WOCS in partnership with Child Australia investigated and developed supports for volunteers operating community child care services in the Wheatbelt. The Lotterywest funded project was developed in response to concerns regarding the sustainability of rural child care services and the issues and barriers encountered by volunteers in establishing and operating services. The project was completed in October 2009.

The supports developed included forums, the WOCS’ Website: www.wocs.com.au and the release of the Wheatbelt Child Care Resource Manual. The manual is being distributed to all Wheatbelt Child Care services and is also available for download from the Resources and Publications page.

During the course of the Lotterywest project needs were identified which were outside the scope of the funding. Additional funding was successfully sourced through the Wheatbelt Development Commission Regional Grants Scheme to address some of these needs.
On the 1st November 2009 the Wheatbelt Regional Child Care Support project commenced.

The Wheatbelt Regional Child Care Support project aims to design and implement useable tool/s to enable communities to determine current and future child care needs in both the local and wider community.

The tool/s will encourage planning and assessment of the community capacity (physical infrastructure, population and skills) to establish, operate and manage a service.

The Wheatbelt Regional Childcare Support (WRCS) project has been funded through the Royalties for Regions - Regional Grants Scheme for a 12 month period (1/11/09 – 31/10/10) enabling a focus on achieving the following outcomes:

• Developing a toolkit to facilitate analysis of the local care needs and service viability
• Project /strategic planning, templates, resources, information and training on regional models of sustainable child care
• Developing and providing resources and support prior to child care operation or while transitioning to alternative child care models
• Coordinating / facilitating a “Wheatbelt Roadshow” involving key stakeholders and agencies presenting up to date information with particular reference to the national early years learning framework