Frequently Asked Questions

You can pay your fees by:

• Eftpos at the service office.
• Cash at the service office.
• Direct Debit.

We find that most people these days prefer the convenience of direct debit.

Jabiru is a small non-profit community organisation. We get our income from thousands of fee payments every week, and the associated Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate that we get direct from Centrelink.

We spend most of that income the next week on wages and program costs – so we need a constant cashflow.

We introduced the requirement that we have direct debit details several years ago because we had a big problem with bad debts making it difficult for us to pay our staff their wages on time.

By keeping our bad debts down, we can charge lower fees for everyone.

Because we collect small payments when they are due, we don’t let big debts accumulate that might create bigger financial difficulties for our families.

If you pay your fees on time you can choose whatever payment method you like, and we will never use your direct debit details.

If your fees are NOT paid on time, we will use your direct debit authority to take the amount due from your account. It’s our back-up plan, that we hope we never have to use.

If you give us 48 hours notice of cancellation, we will not charge you for the care. If you give us less than 24 hours notice we will charge you the usual fee, unless you provide us with a doctor’s certificate. This is because we have to organise our staffing on the basis of the bookings we have, so we have to pay staff to cover the number of children we have booked, no matter how many attend on the day.

If you give us a doctor’s certificate, we will not charge you for an absence even if you don’t give us 48 hours notice.

Yes! If we are expecting your child and they don’t attend we will have to track you down to find out where they are. If we are unable to contact you we may have to involve the police – for your child’s safety.

For before and after school, Jabiru applies the school’s sun safe policy. However during Vacation Care programs, we require children to wear a broad brimmed hat and sun safe clothing.

Children may experience as much as six to eight times MORE exposure to sun and UV radiation during holiday programs than during school.

To maintain standards required under National Quality Assurance, and to avoid future legal action against us by you or your child, Jabiru requires each child who attends our vacation programs to wear a hat with a broad brim (10‐12 cm) or a flap at the back to shade both the face and back of the neck. A baseball hat is not adequate head cover unless it is of the ‘legionnaires’ variety and is worn with fold down covers.

To help you out, Jabiru has stocks of hats that meet our requirements and that you can purchase from us at our cost price. Purchasing a hat is one way to avoid having to return home to get one! If the lack of an appropriate hat is discovered after you have left, your child will be provided with a new one, which will be charged to your account.