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ACCS Trends in Community Children’s Services Surveys have tracked the impact of the Early Childhood National Quality Reforms as they rolled out over 5 years.

ACCS Launches TICCS In Context report

By Home, TICCSS Report

Australian Community Children’s Services is proud to launch our report TICCSS In Context revealing on how the experiences of the community sector influenced public debate during a significant period of positive change for children and families across Australia.

The Trends In Community Children’s Services Survey (TICCSS) is our ground-breaking longitudinal study of how children’s services stepped up to the challenge of each step in the improvement of minimum quality standards in child care and pre-school/kindergarten from 2012 to 2020.

TICCSS In Context sets the findings of this research in the context of the lively debate leading up to and during this seminal reform.

It examines how this research contributed to crucial policy discussions especially in defence of the reforms in the context of doubts about affordability, the administrative burden and the availability of an appropriately skilled workforce. Our research was influential in demonstrating that the new quality standards were achievable without causing services to become unaffordable for families and that it is possible to build the workforce by starting with upskilling existing educators.

It includes forewords from the Members of Parliament who drove the quality reform process and from Professor Deborah Brennan, author of The Politics of Australian Child Care: from philanthropy to feminism and beyond.

The reports on the six waves of the survey research and this contextual report will stand as a testament to the resilience of the community ECEC sector, showing leadership in times of positive change and speaking out about the impacts of calamitous events like fires and pandemics as well as the everyday vulnerabilities experienced by children and families.

Trends In Community Children’s Services Survey Wave 6 Report Showcases the Strengths of the Non-profit Sector

By TICCSS Report

The final survey in the longitudinal study of implementation of the National Quality Framework is now completed and the report is available on this website.

The report highlights the leadership of the community children’s services sector in implementing the quality reforms and achieving ratings of Exceeding the standards and of Excellent service.

Services are exceeding the mandatory staff to child ratios and employing more qualified educators and teachers. They support their Educational Leaders and support increasing numbers of children and families experiencing vulnerability – all while limiting fee increases.

Watch out for publication of a paper documenting the findings of the TICCSS studies in the context of the policy and advocacy debates during the eight year period of phased implementation of the National Quality Framework.

Trends In Community Children’s Services 2019 Survey report released

By TICCSS Report

The report on the 2019 TICCS Survey is now available. This important research demonstrates that:

  • More not-for-profit childcare services are high quality and fewer are poorer quality compared to services run for profit
  • Not-for-profit services maintain or improve on their already high quality ratings
  • Not-for-profit services have higher numbers of educators and teachers than they are legally required to
  • Not-for-profit services have the major structural requirements needed to be nurturing early education environments.

ACCS Trends in Community Children’s Services Survey 2017

By TICCSS Report

ACCS Nationwide Research shows Community children’s services are delivering some of the highest quality services in Australia.
The 4th wave of the ACCS Trends in Community Children’s Services is now available. It shows that community services are leading the way in:
• providing quality education and care services for children and families
• demonstrating a commitment to continuous quality improvement and strong support for the National Quality Framework
• providing wages and conditions above award
The research showed that community children’s services are working more closely with the wider community and have noticed an increase in the number of children attending services who are in vulnerable circumstances.
Community children’s services are concerned that children who will most benefit from ECEC will have reduced access to ECEC as a result of the reduction in eligible subsidised hours for children of families who don’t meet the Child Care Subsidy activity test. The research showed that community children’s services believe that access to ECEC can be supported through the provision of fee relief, financial support and even free ECEC services.
Community children’s services are prioritising structural aspects of quality, providing services with higher than prescribed ratios of children to educators and employing educators with higher than prescribed qualifications.