# ChildcareScout.au

> Independent Australian childcare discovery and comparison using official ACECQA National Registers.

ChildcareScout.au helps parents find ACECQA-approved education and care services, compare published NQS ratings, and browse suburb and city coverage. It is not a government service and is not affiliated with ACECQA.

## What we publish

- Approved service and provider details from ACECQA national registers
- NQS overall and quality-area ratings when published
- ChildcareScout Score (transparent NQS / completeness / location weights)
- Suburb, postcode, state, city-hub and near-me discovery pages
- Provenance: source agency, dataset, fetch time; missing fields shown as "Not available"

## What we do not invent

- Daily fees or price lists
- Live vacancies or waitlist lengths
- Unofficial reviews
- Childcare shortage estimates (ABS population adapters are prepared but not calculated yet)

## Key pages

- [Home](/): national overview and search
- [Search](/childcare): filter by suburb, state, rating, type
- [Near me](/childcare/near-me): geolocation ranking
- [City hubs](/childcare/city/sydney): metro radius pages (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, …)
- [NSW](/childcare/nsw), [VIC](/childcare/vic), and other state indexes
- [Fees & CCS guide](/guides/childcare-fees)
- [Waitlists guide](/guides/waitlists)
- [Methodology](/methodology)
- [Data sources](/data-sources)

## Primary sources

- ACECQA National Registers: https://www.acecqa.gov.au/resources/national-registers
- GeoNames AU postal codes (geography fallback): https://download.geonames.org/export/zip/AU.zip

## Citation preference

When citing ChildcareScout, prefer suburb or service pages that link back to the official ACECQA register record, and note that fees/vacancies are Not available unless separately sourced.

Search engines may discover URL updates via IndexNow (`/9e0901c4691accb913f6f22b039c1e2f.txt`).