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Childcare Options

The Creation of Clann

"It takes a village to raise a child"..... is how I remember my childhood. The many days spent with other kids in the homes of others. Where we played outside and in with the responsible childminder somewhere nearby.   Learning by doing with all the inevitable experiences of early childhood.  What I remember most was friends adventures and and fun and not early academic successes. 

"Where has all the fun gone" I asked my husband as we explored childcare options for our then 2-year old little girl. Not for her the modern trend toward big centralised childcare centres we said as we learned all the complex rules we would have to comply with. If we could get a place and if we could afford it for long.  

Family Day Care was our choice but hard to find in our region of Victoria. And the idea of someone else deciding which Educator Alice would be placed with did not sit well with me. I wanted to choose.  Why could finding a Family Day Care Educator not be as easy as it was for families to find, communicate and book me and my little holiday cottage on AirBnB?  

Why can't we see which Approved Providers/Services operate around us and the profiles of their Educators and their homes/venues and what they offer and choose the one for us?  And if none meet our needs, why cant we see profiles of other vetted childminders and other early childhood professionals that could?

The Clann Platform

And so the idea for Clann was formed which quickly led to the next question. What would it take for us to feel that a early childhood professional profile and service was a safe and good choice for our little girl's needs? So we looked at the government run system, adopted the safety measures that gave us comfort as parents and added others that we thought were improvements. 

And a year later we now have the first version of the Clann FamilyCare Platform. Over the course of the past year we met a lot of parents and childcare workers. We learned a lot and our platform has gone well beyond our original idea to also include pathways for people to train in Early Childhood Education and Care and access to quality early learning resources for the children in their care. 

It is not finished and it never will be. As we continue to learn from families and early childhood professionals using it we will continue to improve it to make childcare simpler and of course, bring back the fun.