Government schemes: Supporting your professional skills

Health and Development Participation Grant Program

Once upon a time, families could easily access local early childhood health clinics that had an early childhood nurse on hand to support families with the health and development of their children, from birth to five years.

These clinics were an invaluable resource to parents – conducting health and development checks and tracking children’s development.

Such drop-in services are harder to come by now, leaving us wondering who supports these families and what the impact is down the track.

A new government scheme called the Health and Development Participation Program is for eligible services to support family access to these checks, to be conducted by health professionals. There is a dedicated team in each local health area who will implement the program to those services.

Applications for services close 31 March.

Paid Practicum Subsidy

The deadline is fast approaching for last applications to the Paid Practicum scheme and Professional Development subsidy scheme. Applications close on 10 May.

The schemes were designed to address an urgent need in supporting the training and skills of early childhood and care educators and teachers.

While this primarily targeted regional, remote and very remote communities, First Nations educators and services are eligible, regardless of location.

Eligibility for the scheme is focused on services who receive Child Care Subsidy (CCS), and assist students with up to four weeks of subsidised funding to the service, based on students’ practicum requirements for up to four weeks per semester.