‘That's all they care about, is money': Childcare chain sets debt collectors on assaulted kid's mother

The Age

13 hours ago

Edge, a for-profit childcare chain owned by private equity firms, only cancelled the debt collection process after being contacted by A Current Affair this week.
A spokesperson for Edge said the company 'understands these circumstances are sensitive and the collection process has been cancelled'.
More shocking alleged child abuse cases are emerging including one exposed at a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry by one of the state's top cops.
Commander of the NSW Police Child Abuse Squad, Detective Superintendent Linda Howlett, revealed to the inquiry on Thursday a disturbing case of a childcare worker dropping a seven-month-old baby and fracturing its leg in two places but not notifying parents.
'The child was only taken to the hospital a week later where that child sustained a significant injury and was obviously in distress for a number of days,' Howlett said.
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A New South Wales police spokesperson confirmed the incident happened at Dapto in June and a 27-year-old female childcare worker had been charged with neglect of a child in her care.
The centre has not been named but Howlett claims it not only failed to notify parents but actively tried to cover the case up.
'When we approached the centre, they actually denied anything took place. It was the CCTV that we obtained, we saw the actual injuries and how the actual injury took place,' she said.
Discovering the full extent of a childcare centre's history is almost impossible in Australia given the secrecy in how the industry is regulated.
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Families are directed to a government website StartingBlocks.gov.au, which is run by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) to find 'trusted information' about safety standards at the 16,000 centres nationally.
But a search of Edge Early Learning, Morayfield, reveals it is 'meeting National Quality Standards' and that 'your child is made to feel supported and welcomed' and 'plays in a safe well-maintained environment.'
There is no mention of the two assaults 18 months ago or the former centre director failing to notify parents.
Another case involving Le Smileys Early Learning Centre at Gracemere made national headlines in 2022 after a three-year-old child was left on a bus for six hours, suffering heat stress so severe she was given a 5 per cent chance of survival.
The Rockhampton centre operators pleaded guilty to 4 charges and were fined $50,000 in a Queensland court.
But there's no mention of that on the Starting Blocks website, it too is 'meeting National Quality Standards' and keeping children safe.
Another case involves John Paul College, in Daisy Hill south of Brisbane, after school care which is deemed to be 'exceeding National Quality Standards' according to the trusted government website, even though it was prosecuted and fined $15,000 for allowing two six-year-olds to wander off more than two kilometres, on their own.
Chey Carter from Divergent Education says it's hard for even those in the industry to know where to find compliance information.
'Families, unless they know where to go, they also won't find that information,' Carter said.
'It's hit-and-miss. You go in just hoping that you're making the best decision.'
An ACECQA spokesperson said it is working with regulators to 'receive the approval to publish more compliance information' on Startingblocks.gov.au.
'All governments are improving transparency so families can better understand how early childhood education and care services are regulated and monitored,' the spokesperson said.
'This will be a key area of focus when Education Ministers meet on 22 August to discuss a range of measures for improving child safety.'
How the National Quality Standard ratings are assessed is also cause for concern.
The Edge centre at Morayfield had its rating assessed in April, which involves officers from Queensland's Early Childhood Regulatory Authority observing the centre for a day, or two at the most.
The centre receives seven days notice to prepare for that visit and put its best foot forward.
The Regulatory Authority decided Edge was meeting the national quality standards even though it had already taken compliance action over the assault of two children.
The details of that compliance action remains hidden from the public.
The Education Department told A Current Affair it is 'unable to publish compliance action that is taken against an individual educator as this is protected information under the act'.
Professor Leah Bromfield runs the Australian Centre for Child Protection and oversaw research on the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse a decade ago.
'Transparency, to me, is an absolute first principle when it comes to responding to abuse and neglect,' she said.
'As a country, I think we thought we'd done this, we had learned about the dangers to children and institutions, and we'd learned. We built a huge amount of evidence about what to do differently.
'When this is kept a secret, the only winners are perpetrators and the reputation of institutions. We are not keeping the best interests of children at the centre of what we're doing.'
Placing privacy provisions above the safety of children is what helped Australia's worst paedophile Ashley Griffith continue his vile offending at childcare centres for almost two decades.
The Queensland Regulatory Authority has found a number of breaches by the centres where he was employed but won't reveal which ones have been hit with any compliance action.
The breaches include 'failing to notify serious incidents within required timeframes, use of inappropriate or unreasonable discipline and failure to accurately record incidents or notify parents and guardians within prescribed timeframes'.
One victim's father tried to warn the broader public about the regulator's secrecy after Griffith was sentenced to a minimum 27 years in prison for his crimes last year.
'Parents are walking their children into these centres today with a false sense of security in its excellence rating,' he said.
'Their kids are having naps on the same cots other kids were raped on, being watched by the same staff who failed to stop it from happening.'
Whilst keeping the names of individual centres secret, a spokesperson for the Queensland Department of Education said the Regulatory Authority has 'communicated emerging findings and recommendations for prevention measures with the early childhood education and care sector'.
'Critically, the RA has also communicated the findings of the investigations completed to date to the Queensland Family and Child Commission, to inform the System Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Review currently under way,' the spokesperson said.