Forget knee-jerk measures - parents know the change needed for safer childcare

Sydney Morning Herald

17-07-2025

Australians absorbed the brutal news this month that a Melbourne childcare worker had been charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material. Over nine years, the man worked at as many as 20 childcare centres, and his alleged victims were aged between five months and two years old.
At first, I took in this news like everyone – confused and frustrated by how an alleged crime of this scale and violence could pass through our community seemingly unnoticed for so long.
Then I processed it as a parent and asked the unavoidable questions: What if these allegations related to my child? Could this happen to her?
Finally, I absorbed it as a client. My daughter attends a small, caring childcare centre four days a week. During that time, she's looked after by a group of women I've come to know and trust deeply. She has been in care since she was five months old. Not because I wanted her to be, but because like many parents, financial pressures meant I had to return to work as soon as I could.
Towards the end of my maternity leave and throughout her early months in care, I was wracked with guilt, grief and anger. I felt like a failure for having built a life that required me to prise my crying baby from my chest each day so that I could serve businesses I didn't care about, just to pay a mortgage that interest rates meant I could hardly afford. One of the few sources of comfort during those early months came from the women who work at the childcare centre my daughter attends. I trusted that they cared about her, and me. Often they would point to their own screaming children in neighbouring rooms and say 'I get it' as they prised her from my arms. And they do get it. But I'm not always sure their bosses do.
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While having a community feel, the centre is part of an ASX-listed conglomerate that runs more than 430 childcare centres nationwide – one of which the alleged offender worked at. In 2024, the company reported $1 billion in revenue and an after-tax profit of $67.7 million. Those numbers probably affected what happened next.
A few days after the allegations came to light, perhaps sensing my fear and instinct to quit my job and never let my child out of sight again, I received an email from my daughter's centre. It was written by the managers – two women whose own children attend rooms that neighbour my daughter's. As they've done many times, they shared their own experiences of modern and often scary parenting, this time expressing personal anguish and confusion and offering support pathways to parents, including links to counselling services and resources on talking to children about consent.
A few hours later, the centre's head office sent another email. In a distinctly corporate tone, an unfamiliar author sought to assure me that safety and wellbeing were the company's highest priorities. They spoke vaguely of training, 'secure environments' and 'cybersecurity measures'.