FamilyBoost 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.
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