‘Activity Hours’, the Child Care Subsidy calculator will ask you some questions about your family and how many hours you and other members of your family spend on eligible activities.
Calculating the amount of subsidy that your family will receive is rather complex and time consuming. The great news is that our Child Care Subsidy calculator makes estimating your family’s entitlement and out of pocket childcare costs quick and easy.
The calculator is free for all families to use to estimate their subsidy.
The payments you receive are paid directly to Inspired Early Learning and apply against your childcare fees to determine your family’s out of pocket costs.
To ensure your payments are paid directly to Inspired Early Learning, you will be required to complete several steps:
If you already have a customer reference number, Centrelink account online and MyGov account then you should be able to progress straight to step 4 above.
To do so, log into myGov and select Services > Centrelink. Select Complete your assessment task and work through the steps to complete your application.
At Inspired, we truly believe it takes a village to raise a child, therefore we incorporate learning within our community, from Nature Walks to sharing a story with the children at Botanic Ridge Primary School.
We are proud of our connections to the historic Indigenous Reserve adjacent to our Inspired Centre, and we look forward to continuing to pay our respects and learn from the oldest living culture.
Our Centre is centrally located with easy access to South Gippsland Highway and Westernport Highway. Are you familiar with our location?
55s Berrybank Terrace
Botanic Ridge, 3977
Monday to Friday 6:30am – 6:30pm
(03) 5990 5000
