History

Families At Work commenced life as the Women's Trade Union Commission (WTUC) in 1975. It was established with a grant from International Women's Year funds.

A group of women unionists applied for the grant as they believed women should be more involved in the Trade Union movement. Membership was open to all women unionists.  The aims of the organisation were to improve the status of women in the union movement, encourage unions to recognise the needs of women workers and promote a greater participation of women members in decision making in the union movement.

It became obvious early on that child care was one of the most important issues affecting women workers at the time.

In 1977, the organisation sought funds to employ a child care co-ordinator. This was granted by the Commonwealth.

The shift to work related child care occurred in late 1976, when the WTUC received a contract with Copeland Development to establish and manage the Eden Park Child Care Centre at North Ryde.

By 1980 the organisation's functions were split in two to become the Women's Information Resource Centre and the part that carried on in this organisation: Children's Services Resource and Development (CSRD).  CSRD's primary objective was to establish and develop children's services that assist working parents.

Funding decreases brought about the next change in 1989 with the decision to contract work on a fee for service basis to become independent of government funding.  The name was also changed to Childcare At Work, a much more memorable name than Children's Services Resource and Development, reflecting the increased focus on women and workforce participation.

In 1990 government funding was completely withdrawn, two years earlier than anticipated. The Board of Directors was faced with the decisions to:

• close the organisation's doors, which would mean the loss of a unique service and the momentum that the organisation had established, right at the time the issue of employer supported child care was front page news ; or 
• re-incorporate as a private company with the employees as the directors

We took the second, more positive option.  In July 1991, three of the employees took over the company (Prue Warrilow, Susan Biggs, and Karen Fisher). The new organisation retained the name Childcare At Work.  The new private company became Childcare At Work Australia Pty Ltd.  The company prospered and grew and in 1996 changed the name again to Families At Work.  This name change reflected the acknowledgment that balance included all family members not just children.

It no longer just provided companies with assistance to establish employer supported child care.  The assistance provided was much broader, and included advice and help for companies wanting to transform themselves into more family friendly places to work - flexible work practices, information services, training sessions as well as child care.

Our priorities remained the same:

• to assist workers to more easily combine paid work with personal responsibilities, and
• to contribute to the debate on, and establish the best quality dependent care services.

In 1994, the Federal government funded Families At Work to establish the Work and Childcare Advisory Service in Queensland, and then later in 1996 in Western Australia and Northern Territory. The company opened offices in Brisbane and Perth and began to service the whole of the country.  The company grew into a highly successful business.  The number of staff continued expanding as our services grew and developed, with a head office in Sydney and staff in four separate work-based child care centres in NSW and Queensland.  Numbers of clients also continued to grow.

Karen Fisher and Sue Biggs left the company in 1997 and 1998 respectively.  Prue Warrilow now solely owns Families At Work.

Throughout the last 27 years the company in its many permutations has built up relationships and affiliations with many individuals and groups. The company continues to work with many diverse organisations across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Families At Work continues to be a very successful, dynamic, growing small business with many years ahead of us.