How to Manage Casual and Relief Staff in Childcare

Every centre needs relief cover. Educators take leave, call in sick, and attend training, and the day still has to run to ratio. The question is never whether you use casual and relief staff — it is whether you manage them, or let them manage you. The centres that get this right run cheaper, smoother, and sell for more.

Casual staffing looks like an operational footnote until you add up a year of it. Done well, it is a quiet cost saving and a continuity tool. Done badly, it becomes the most expensive line on your roster and a red flag the moment a buyer opens your books.

Treat Relief Cover as a System, Not a Phone Call

The default approach is reactive: an educator calls in sick at 6am, the director starts ringing an agency, and whoever is available walks in at 8am having never seen the room, the children, or the routine. That works once. As a standing model it is slow, dear, and bad for children.

A managed approach builds the pool before you need it. The aim is a known bench of relief educators who have already been inducted into your centre, understand your routines, and can step in with minimal handover. Practically, that means recruiting two or three reliable casuals you call first, keeping their compliance current, and rotating them through often enough that they stay familiar with your rooms.

The familiarity matters more than most owners assume. A casual who knows where the nappies are, which child has an allergy plan, and how your sign-in works is worth far more than a cheaper stranger. Continuity is part of quality, and quality is what families and assessors notice.

Know What Agency Reliance Actually Costs

Agencies have a place. When your own pool is exhausted and you still have to hold ratio, a same-day agency placement is cheaper than breaching. But the price is real. Industry recruiters put agency rates at roughly 30–50% above the cost of employing the same educator directly, once the agency’s margin sits on top of the wage. Lean on agencies as a habit and that premium compounds across every covered shift, every week, all year.

There is also a funding nuance worth understanding. Under the Australian Government’s Worker Retention Payment — the funded wage support that was extended to 30 June 2028 (covered in our breakdown of the 2028 wage funding extension) — money paid to a labour-hire agency must be passed through to the worker as higher wages. It cannot be used to cover the agency’s fees. That rule protects educators, but it also means the agency margin you pay is genuinely your cost, not a subsidised one.

The strategic response across the sector has been to reduce agency dependence rather than fight the rate. Larger operators have reported lower reliance on casual and agency staff as the funded wage increase made direct roles easier to fill. The same logic applies to a single centre: a stable, well-paid permanent core needs less relief in the first place.

Hold Your Ratios and Your Qualifications

Relief staff still count toward your legal staffing — but only if they actually qualify for the role you put them in. Centres get into trouble when a casual is used to fill a ratio slot they aren’t qualified or approved to hold, or when an agency sends someone whose clearances haven’t been verified before they walk onto the floor.

Two non-negotiables apply to every casual and relief placement. First, the educator must hold the qualification the position requires and a current Working With Children Check, verified by you, not assumed from the agency. Second, the placement must keep you compliant with the educator-to-child ratios set under the Education and Care Services National Regulations — we cover how those ratios work by age group in our guide to staff-to-child ratios, so we won’t repeat the detail here.

The discipline is simple: never let a relief booking quietly drop you below ratio or your qualified mix. A casual who fills a body but not the requirement is not cover — it is a breach waiting for a spot visit.

Read Your Casual Spend the Way a Buyer Will

Here is the part most operator-focused advice skips, and it is where ChildcareLink’s transaction work changes the picture. Your casual and agency spend is not just an operating cost. It is a signal that buyers, valuers, and their accountants read closely.

When a centre is assessed for sale, the wage line gets normalised. A buyer wants to know what it actually costs to run the centre to ratio on a sustainable basis — not a number flattered by an owner who works the floor unpaid, and not one inflated by chronic agency use. Heavy agency reliance does two things to a sale. It lifts the historical wage cost, which compresses the adjusted earnings a buyer is willing to pay a multiple on. And it raises a question about the centre’s stability: a roster propped up by strangers suggests a recruitment and retention problem, which is a risk, and risk widens the discount. We unpack this normalisation process in our guide to valuing a childcare centre, and it is one of the first things scrutinised in any buyer due diligence.

The flip side is the opportunity. A centre with a stable permanent core, a modest and predictable relief pool, and minimal agency dependence presents as a well-run, lower-risk business — and that reads straight through to value. Fixing your staffing model is one of the few operating improvements that genuinely moves the price.

Build the Pool the Market Makes Possible

The workforce backdrop is genuinely better than it was, and it changes what’s achievable. The funded wage support has pulled vacancies down sharply and added tens of thousands of workers to the sector since it began (Department of Education and Jobs and Skills Australia data). But the shortfall is still real — Jobs and Skills Australia estimates the sector needs roughly 21,000 more qualified professionals, and the Australian Childcare Alliance reports most centres still find roles hard to fill. The detail of that squeeze sits in our pieces on staffing challenges and the educator shortage.

What that means in practice: relief educators have options, so the centres that keep a reliable bench are the ones that treat casuals like part of the team. Pay promptly, give them notice where you can, brief them properly when they arrive, and offer the regular days a good casual values. A relief educator who feels respected picks up your call first. That single behaviour — being the centre casuals want to work at — does more to cut your agency spend than any rate negotiation. And a well-staffed centre fills places faster, which is the engine behind both occupancy and value (see how to increase occupancy and our operating costs breakdown).

Key Takeaway

Casual and relief staffing is a discipline, not an emergency. Build your own bench, verify every placement against ratio and qualification, keep agencies for genuine overflow, and watch the wage line the way a buyer will. Get it right and you run a cheaper, calmer, more valuable centre.

Want to know what your staffing model is doing to your centre’s value? Talk to ChildcareLink for a confidential appraisal. Visit childcarelink.com.au or contact our team directly.

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman — Children’s Services Award [MA000120], casual loading and award structure, 2026
• Australian Government Department of Education — Early Childhood Worker Retention Payment (15% wage support plus on-costs; extension to 30 June 2028; labour-hire pass-through requirement), 2026
• Jobs and Skills Australia — early childhood education and care workforce capacity and shortfall estimate (~21,000), 2024–2026
• Australian Childcare Alliance / The Sector — difficulty filling roles and time-to-fill data, 2026
• Education and Care Services National Regulations / ACECQA — educator-to-child ratio and qualification requirements, 2026
• Industry recruitment commentary — agency staffing premium of approximately 30–50% over direct employment (sector estimate), 2026

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or professional advice. ChildcareLink recommends seeking independent professional advice tailored to your specific circumstances before making any business or investment decisions.