IPART needs small/medium size service provider volunteers

As you know, the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) is reviewing the NSW early childhood education and care sector to understand affordability, accessibility and consumer choice, and make recommendations where necessary to improve them.

IPART is looking for small and medium sized providers of long daycare, community and mobile preschools and, in particular, family day care and/or outside school hours care (OSHC) services to provide data and information on their service(s) costs, revenue and fees. 

This will help IPART better understand the costs NSW providers face and the fees they charge, which is a similar line of enquiry to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s enquiry at the national level.

Notwithstanding an earlier call for volunteers, IPART still needs to talk to more services, in particular: 

• small providers running 1 to 4 services; and
• medium providers running 5 to 39 services.

What’s involved

Service providers who volunteer will work with IPART and complete a spreadsheet, and providing (confidential) written responses to a few questions, to provide data and information on their service/s:

• business – for example, service type, operating hours, number of children enrolled or waitlisted, and occupancy rates
• workforce – for example, staff levels and vacancies
• income – for example, fees, government subsidies and grants
• costs – for example, labour and rental costs.

How to volunteer

If an ACA NSW member is willing to assist, please contact Jennifer Vincent on (02) 9290 8418 or e-mail jennifer_vincent@ipart.nsw.gov.au by 20 July 2023.

And for any further information/clarification, please feel free to contact the ACA NSW team via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au.

PUBLISHED: 14 JULY 2023