All New South Wales children will only be eligible for one more summer sport voucher next financial year, as the Active and Creative Kids scheme is wound back.
NSW Premier Chris Minns is significantly pulling back the voucher program from January 2024 by offering it on a means-tested basis.
Families on tax benefit A will still be eligible to receive the vouchers but all other children would be ineligible.
As for this year's winter sport, families have until Friday to use their vouchers before they expire on June 30.
Implemented by the former Coalition government in 2018 to relieve cost-of-living pressures and see more children engage in sports and extracurricular activities, Active Kids provides families with a $100 voucher for each school-aged child to go towards sport or active recreation.
In a similar vein, Creative Kids is a $100 voucher to be spent on creative or cultural pursuits such as music lessons, art classes, drama or learning a language.
So how can families still make the most of the vouchers, and what organisations will still take them?
Where to use Active Kids vouchers
All school-enrolled children aged 4½ to 18 in New South Wales with a current Medicare card are eligible for the $100 vouchers until January 2024.
This includes those who are home-schooled or enrolled in secondary school education at TAFE NSW.
While the vouchers expire at the end of this month, the sports or activities don't necessarily have to be undertaken by then – so long as the provider redeems the voucher via the Service NSW portal by June 30.
This leaves families with a range of options to make the most of the vouchers, including paying ahead for your child's next term of swimming or tennis lessons.
Many clubs will allow you to do this upfront online by entering your voucher details when you pay the fees. For others, you may need to sign up and complete your registration before contacting the club to get a credit placed on your account.
Alternatively, you could use this as an opportunity to explore something new, such as a school holiday program in the circus arts and flying trapeze, or the less adventurous could sign up for mindfulness and meditation classes.
Or you could sign your child up for Scouts and use the voucher upfront to cover the cost of membership and registration.
It's worth noting that the vouchers can only be used for one transaction, so if your purchase is less than $100, you'll lose the remainder.
Where to use Creative Kids vouchers
Using these vouchers may seem less straightforward for many parents than Active Kids, but the scope is wide.
Valid creative pursuits include everything from the more obvious art, music and drama classes through to the more obscure - with coding, parkour workshops, architecture and robotics programs all fair game.
Many dance and gymnastics classes are also able to accept both Active and Creative Kids vouchers, meaning you could potentially save up to $200 off the cost of one child's lessons.
Kids can't make it to in-person classes?
Many providers are offering online creative workshops where kids can join others in real-time with tutorials led by an expert, such as tie-dye, clay modelling and painting workshops run by Charlie Boots
There are options for the tech heads too, with coding camps and engineering clubs accepting the vouchers.
Another option is to sign up for an annual family pass to a cultural site, such as the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, which includes access to art workshops and select performances for all your children throughout the year.
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