Jessica’s Story

Making Ends Meet

Jessica and her husband Andrew live in a nice home in a nice suburb in the inner city of Melbourne. They bought the house ten years ago and took out quite a large mortgage in order to purchase it. Andrew was working in his own business full time and at the time the mortgage was very manageable. However in the last several years Andrew's work had begun to dry up, going for months sometimes without any work at all. This has placed a huge amount of pressure on the household finances in order to make ends meet.

Jessica has skills that she can use to go out to work but they have a young six year old Alex, which makes this a further challenging option. They have looked at their child care choices in the Eastern side of Melbourne and have found them very limited. There is full day care that, providing you are not put on a waiting list, requires quite a financial commitment. It was also quite a long drive to pick up and drop off.

Jessica and Andrew really liked the option of Family Day Care as it is more flexible and can be a cheaper child care option. However it seems that with recent closures of Services and Educators and others being unable to offer childcare subsidies, there are far fewer choices and more questions with this form of child care. Informal Care arrangements were limited as their families were too far away and while cheaper, it would not provide any structured early childhood learning for Alex.

Andrew and Jessica are now having to seriously weigh up their options. Andrew has been looking for full time work but because he has worked for himself for so many years now opportunities are very few and far between. With savings running out they had decided the only way they can now manage is to put the house on the market as the difficulties associated with paying the mortgage have become unmanageable.

Then Andrew was spoke with a financial counselor who suggested to Andrew that Jessica have a look at Clann Australia as he knows she is at home with Alex and has an interest in child care.

Clann Australia

Jessica did have some past training and experience in child care but this was more than 10 years ago. Clann assessed this and confirmed she still needed to do the Essentials On-boarding course (other than the First Aid Unit as she already had the required current certificate), update all her necessary documentation and build her profile on the Clann platform.

Jessica could then begin operating as a Clann Childminder working from home with Alex and make enough money to manage financially.

Jessica put herself in the position of client families and was confident she was a safe and good childcare choice for their children. She understood that Clann's screening and on-boarding process was very thorough and the platform included additional safety features that gave her comfort as a parent to use other Clann Childminders herself.

She also liked that Clann offered her a pathway to further train and qualify with a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care meaning that she could both Earn and Learn. Within a year she could seek full time employment or be registered with a Clann affiliated Approved Service and build her business and income as a Family Day Care Educator.

She also loved the range of quality early learning resources she could use with Alex and other children while in her care.

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Making Ends Meet

Clann Australia

FLEXIBLE, SAFE & RELIABLE

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About the Author: Amanda McFadden