Hi, my almost-2-year-old daughter goes to family day care 3 days a week.
She gets really excited when I drop her off so I suppose she must really enjoy it!

When I was looking for carers, I actually just went with the first one I visited because she was just so perfect for what we wanted! We looked for the obvious things like safety, if the room was inviting, an outdoor play area and an indoor play area, I looked at the room the children sleep in during the day, where they eat, what sorts of toys they have etc. We also talked about what sorts of activities they do during the day, if they do any outings (ours does - every month during school terms the FDC bus picks up all the FDC kids and carers in the suburb and they go to the FDC office and have a play session for a couple hours). Our FDC is run by a scheme and is community based and they do fundraising to get more money for more toys/books/other equipment etc. I also asked about policies on sick kids, biting, absences etc.

Ours charges per hour. It is $6 per hour. It is a little extra (like 50c or something) for children under 2 years old. It is "approved care" so we get a bit back through centrelink/family assistance. We also pay an admin fee which goes to the scheme organiser. I cant remember how much it is, but its something really tiny. We also pay insurance annually, $4.40 or something tiny like that.

You'll need to ask if they provide food or not. Ours doesnt. We provide food/milk and nappies. She gave us suggestions on good types of food .Obviously something that is really easy considering she is also looking after other children and hasnt got any other staff members to help so she cant go away and prepare food. I just put food in a lunchbox for her.

hope this helps!