You are. That never changes, and any management company that tells you otherwise is selling you something they can't deliver.

Under the National Law the approved provider holds the approval. You're the one the Regulatory Authority engages with, the one named on notifications, and the one whose fitness and propriety sits behind the service approval. We're engaged as an independent external management provider — we don't become the approved provider, the nominated supervisor or a person with management or control.

You can't outsource the licence. You can absolutely outsource the work.

Three years.

That's longer than some will offer, and we'd rather explain it than shorten it. Compliance can be fixed in months. Quality can't.

The first year is stabilising. The second is where capability shows up. The third is where practice becomes consistent enough to be evidenced, which is what a rating actually measures. A twelve-month agreement would let us tidy your compliance and hand you back a service that looks better on paper.

After the first year either party can end the agreement on notice, and we can unwind it by agreement at any point before that. The term commits us to the work. It doesn't commit you to us.

Three ways, and none of them require a fight.

By agreement, at any time. If you tell us it isn't working we'll sit down and work through it. Sometimes that ends with a change to how we're operating, sometimes with us helping you unwind the arrangement properly.

On notice. After the first year, either party can end the agreement on three months' written notice. The same period applies both ways.

Immediately, for serious misconduct or material breach. By either of us.

Your team stays employed by you, your records stay yours, and we hand over properly to whoever takes it on.

Capital expenditure and anything committing your balance sheet. Fee increases and the annual budget. Employment decisions, including the appointment of the Centre Manager — we recruit, assess and recommend, you decide and you employ. Anything touching the service approval. Lease, sale, brand and legal proceedings. Any change to your service's philosophy.

We handle day-to-day operations within thresholds we agree in writing at the start. One exception: where money needs to be spent immediately to address a risk to a child's safety or to compliance, we act and tell you as soon as practicable.

If we're ever unsure which side of the line something sits on, it goes to you.

We manage the process. The notification itself is made by you, because the National Law puts that obligation on the approved provider and it can't be moved.

In practice we identify the notifiable event, prepare the notification, gather and check the evidence, and get it in front of you inside the statutory window. You see exactly what's going in, and you're never finding out after the fact.

Some timeframes are as short as 24 hours from becoming aware. Missing a notification deadline is its own breach, separate from whatever the underlying incident was.

Usually four to six weeks from a signed agreement, with the first weeks spent on site understanding the service and the team before we change anything.

That moves for two reasons. Where your service is sitting when we meet, and whether we have the people to do it properly. We won't take on a service if we don't, because that would put our own team under pressure and our existing clients at risk.

If a service is in real trouble and needs help now, we'll rework our resourcing to make it happen. Tell us your timing.