New Changes To Family Boost A Win For Working Families
From this quarter, eligible parents can now claim up to 40% of their early childhood education (ECE) fees, and the household income threshold has increased significantly —meaning more families than ever will qualify for the rebate. These changes will result in more generous payments, making it well worth families' time to apply.
ECE service owner and sector advocate Kelly Seaburg is welcoming the change and encouraging families to make the most of it.
'This is great news for working parents,' says Seaburg. 'With the cost of providing high-quality early learning on the rise, especially as centres move to pay qualified teachers fairly under the Government's pay parity scheme, many services will need to increase fees beyond CPI. The expanded Family Boost will be vital to help offset those increases so I encourage parents to make the most of expanded Family Boost.'
Seaburg says ECE services are ready to help families access their entitlements:
'Families should absolutely take advantage of this support. If you're unsure how to apply, just ask your ECE service or go to the IRD website. Centres will provide quarterly fee statements that parents can quickly upload as part of the application process.'
The changes are expected to reduce financial pressure on families and support parents returning to the workforce, while ensuring children continue to benefit from high-quality early learning experiences.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
19 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Covid inquiry: Time to cut Dame Jacinda Ardern a break – Fran O'Sullivan
Sowing dissension when this country could more usefully focus on setting an ambition that might persuade more talented New Zealanders to build their futures here instead of heading for the departure lounge. Fact: Ardern has agreed to give evidence to phase two of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Government's response to Covid-19. If she cares deeply for her reputation – and I am sure she does, given the global acclaim that has come her way after her memoir A Different Kind of Power – she will agree to do that in public during the commission's hearings. Ardern doesn't have to come back to New Zealand for that. If the commission calls her – and it should – it can take evidence via Zoom as is now commonplace in transnational court hearings. Subjecting the former Prime Minister to running a gauntlet of personal and potentially physical abuse by insisting she gives evidence in New Zealand will just set off another wave of paranoid behaviour. It won't help in getting to the facts and motivations which coloured prime ministerial decision-making in the Covid years in the dispassionate manner that is needed. The economic trade-offs where the money printers went overtime and dollars were flung at business – critics lament that now. The country has a debt bubble to digest. But it is notable that some critics come from companies that took the Government's financial handouts but did not remit them back when their fortunes improved. The shareholders were winners. The taxpayers were 'tail-end Charlie' here. Go figure. Commission chair Grant Illingworth, KC, has said the inquiry will take public evidence from those affected by 'social division and isolation, health and education, and business activity'. This is important so New Zealand can learn the hard lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and craft strategies for when the next pandemic arrives, as it certainly will. It will also provide a bloodletting for those who were most cruelly affected by the former Labour Government's Covid policies. Hearing from the 'victims' is long overdue. And there are personal stories aplenty, as most can attest. The commission also wants to hear from key decision-makers (and experts) about major decisions and their consequences so lessons can be learned. But the inquiry would be incomplete without hearing from Ardern, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson, former health supremo Sir Ashley Bloomfield and others within the tight Beehive circle that ran the country during the Covid years. It is undeniable that Ardern's performances at the 1pm 'podium of truth', where she and Bloomfield updated daily on the latest Covid situation, were required viewing. Her most impressive attribute was her mastery of that press conference. Her coining of the 'team of five million' (drawn from the late Sir Peter Blake's slogans to build public support for his America's Cup campaigns) to unite New Zealanders in 'fighting the virus' was also masterful. And it worked – at least in the initial phases of the pandemic response. People stayed home. The hospitals were not overrun. Lives were saved – although it is noticeable that the current world Covid death rate statistics show that many other countries did better than New Zealand in the long run. But Ardern's Covid honeymoon was quick to sour. Just one year after she pulled off a historic victory by catapulting Labour to an outright win in the October 2020 election, Ardern's reign hit stumbling blocks. Her Government's tardiness in getting sufficient New Zealanders vaccinated before the mid-August 2021 Delta outbreak helped pave the way for a punishing Auckland lockdown. This was Ardern's toughest year as Prime Minister. Cap that with the politically naive decision not to speak with protesters on Parliament's front lawn – instead of at least speaking with their leaders as commonsense former PM Jim Bolger advocated – and it is not surprising that the tide went out on her prime ministership. It was obvious to anyone coming down from Auckland to Wellington during this period that our political leaders were in a bubble of their own. I went to political journalist Tova O'Brien's farewell from the press gallery on the day we were finally allowed to travel domestically again. It was a different world. No paranoia about drunk citizens hassling or mugging people and acting thuggishly, which had become all too commonplace in the Auckland CBD, where I had spent the past four months. It was all bonhomie and drinks aplenty. The atmosphere also brought into sharp focus the lack of reality that coloured those 1pm press conferences to those watching from Auckland. Bizarre traffic light systems, for instance. The Prime Minister's empathetic response to the March 2019 Christchurch massacre, where 51 Muslims were murdered at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques, had earlier propelled her to international superstardom. The world's tallest building – Dubai's Burj Khalifa – had been lit up with a giant image of Ardern embracing a woman at a Kilbirnie mosque. Her leadership was tested not just by the terrorist attack, but by the Whakaari/White Island disaster and the pandemic. It's ironic that few thank her now for throwing so much money at the crisis. That's the pain of having to pay all that debt back. But there is room to examine all of this dispassionately – not try to (figuratively) hang her again as the more deranged attempted when they wheeled out their noose on Parliament's grounds.
Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
FamilyBoost Fizzer
Changes to the early childhood education FamilyBoost package announced this week cannot disguise the fact this National flagship policy has been a fizzer. Prospective voters were told it was expected to help 130,000 low and middle-income families, boosting after-tax pay by up to $75 each week. But only 60,000 families have benefited, and in the first nine months of the scheme only 249 families consistently got the full $75 a week. In the election campaign, FamilyBoost was sold to the public as a rebate system which would be administered by the Inland Revenue Department "with rebates paid directly to parents on a fortnightly basis". Information on childcare expenditure would be provided to IRD directly by childcare providers using existing systems, making the process simple for providers and seamless for parents, according to the campaign document. But the party had not done its homework. As the IRD pointed out in its regulatory impact statement (RIS) on the proposal "administering a childcare tax credit as outlined in pre-election documents requires access to fees information that is linked to individual parents or caregivers, the children in their care, and to their family income for a broad segment of society. Currently no government agency has this fees information." We would be surprised if this could not have been checked before the party flogged its policy to voters. Rather than wait for a direct payments system to be developed, the government was understandably keen to find a way to deliver its promise. It came up with a system whereby eligible families have to pay their fees up front but then can make a claim for part of them. This requires collecting three months of receipts from the early childhood education (ECE) centre and sending them to IRD. This was criticised for being too onerous and not providing the immediate boost to family funds struggling parents might have been hoping for. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has tried to put a brave face on the debacle, but it was only when information about the low uptake came out in April, she said she would be looking at making changes to the scheme. She has seemed keen to blame IRD for over-estimating how many families would qualify for the full rebate (21,000) but IRD made it clear in its RIS the information available was patchy. It said lack of comprehensive ECE fees data from any government agency required it to make assumptions about the severity of the policy problem and the factors causing it, as well as the impact of different options. "This makes it difficult for any government agency to provide advice on how effective existing or new interventions are on the overall affordability of ECE." There will be hopes the changes to the scheme will enable it to benefit far more families, as the proportion of fees which can be claimed has increased from 25% to 40%. The maximum payment is now $120 a week (this would only be available to those paying $300 or more in fees weekly). The amount families can earn yearly to be eligible has increased from $180,000 to $229,000. This has already prompted criticism the scheme will benefit high income earners disproportionately as they already access ECE more because they can afford to. The Office of Early Childhood Education, which was asked for its ideas on the scheme, suggested a rebate of 25% for higher income households and a 50% one for those on lower incomes. It also wanted the rebate cap of $975 a quarter to be per child, rather than per family. Concerns, widely expressed, around the claiming process have not abated. Ms Willis says further work will be done on longer term improvements including ECE providers giving fees information directly to the IRD. The scheme is among the plethora of funding programmes which will be examined in the Early Childhood Education Funding Review announced last month and due to report to the government in about a year. It remains to be seen whether any of its findings will help political parties come up with realistic and comprehensive early childhood funding policies rather than the poorly planned and executed FamilyBoost.
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
Gisborne seeks Government backing for long-term projects with Regional Deal
Mayor Rehette Stoltz say Gisborne District Council will continue to talk to the Government about its Regional Deal and possible investment. Gisborne District Council has submitted a Tairāwhiti Regional Deal proposal to the Government under a new initiative setting project priorities over 10 years. Regional and City Deals are a central government initiative to establish long-term agreements between central and local government. Earlier this week the Government announced the signing of
