If your child is absent from child care

When your child is going to be absent from child care, you need to let your service know. It’s important you tell them so they can accurately record the absence. If they don’t do this, we can’t pay your CCS correctly.

How many absences you can get

You can get up to 42 allowable absence days per child each financial year.

If you reach your allowable absence limit, you may be able to get additional absences. You may get additional absences if any of these apply:

• your child is ill
• your child’s carer or their partner or another person your child lives with is ill
• your child is attending preschool
• alternative arrangements have been made for your child on a pupil-free day
• your child hasn’t been immunised against an infectious disease and the absence occurs during an immunisation grace period
• your child is spending time with a person other than their usual carer as required by a court order or parenting plan
• your child’s child care service is closed because of an event for which a CCS period of emergency has been declared
• your child can’t attend because of an event for which a CCS period of emergency has been declared
• your child’s carer chooses not to send the child because of an event for which a CCS period of emergency has been declared.

Talk to your child care service about this. You may need to give them supporting documents.

You may be eligible for extra allowable absences if you live in a region where a CCS period of Emergency has been declared. Read about what a CCS period of emergency is and how to get extra absences if you’re affected by an emergency.

If you have both allowable and special purpose absences available, the special purpose absences will be used first.

When you can use absences

You can only use absence days for days your child would normally attend child care and get CCS. This includes public holidays.

You can use absence days for any reason, including if the child is on a holiday. You don’t need to provide evidence for any absences you use under the allowable absence limit.

Tracking your absences

If your Centrelink online account is linked to myGov, you can track your absences online.

To do this:

1. Sign in to myGov.
2. Select Child Care from the My Family menu.
3. Select Absences.

Sign in to myGov

You can also use the Express Plus Centrelink mobile app. Select your child’s name from the Child Care Subsidy menu option, then Absences.

When you can use absence days before your child attends child care or after their last day of attendance

We generally won’t pay CCS for any absences before your child physically attends or after the last day your child physically attends child care. You’ll need to pay full fees for these days.

However, if you have an approved reason, we’ll pay CCS for absences that occur up to 6 days at the start or the end of an enrolment. The absence days must occur in the 6 days before the first or after the last day of attendance.

Approved reasons include any of these:

• any of the additional absence reasons on the Department of Education website
• your child’s child care service has changed ownership
• your child’s usual child care service is closed and the child attends a different service under the same child care provider
• your child’s enrolment ceased incorrectly
• you’ve experienced a family tragedy.

You should talk to your service about these absence reasons and about using these absence days. Your service may ask you to provide evidence.

If your child hasn’t attended child care for 14 weeks in a row, both of the following will apply:

• your enrolment with the child care service will end
• we won’t pay any absences after the last day your child physically attended care.

Read more about what happens if we end your enrolment.

When your child doesn’t use child care

Enrolments with your child care service will end if your child hasn’t attended child care for 14 weeks in a row. If your child hasn’t used child care at least once in the previous 26 weeks, they will stop being eligible for Child Care Subsidy (CCS). If you have shared care arrangements for your child, your 26 week period will be calculated based on the sessions of care you are responsible for paying for.

We’ll reassess your family if one or more of your children stop using child care. We’ll check to see if any other children still using child care can get the higher CCS rate.

If you decide not to use child care, you can contact us to end your child’s CCS eligibility.

If your child starts to attend care again, you’ll need to submit a new claim for CCS and re-enrol them with your child care service.

Read more about if you want to re-enrol your child in the same service.

Examples of what happens when your child is absent from child care

Learn more about different examples of when your child is absent from child care and how this will affect your CCS.