Latest news with #childcarecentres
ABC News
07-07-2025
- General
- ABC News
Concern over training for childcare workers
There's more evidence that Australia's early learning sector is in crisis. An ABC investigation has discovered overseas students are being encouraged to sign up for childcare education courses in order to obtain permanent residency. And as many of them have no interest in education, standards are falling in childcare centres.
Daily Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Telegraph
Difficult calls needed to fix broken childcare system
Don't miss out on the headlines from Parenting. Followed categories will be added to My News. If we are serious about child safety, we have to advocate for kids first and foremost. That means making difficult decisions, uncomfortable conversations, knowing the signs, and doing everything in our power to keep kids safe. Right now anyone who has entrusted their little ones to a childcare centre is probably struggling with guilt. But it's this broken system that has failed our kids, putting a dollar sign on safety most of us can't afford. The village we know it takes to raise a child is no more. Instead we are obliged to pay for a 'caring' community that has failed us time and again. I qualify for the childcare subsidy. So how about we take out the middle man? How about the government pays me to stay home with my kids? Because when there is no access there is no abuse. To create change we must understand what child sexual abuse is. Children can be abused by adults and other children in a position of power, in person, by phone or online. It can be kissing, holding or fondling, exposing genitalia, talking in a sexual way, intruding on a child's privacy, showing pornographic videos or images, forcing a child to watch a sexual act, child exploitation, or sexual engagement. You know your child best and when it comes to their wellbeing always trust your gut. That also means being attuned to concerning behaviour in adults and children who have contact with your child. As parents and carers we must be prepared to confront it head on – particularly when addressing the elephant in the room: Childcare. An obvious example we often fail to address – not just in childcare centres but in our own social circles – is nappy changing. It's a really vulnerable time for your child and it's important to be clear about Who changes nappies, Where, and What the change looks like. Feel free to say: • Wipes only, no nappy rash cream • In a change room with another worker in attendance, not an audience • That it has to be a specific person and that person alone. Despite these horrific circumstances, your child, and you, will heal. Provided you are brave enough to have big open conversations, be honest and don't shy away when explaining what happened and why it's wrong. Seek support. These wounds don't heal if left to fester. And trust that there are people fighting tooth and nail to see this broken system torn down, and a new one that actually prioritises keeping our kids safe built in its place. Madeleine West's advice to parents: 'You know your child best and when it comes to their wellbeing always trust your gut'. Picture: Sam Ruttyn MADELEINE WEST'S TIPS FOR PARENTS QUESTIONS TO ASK OF CHILDCARE CENTRES 1) What are the qualifications and training of your educators? 2). What is the ratio of children to educators? 3) When you're attending to my child's personal needs are the educators alone with my child? 4). What's your policy on staff using their phones or cameras? We've been promised there will be a blanket ban but it's yet to be enforced. 5). What is your child protection policy? Can I have a copy? Ask another staff member how familiar they are with it. 6). What is your centre's quality rating? 7). What are your policies on sleeping, toileting, and social media? HOW TO RECOGNISE ABUSE Emotional and behavioural signs: • Speaking/knowing about sexual activities • Playing in a sexual way • Refusing to undress or wearing extra clothing • Fear of a particular person or group • Fear of going to a particular location • Despair, worry, anxiety or fear • Withdrawal, outbursts or tantrums • Creating stories or artwork about abuse • Insomnia, nightmares • Being secretive Physical signs: • Bruising, bleeding, swelling, tears or cuts on genitals • Itching/pain in the genital area. • Difficulty going to the toilet, walking or sitting • Wetting the bed or soiling themselves • Chronic stomach pain, STI's, chronic thrush, UTIs or other such unexplained repeated concerns • Early onset of puberty. BEHAVIOURS TO LOOK OUT FOR & HOW TO RESPOND • Not respecting boundaries. Example response: 'I notice you allow my child to stay up past our agreed bedtime/watch M rated movies/play games outside their age group. You need to check with me first to see if it's okay.' • Encouraging or engaging in touch where you have indicated the attention is unwanted. Example response: 'I notice that you encourage my child to kiss/hug/touch to say goodbye. That's not okay with me. Lets talk about alternatives.' • Not having age-appropriate relationships. Perhaps ask the person in contact with your child questions about their work, family, friends, hobbies, and interests to gain more context and understanding about who they are and who is in their circle. • If you find an adult is talking about their relationships with your child or relationship problems, an excellent response is to say 'talking to a to child about your relationship problems is too much for them, it's not appropriate. I think you need to seek alternative support, talk to a counsellor or your own friends or family'. • If you find an adult or another child wants to spend time alone with your child and is making excuses to be alone with your child (for example a childcare worker wanting to spend time with your child outside of care hours), respond by saying 'I've noticed that you want to spend a lot of time with my child. I feel that's inappropriate, and so it won't be happening', • If you find that an adult or child is expressing interest in your child's sexual development and physical development. A great way to respond to that is to say 'I notice you make comments about my child's body and how they are developing. That makes us all feel uncomfortable. Please stop. • Another adult or child is giving gifts without occasion or reason. Your response: 'Thanks for the gift, on this occasion we cannot accept it'. • An adult or child is restricting your child's access to other trusted adults, for example at a family function. You could say 'I see you are discouraging my child from hanging out with other people. That's not OK with me and that needs to stop'. Madeleine West is a campaigner against child abuse. Follow her on Instagram @msmadswest, and watch her free webinar A Critical Conversation on Childhood Safety with early childhood expert Maggie Dent on Monday, July 7, at 7pm (AEST). Originally published as Madeleine West | Difficult calls needed to fix our broken childcare system
ABC News
04-07-2025
- ABC News
In Australia's childcare centres profit comes before safety
It's the stuff of nightmares. Broken bones. Burnt hands. Children strapped into high chairs for hours and force fed until they vomit. Toddlers yanked, shaken, dragged along the ground. Kids found unsupervised in car parks or roaming next to busy main roads. Babies left in soiled nappies all day. Ignored, neglected, left to cry. And then there's the video — just nine seconds long. A defenceless baby, strapped into a bouncer, crying hysterically as a childcare worker slaps her across the face repeatedly for fun. Her colleague films it, laughing, and uploads it to Snapchat. It's hard to believe it's happening in Australia's childcare centres but it's been going on for years, all in plain sight. But there are even more heinous crimes. It took the announcement of a 26-year-old male educator charged with more than 70 counts of child sexual abuse at a Melbourne childcare centre, before people started asking the question: is childcare safe? For those like me who have been investigating childcare for almost a year now, the news was horrifying but not a surprise. In Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, at least one report of sexual misconduct is made every day. And that's just what's tracked and reported. In Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory, there's no reportable conduct scheme, so we simply don't know. The Victorian man, Joshua Dale Brown, worked at 20 childcare centres, most of them owned by big private operators including private equity-owned Affinity Education, listed ASX giant G8 Education and United States owned Only About Children. Scratch the surface, and you find more. On July 9, a worker from Affinity childcare group is scheduled to face a NSW court charged with nine counts of sexually touching a child. In March, Quoc Phu Tong, who worked at a Seaforth centre run by Only About Children, was sentenced to two years in prison for the intentional touching of a child. Then there's Ashley Paul Griffith, a childcare worker sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to a series of offences at early learning centres, mostly in Queensland. His crimes, described as "depraved," included rape and the production of child exploitation material. Griffith's abuse went undetected for years, despite holding a valid Blue Card, due to systemic failures in the child protection systems. In March I launched a series of investigations into the $20 billion childcare sector, forensically exposing a system in deep crisis. What was revealed is how for-profit providers, now accounting for 75 per cent of the sector, have fundamentally reshaped the sector. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, on average the big operators pay lower wages, hire more casual and part-time staff, and experience higher educator turnover, than their non profit counterparts. At the same time, they receive the lion's share of the $14 billion a year of taxpayer money spent on childcare subsidies. These are taxpayer dollars propping up a system where some operators spend as little as $1 a day per child on meals, and where educators are placed under KPIs to boost occupancy and cut costs. When you follow the money, the priorities are clear. Profit comes first. Such an obviously stark difference to how we treat primary and secondary education. Childcare is a vital service for families turned into a money-making machine. The childcare sector has exploded in scale but the laws and oversight meant to govern it have not kept pace, particularly with the rise of the big for-profit operators, with their deep pockets and lobbyists in tow. It is also a property play. Children aren't just enrolled, they come with a price tag. They can be worth as much as $350,000 to a centre when you take into account childcare property evaluations, which are calculated based on the number of children the centres are licensed to enrol. Some ads even say "no experience necessary" for owning a centre. The brutal reality is Australia's regulatory system is fragmented and reactive, with each state handling complaints differently and no consistent national oversight. In many cases, regulators are under-resourced and hesitant to use the enforcement powers they do have. Centres with repeated breaches remain open. Serious incidents, including abuse, neglect, and unsupervised children, are often dismissed as "one-offs". They're absolutely not. Affinity Education offers a window into how the regulatory system is failing families. Between 2021 and 2024, its NSW centres racked up more than 1,100 regulatory breaches, averaging more than one a day. Yet in that time, the regulator issued just nine infringement notices, totalling less than $2,000 in fines. In previous statements, Affinity has said it takes concerns from families seriously. Thousands of pages of internal regulatory documents reveal the same problems surfacing again and again: unsafe sleep practices, staff out of ratio, and incomplete records ranging from expired working with children checks to missing staff qualifications and children's medical histories. In most cases, they are told to do better by the regulator. Despite this, since December last year, Affinity was allowed to expand — acquiring 13 more centres in NSW. Then there's the National Quality Standards which are meant to give parents peace of mind, a ratings system or benchmark for safety, care, and education. But they too are broken. One in 10 centres have never been rated and the others are rated on average every four years, with some as many as nine years, according to ACECQA. The flaws in the system are there for all to see. A worker shortage due to burnout and low pay, education providers exploiting the situation by offering fast tracked courses and some selling fake qualifications, which all undermines the quality of care. We've seen review after review. NSW had one and released the findings last week. Now Victoria is scrambling to conduct another. What about the other states? Do we really have to wait for a scandal to break before each state starts paying attention? Education Minister Jason Clare admitted to Sarah Ferguson on 7.30 that governments and ministers haven't done enough. They have been too slow to act. He is right. He is finally taking action introducing legislation to cut funding to childcare centres that fail to meet safety standards and working with children checks. But there are other fixes he can make including the establishment of a national childcare commission, a key recommendation from the Productivity Commission in September 2024. Or an independent review into the National Quality Standards or the performance of its oversight body, ACECQA. None of this addresses the elephant in the room: the dominance of private operators and the inherent conflict of interest between profit and child welfare. Nor does it tackle the widespread fraud and compliance failures uncovered in the auditor-general's recent report into childcare subsidies, which estimated $2.6 billion has been sucked out in the past five years. But as many know it is the tip of the iceberg. The sector is riddled with complexity, failure and risk. While there are some good operators and good, passionate educators, it is getting tougher for families to find quality care. A royal commission or independent inquiry is the only way to truly expose how deep the problems go. The Greens have called for it, alongside educators, parents and some policy experts. But the major parties remain silent. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dismissed the idea, saying a royal commission would "take too long" as the system spirals further into crisis. It's worth remembering the banking royal commission. The government of the day resisted it too, but in just a year it exposed systemic misconduct, helped restore public trust, and forced long-overdue reforms. Why do children deserve any less?
ABC News
03-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Federal politics live: Fast-tracked childcare laws to establish power for spot checks of sector
Federal officers would be given the power to conduct spot checks at childcare centres as part of fast-tracked laws set to be introduced later this month. Follow all the updates in our live blog.
SBS Australia
02-07-2025
- SBS Australia
'Families cannot wait': Victoria announces sweeping reforms after alleged childcare abuse
This article contains references to child abuse. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has announced urgent new measures to improve childcare safety following allegations that a former childcare worker sexually abused multiple children. Twenty-six-year-old Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been accused of abusing eight children, whose ages range between five months and two years old. Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material. Authorities have identified 1,200 children who may have been affected and are being urged to undergo precautionary testing for infectious diseases. Around 2,600 families have children at centres where Brown worked. The government said affected families have now been contacted via email. Brown worked across 20 other childcare centres. Police said there is no evidence other childcare workers were involved in Brown's alleged offences. He is due to face court in September. Mobile phone ban and urgent safety review In response, Allan said "more needs to happen now" and that "families cannot wait", announcing new measures that will be rolled out over the coming months. From 26 September, all Victorian childcare centres will be required to ban personal mobile devices — a policy that was previously left to individual facilities. "To avoid delay, we'll be putting all Victorian childcare centres on notice," Allan announced at a press conference on Wednesday morning, adding centres failing to comply will face potential fines of up to $50,000 and conditions placed on their licences. An "urgent review into childcare safety" will also be launched, which Allan said would be a "short, sharp piece of work" focused on immediate actions Victoria can take. Its findings will be due by 15 August. LISTEN TO SBS News 02/09/2024 06:17 English The review will consider options such as installing CCTV in childcare centres and explore whether Victoria can "go even further and act faster" than the national framework allows. The state also plans to expand its registration system to track early childhood educators working before the kindergarten years. Victoria's Children Minister Lizzie Blandthorn said: "We can do that immediately. We can do that within two months." Allan also announced a $5,000 "immediate-needs payment" for affected families, including those whose children are referred for precautionary testing. The payment is intended to support families with time off work, alternative care, and medical or mental health costs. Federal response and Working with Children Check reforms The federal government is also working with states to strengthen Working with Children Checks, with legislation expected by the end of the year to expand safeguards in early education settings. Education Minister Jason Clare said he was informed about the incident "over a week ago" and that it was one of the reasons child safety was discussed at last week's ministerial meeting — although the case itself was not directly addressed. "For every parent that is directly affected by this in Victoria, they would be frightened, and they'd be angry," Clare said during a Wednesday morning press conference. "I know that they're angry because one of those parents is a friend of mine, and her two little girls are directly affected by this." LISTEN TO SBS News 04/04/2025 06:53 English "My friend is mad because of all of the stress and the trauma and the crap that she and her girls are going to have to go through in the weeks ahead. This is serious, and it requires serious action," Clare said. He said upcoming legislation would include cutting off funding for centres that "aren't up to scratch". But he cautioned that Working with Children Checks are "not a silver bullet", noting that many perpetrators pass background checks because they have no prior convictions. Brown had a valid Working with Children Check. "It's taken too long to do the work necessary to make sure that our Working With Children Check system is up to scratch," he said. Child sexual abuse organisations call for a national review Alison Geale, CEO of Bravehearts, an organisation dedicated to the prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse, said the allegations were "deeply distressing" and underscored the "urgent need for systemic reform in how we protect our most vulnerable". "It is unacceptable that someone accused of such prolific and heinous crimes was able to move between multiple childcare centres undetected," she said. "We urgently call for a national review of child protection protocols in early learning settings, including more rigorous screening, monitoring, and reporting systems. "Every child has the right to feel safe and be safe, particularly in environments designed to nurture their development. Bravehearts remains committed to advocating for stronger safeguards, early intervention, and justice for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse." At least 79 per cent of child sexual abuse survivors reported they were abused by someone they knew, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. A 2023 study found more than one in four Australians (28.5 per cent) had experienced child sexual abuse. In more than half of the cases, the onset of abuse happened before they were eight years old. One in four Australians is not confident in identifying indicators of sexual abuse, and only one in five feels confident talking to a child or parent about sexual abuse, according to the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. The Greens have renewed their calls for a royal commission into safety and quality in Australia's early childhood education system. Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May said: "How many more horror stories from across the country need to emerge for the government to recognise the ongoing and systemic nature of abuse allegations within our childcare centres?" "We can't keep looking away. The government must establish a royal commission to uncover the scale of the crisis and chart a way forward to keep our kids safe." Victorian Greens early childhood education spokesperson Anasina Gray-Barberio said the childcare sector in Victoria was "deeply flawed". "We have heard the childcare sector in Victoria is deeply flawed, lacking transparency and oversight, and leaving the door open for abuse and neglect. "Everyone rightfully concerned for their children's safety today needs answers. "It's been distressing to hear that some of these affected centres were in my electorate of Northern Metro. My office is here to support everyone, and I encourage people to reach out so we can help you access support services." Readers seeking support can ring Lifeline crisis support on 13 11 14 or text 0477 13 11 14, Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged 5 to 25). More information is available at and . Anyone seeking information or support relating to sexual abuse can contact Bravehearts on 1800 272 831 or Blue Knot on 1300 657 380.
