A Hunter early childhood centre director says the full implications of the end of the Morrison Government's fee-free scheme are not yet clear, but she hopes it will mean her not-for-profit community-funded facility can take on more enrollments.
Federal education minister Dan Tehan announced on Monday the COVID-19 initiative would end on July 12, along with JobKeeper payments for early childhood sector employees.
Samantha Gilmour, the service director at Mayfield's Hunter Early Childhood Centre, said demand had risen after the initiative was announced but the facility was forced to reduce enrollments - by as much as half on some days - because it could not keep enough staff on.
The scheme meant centres received continuity payments of 50 per cent of their regular fee revenue from the government in place of charging parents.
But Ms Gilmour said her facility's fees were already so low that the arrangement caused "viability issues".
"Having to turn families away doesn't sit well for us," she said.
"Hopefully with the changes and going to a new normal we'll be able to accommodate a lot more families a lot more frequently than we could previously.
"I think we need to take the same mindset that we have throughout this whole COVID situation - just a week at a time and just make the changes we can make with the information we have. For us, in our service, it will mean that we can put all our enrollments back in place. We'll be able to put our organisational structure back to how it was pre-COVID.
"It will hopefully mean we'll be able to make our service as sustainable as possible."
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During his announcement on Monday, Mr Tehan said the pre-COVID Childcare Subsidy would return from July 13 and JobKeeper for employees in the sector would no longer be available from July 20.
He said the activity test for parents who wanted to access the Childcare Subsidy would be relaxed until October to help families whose income had been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
"The activity test sets out the minimum number of hours a parent must spend working, studying or volunteering to qualify for the Childcare Subsidy," he said.
"These families will receive up to 100 hours per fortnight of subsidised care during this period. This will assist families to return to the level of work, study or training they were undertaking before COVID-19."
Shadow early childhood education minister Amanda Rishworth said rolling back the scheme would make early childhood care "completely unaffordable and inaccessible for many".
She also called on the government to ensure that transitional funding would keep early childhood education workers in jobs.
