WARWICK mums and dads have been left in the dark as to how changes to child care benefits will affect tight family budgets in the midst of ever-increasing costs of living.

Sarah Dudin has just started her second child in family day care and juggling the additional costs, plus more paperwork and the potential for changes to payments and even hours of care has the Warwick mum concerned.

"We're not completely sure if we'll be better or worse off under the new plan,” she said. "And it will be a while before we find out.”

Mrs Dudin said things would be come even more difficult when she returned to full-time work.

"Dealing with Centrelink is very difficult,” she said.

"So right at this point in time, we're waiting to find out what it means for us - levys just went up so we had to make allowances for that, more changes could more money, but I guess we'll have to roll with it either way.”

Mum Caroline Sinclair said it was unlikely changes would be drastic enough to make a big difference.

"The staff here at Early Learning Centre are really helpful, so we'll be well informed either way,” she said.

Stacey Cantwell has been looking into putting 18-month-old son Scott into care.

"Under the old system I was eligible for 24 hours care but billed over two days,” she said.

"Under the new system I'm now only eligible for 12 hours but can spread that across several days, which may actually work out better for me.

"Merging the Child Care Benefit and the Child Care Rebate into one payment should make things less complicated, but I think a lot of families are quite confused right now as to how things will affect them.

"So hopefully less paperwork, less jargon, but fingers - crossed more subsidies.”