I did it by correspondence. I'm currently director of a CCC, so have supervised a lot of other people go through theirs.
I did mine through tafe nsw. OTEN (open training and education network) offers it and were really very good. You do need a good deal of motivation - I look back now and wonder where I got it from! They have an incredible knack of explaining things in a very broad spectrum way, and the support centre is very good - you're not tied up wit one particular teacher the way some private providers do. So if you're stuck, you ring OTEN and whichever children's services teacher is available, you just call. Others, if your teacher is away, or whatever, you're stuck until you can get in touch with them. So check them out. You don't have to be NSW based.
My other advice is to do your quals through a real tafe (ie govt provider) I just think the experience is more complete, they're not as penny pinching as others, and in my experience, staff who have studied this way are better equipped for work in the industry.
Cost, from my cruddy memory and what others around me are paying - between $500 and $1500?? Mine was at the lower end of the scale but it was a loooooong time ago.