The 3 Day Guarantee, explained.

The 3 Day Guarantee started on 5 January 2026, and it is the biggest change to the Child Care Subsidy in years. The short version: every CCS-eligible family now gets at least 72 hours of subsidised care per fortnight, whether or not the parents work, study or volunteer.

What changed

Before January 2026, the activity test tied your subsidised hours to the hours of recognised activity (work, study, training, volunteering) the parents did each fortnight. Families with less recognised activity got fewer subsidised hours, and some got very few.

The guarantee puts a floor under all of that. 72 subsidised hours a fortnight is now the minimum for every eligible family. Families with higher recognised activity, a valid exemption, or an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child in care can access up to 100 hours.

What 72 hours a fortnight actually buys

Hours, not days, is the unit that matters, and the same 72 hours stretches differently depending on the length of the session you book. Across our four centres:

• At Normanhurst, West Ryde and St Ives Chase, a long day care session runs 11 hours (7am to 6pm). Six sessions a fortnight is 66 hours, comfortably inside the guarantee. That is the "3 days a week" the policy is named for.
• At Roseville, the long day care session is 9.5 hours (8am to 5:30pm), so 72 hours covers seven sessions a fortnight.
• Preschool-hours sessions at Roseville and St Ives Chase run 6 hours (9am to 3pm). Twelve of those fit inside 72 hours, which is more than a full five-day week uses.

The catch at 4 and 5 days a week

Hours above your fortnightly cap are charged at the full fee, with no subsidy. At an 11-hour day, five days a week is 110 hours a fortnight, well past both the 72-hour guarantee and the 100-hour maximum. This is why the distinction between 72 and 100 hours matters most for families booking 4 or 5 days: check which cap applies to you before you settle on days.

What the guarantee does not do

It does not guarantee a place at a centre. It guarantees that if you have a place, at least 72 hours a fortnight of it attracts subsidy. Places still work the way they always have, which at our centres means the waiting list.

It also does not change how the subsidy percentage is worked out. That still comes from family income: for 2026-27, 90% for incomes under $88,520, tapering to zero at $538,520, applied up to the hourly rate cap of $15.19 for centre-based care. Families with a second child aged 5 or under in care can get a higher rate for the younger child. The full rules are on our Child Care Subsidy page.

Checking your own numbers

Services Australia determines your exact entitlement once you claim through myGov. For a quick estimate first, our gap-fee calculator runs the 2026-27 rules against the real fees at each of our centres, including the 72 and 100 hour caps. And if the fortnightly arithmetic stops adding up, run your booking pattern through the calculator before you settle on days; it handles the 72 and 100 hour caps for you.