Home-based, sole operator
Each educator runs care from their own home. No shared reception, no handover between shifts, no director walking the floor. The educator is the environment.
Why family day care
Family day care is not centre-based care with fewer children.
It has its own operational structure, its own regulatory surface, its own trust relationships, and its own failure modes. Every piece of childcare software on the market was built for centres first and awkwardly adapted for FDC second. That's the gap.
The structure
One educator, one home, one service watching over it all.
A centre has one building, shift rosters, shared rooms, and a director on site. FDC has none of that. Each educator runs care from their own home, supervised remotely by a service coordinator who might oversee 20 or 50 educators across a city.
Service-supervised, remotely
A service coordinator oversees 20, 40, sometimes 60 educators spread across a region. Oversight happens through documentation, visits, and trust. Not by walking down the hall.
Three-party trust
Centre-based care is two parties: centre and parent. FDC is three: educator, service, and parent. Every record, every payment, and every compliance artifact flows between all three.
The gap
Centre-based software assumes things that aren't true in FDC.
"One building, one manager"
Centre software assumes a director on site. FDC has a remote coordinator overseeing dozens of separate homes. Oversight needs a queue, not a walkaround.
"Shared rooms, shift rosters"
Centre tools manage room ratios and staff shifts. FDC educators work alone in their home. Rostering is irrelevant. Home safety assessments are not.
"One CCS service, one reconciliation"
A centre reconciles CCS for one location. A service reconciles across 20-50 educators, each with their own session reports, attendance records, and subsidy claims.
"Compliance is the director's job"
In centres, one director holds compliance. In FDC, every educator independently maintains WWCC, First Aid, CPR, home assessments, and NQF evidence. The service must track all of them.
"Parents drop off and pick up at the front desk"
Centre parents interact with a reception and a daily app. FDC parents interact directly with the educator, often through WhatsApp. The trust surface needs to be formal without being corporate.
The regulatory reality
The same frameworks, applied differently.
FDC operates under the same NQF, NQS, and EYLF as centres, but the compliance surface is different. Home-based settings have unique Quality Area requirements. CCS session reporting works differently when each educator is their own service unit. ACECQA assessments evaluate the service and the educator separately.
Home-specific Quality Areas
Quality Area 3 (physical environment) means something different when the environment is someone's home. Sleep, play, hazard management, and outdoor space all assessed differently.
Dual A&R assessment
ACECQA assesses the service and each educator separately. Both need evidence, both get rated, and a service's overall rating reflects the quality of its educator oversight.
Distributed CCS
Each educator generates their own CCS sessions. The service must reconcile across all of them. One missed session report from one educator can put thousands in subsidy at risk.
What twobabies does differently
Built from FDC operational reality. Not adapted from centre-based.
We started with the FDC coordinator desk, the educator home, and the parent trust relationship. Not with a centre floorplan. Every screen, every workflow, and every compliance check is designed for how family day care actually works.
Service-first architecture
The coordinator command center is a first-class surface, not an admin panel bolted on. Risk visibility, educator onboarding, and financial oversight are the product, not afterthoughts.
Educator-native workspace
Built for one person running care from their home, not for shift handovers in a centre. Daily tasks, proof capture, and compliance in one calm mobile-first surface.
Parent trust, not parent messaging
A formal trust record that replaces WhatsApp groups and paper notes. Attendance, fees, incidents, and authorizations. Legible and official, not casual.
For family day care
If you've been waiting for software that actually understands FDC, it's here.
We built twobabies because family day care deserves its own operating system, not a centre-based tool with the word "home" swapped in.