Community Child Care Fund Open Competitive Round 4 (Disadvantaged and vulnerable communities grant)

Overview

The Australian Government has approved funding of $84 million (GST exclusive) from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2026 for the Community Child Care Fund (CCCF) Open Competitive Round 4 grant opportunity. This funding will help support early childhood education and care (ECEC) services address barriers to ECEC participation, particularly targeting disadvantaged and vulnerable families and communities. This grant opportunity is available to Child Care Subsidy (CCS) approved services that meet eligibility criteria in the Grant Opportunity Guidelines.    The intended outcomes of the grant opportunity are to support:  *ECEC services operating in under-served disadvantaged and vulnerable communities to be able to address (or have increased capacity to address) community level barriers to child participation in early childhood services *increased number of children from vulnerable or disadvantaged families and communities accessing ECEC *viability of ECEC services operating in disadvantaged communities, including in areas with fluctuating and/or low short-term demand *increased availability of ECEC places in disadvantaged communities with high unmet demand.  The grant opportunity will provide funding for two key activities:  Sustainability Support: helping eligible ECEC services improve the viability and financial sustainability of their service, including working with other organisations and families to identify and address community level barriers to early childhood participation. Community level engagement must ultimately result in increased access and participation.  Capital Support: helping eligible ECEC services by contributing towards the cost of minor to moderate capital works, including repairing, modifying, renovating or extending existing ECEC facilities (‘capital works’). These capital works must result in more ECEC places in areas where there is unmet demand.