Childcare in Maroubra: The Questions Parents Ask Us Most

One guide, from joining the waitlist to the end of the first month. The waitlist, the real cost after subsidy, the first day, sleep, food, sickness and the rest — answered plainly by the people who answer them at the door every morning.

Some of these questions get asked on tours. Some get asked in the car park. And a lot of them get asked at about 11pm, of a search engine, by a parent who has already enrolled and is now quietly worried.

So here they all are in one place, with honest answers — including the parts that are not especially flattering to us.

How long is the wait?

It depends almost entirely on two things: how old your child will be when you need to start, and which days you need.

Places for children under two are the hardest to come by, everywhere in the Eastern Suburbs, and families who join our list during pregnancy are the ones who tend to get the start date they wanted. Preschool places move much more freely, and there is real movement at the start of each school year.

Anyone who gives you a single number — “about six months” — is guessing. The wait for a Tuesday–Wednesday nursery place and the wait for a five-day preschool place are not the same question.

Why the baby room is always the bottleneck

This is not scarcity anyone invented. It is arithmetic, and once you see it the whole waitlist makes sense. The National Regulations set how many children one educator can care for, and the number changes sharply with age:

We are licensed for 75 places across the whole centre, and we are one centre, not a chain with a spare room down the road. When a baby leaves the nursery, one family gets that place. There is no second one.

The thing most parents get wrong: a waitlist is not a queue

Almost everyone assumes it works like a deli ticket. Join in March, and everyone who joined in April is behind you forever.

It does not work that way, and it cannot. When a place comes free it is a specific place: a Monday, Wednesday and Thursday spot in the Toddlers room, starting the second week of February. The question is not who has waited longest. It is who on the list can actually use that place.

So what genuinely moves you up:

• Flexibility on days. The single biggest factor. A family who can take Monday–Wednesday will be offered a place months before a family who can only take Thursday and Friday, no matter who joined first.
• Siblings already here. Families with a child enrolled are given preference. It keeps one drop-off instead of two, and it is how nearly every centre runs.
• A start date that matches when the place opens. “From February” and “from whenever you have something” are very different positions on a list.
• Being reachable. Genuinely. Places are offered with a short window, and we do move on if we cannot reach you.

What does not move you up: joining ten waitlists, or ringing every week. We would rather you rang once a term and told us if anything had changed.

When should you join?

When do places actually come free?

Not evenly through the year. There are two patterns worth knowing.

January is the big one. Our Preschool 2 group leaves for kindergarten, which moves Preschool 1 up, which moves Toddlers up, which finally opens nursery places. One school year ending cascades through all four rooms. If you are flexible on when you start, aiming at January puts you in front of far more places than aiming at July.

The rest of the year is families moving. People relocate, change jobs, drop a day or add one. These places appear with little warning and get filled quickly, which is exactly why being reachable matters more than being early.

Does joining the list cost anything?

No. Joining is free, it commits you to nothing, and we do not charge a bond at any stage. If a place comes up and your plans have changed, tell us and we will pass it to the next family. Nobody is annoyed — parental leave gets extended, jobs change, grandparents step in.

What if you need care sooner than we can offer it?

Then take something else, and stay on our list. We would rather say that plainly than have you hold out for us and end up with nothing in February. You can see every approved service near you, with its quality rating, on the government’s Starting Blocks service finder. Family day care often has availability when centres do not, and it suits some babies better anyway.

Plenty of our families started somewhere else and moved here when a place opened. That is a completely normal path and no one thinks anything of it.

What will it actually cost me, after the subsidy?

Our daily fees for 2026 are $189 in the Nursery, $184 in Toddlers, $162 in Preschool, and $100 for the Short Preschool Day. What you pay is not that number. What you pay is the gap between the fee and your Child Care Subsidy.

The subsidy has more to it than fits here — the 5% withholding, the absence rules, and how Start Strong is applied. We have set it out in full in How the Child Care Subsidy actually works.

Here is the mechanism in one paragraph. Services Australia works out a subsidy percentage from your combined family income. From 6 July 2026, families earning up to $88,520 receive 90%, and the rate falls by one percentage point for every extra $5,000 of income until it reaches zero at $538,520. That percentage is applied to your hourly fee — or to the government’s hourly rate cap, whichever is lower. For centre-based day care in 2026–27 the cap is $15.19 an hour for children below school age.

Two things families routinely miss:

• What’s included. Nappies, wipes, sunscreen, a hat, all meals and snacks cooked on site, the martial arts and music programs, yoga, incursions and the parent app are in the daily fee. Compare gap fees, not headline fees, and check what a cheaper centre charges separately.
• No bond, and no fees during our Christmas closure. Not every centre does this. Over a year it is a meaningful difference.

One more lever worth knowing: if your child is in preschool and booked for two or more full days, you can add Short Preschool Days at $100 instead of $162. Each uses seven of your subsidised hours instead of eleven, which for a lot of families is what turns three days into four.

What age should my child start?

There is no right age. There is only the age that works for your family.

We take children from six weeks. Some families start at three months because parental leave has run out. Some start at two because a parent has gone back part-time. Some start at three for the preschool program and have never been in care before. All of these are normal, and all of them settle.

What matters more than age is how the start is handled. A six-month-old who comes in gradually, with the same educators each day, usually settles faster than a two-year-old dropped into a full five-day week with no lead-in.

How many days a week should my child go?

Two days is usually the practical minimum, and this is professional judgement rather than a research finding.

Children build relationships through repetition. With one day a week, a week is a long gap — a toddler can arrive on Tuesday having largely reset since the last Tuesday. With two or three days, the room, the routine and the educators stay familiar.

Beyond that, the evidence does not point to a magic number. What research does consistently support is the quality of the setting and the consistency of the relationships in it, rather than the raw number of hours. So: choose the number of days your family can sustain, and keep them consistent. Three steady days beat five chaotic ones.

One practical note. Since 5 January 2026, all Child Care Subsidy eligible families are entitled to at least 72 hours of subsidised care per fortnight — three days a week — regardless of how much work, study or volunteering the parents do. This is the 3 Day Guarantee, and it replaced the old activity test for most families. If you cut back to one or two days because of the activity test, it is worth re-checking what you are entitled to now.

What do I need to bring on the first day?

Less than you think, because meals, nappies, wipes, sunscreen and a hat are already here.

Label everything. Not the tag — the fabric, in permanent marker. Twenty toddlers own remarkably similar sock collections.

And send them in clothes you don’t mind losing to paint, mud and the sandpit’s ambitions. A child who is dressed to be careful can’t join in properly.

What actually happens on the first day?

Ideally, not much — because it isn’t really the first day.

Before your child starts we run orientation visits. They are free, there is no limit on how many you have, and they run at your child’s pace. A stay-and-play session is about thirty minutes: you come in, your child explores, you stay. Then a slightly longer one where you step out for a coffee. Then a short day. Then a full one.

By the time the official first day arrives, your child has already been in the room, met the educators, and found where the good toys live. That’s the point.

Will my child actually sleep here?

Most do, though often differently from how they sleep at home. Children sleep in a room with other children, in a routine, with an educator nearby patting or sitting close. Some children who fight sleep at home fall asleep here easily because everyone else is doing it. Others take two or three weeks to work it out.

Tell us how your child sleeps at home — the sleeping bag, the position, the words you use, whether they need a pat or need to be left alone. We will follow it as closely as a room of children allows. And tell us if a long sleep here is wrecking your bedtime, because we can adjust.

What if my child won’t eat what you serve?

Then they won’t, for a while, and then usually they do.

Our meals are cooked on site by our chef — morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and a late snack — and we cater for allergies, intolerances and cultural requirements. Tell us about all of them at enrolment, in writing, and tell us again if anything changes.

Two things surprise parents. The first is that children often eat food here that they refuse at home, because they are sitting with other children who are eating it. Peer pressure has its uses. The second is that a child who eats almost nothing in the first fortnight is usually not hunger-striking — they are busy. Eating comes back once the room stops being new.

Does my child need to be toilet trained before starting?

No. We are a long day care service, not a preschool with an entry requirement. Children arrive in nappies at three, and that is fine.

Toilet learning goes better when home and here are doing the same thing at the same time, so tell us when you are ready to start and we will work with you. Pushing a child who isn’t ready — particularly one who is also settling into a new room — usually costs more time than it saves. Do send several spare changes of clothes during that period.

What happens if my child gets hurt, or bitten?

Both happen. Children run, climb and collide. And biting, in the one-to-three age range, is common and developmental — it is usually about frustration and not having the words yet, not about aggression. Our approach follows the same logic ACECQA sets out for educators: watch for the trigger, shadow closely, give the child the words, support both children.

What you should expect from us:

• We treat it, we record it, and we tell you. The National Regulations require us to notify a parent as soon as practicable and within 24 hours of any incident, injury, trauma or illness.
• You will be asked to sign the incident record.
• We will not tell you which child bit yours. That is not evasiveness — the other child’s privacy is protected by law, and naming them helps no one.

If it keeps happening, ask for a conversation with the room leader and the director. That is a reasonable thing to ask for.

How will I know what my child actually did all day?

Through the parent app: photos, observations, sleep and meal records, and messages to the room.

But the app is not the real answer. The real answer is the two minutes at pick-up with the educator who was with your child. Ask a specific question and you will get a specific answer — “who did she play with today?” works far better than “how was he?”.

You are also entitled, under the National Regulations, to see the program and to ask for copies of the learning documentation about your child. Just ask.

My child cries at drop-off. Will it get better?

Almost always, yes — and usually faster than the walk back to the car suggests.

Keep goodbyes short, warm and honest. Don’t sneak out. Tell your child you are going, tell them when you’ll be back in terms they understand (“after afternoon tea”), and go. A long goodbye extends the distress rather than easing it. Most children settle within a few minutes of the door closing, and we are happy to message you a photo once they have.

We have written about this properly here: My child cries at drop off. Will it get better?

What happens when my child gets sick — and will they get sick more?

Yes, in the first year. Children in group care catch more of everything, particularly in the first six months and particularly under two. It is genuinely miserable and it does settle down.

The rule of thumb for keeping them home: if your child is unwell enough that they can’t take part in a normal day, or has symptoms that spread, they need to be at home.

The specifics, including the exclusion periods for the common ones, are set out here: When is my child too sick for daycare?

Fees are still charged for days your child is absent through illness. That is how the funding model works across the sector, not a centre policy. The Child Care Subsidy covers 42 absence days per child per financial year, for any reason and with no paperwork — so a sick day still attracts your subsidy. Past 42 days you need a qualifying reason and evidence.

Do we have to be immunised to enrol?

In NSW, yes — with narrow exceptions, and the rules are stricter than in some other states. To enrol a child, we must be given one of three documents:

• An AIR Immunisation History Statement showing your child is up to date for their age
• An AIR Immunisation History Form showing your child is on a recognised catch-up schedule (valid for six months)
• An AIR Immunisation Medical Exemption Form, certified by a GP

Conscientious objection is not accepted in NSW. The Blue Book is not accepted either — it has to be the AIR document. And if there is an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease, a public health officer can exclude children who aren’t vaccinated against that disease.

You can download your child’s statement through your Medicare online account or the Express Plus Medicare app. Do it before your tour, not the night before you start.

What do the ratios actually mean?

They are the minimum number of educators per child, set by law, and they are the single most useful number on any centre’s website. Ours are in the table further up: 1:4 in the Nursery, 1:5 in Toddlers, 1:10 in Preschool.

Two things worth knowing. First, ratios are a floor, not a target — ask any centre how often they are rostered above the minimum. Second, ratios say nothing about who those educators are. A room at ratio with three educators who have each been there six weeks is a very different room from one at ratio with three who have been there six years. Around 80% of our team hold a diploma or higher, and our turnover is low. That is the number we would look at if we were you.

Can I visit, or call during the day?

Yes. Call whenever you want, and we will go and look at your child and tell you what they are doing. Nobody will make you feel awkward about it.

You are also welcome to come in. A centre that makes visiting difficult is telling you something.

More from our Parent Hub

• How to choose a childcare centre in Maroubra: 12 questions to ask on a tour
• Is my child ready for school? Signs of school readiness

And if there’s a question here we haven’t answered, email us at info@mjeec.com.au. If one family is wondering, five others are too — it will probably end up in the next version of this page.