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Video shows childcare worker hitting baby and laughing about it at Affinity Education centre
Video shows childcare worker hitting baby and laughing about it at Affinity Education centre

ABC News

time11-05-2025

  • ABC News

Video shows childcare worker hitting baby and laughing about it at Affinity Education centre

The video is sickening. A baby cries hysterically in a bouncer as a childcare worker slaps her across the face — again and again — for fun. It was filmed at an Affinity Education centre in South Strathfield in Sydney's inner west in May 2023. A colleague recorded the abuse for entertainment to be posted on Snapchat with a laughing emoji. The footage is just nine seconds long, but it highlights ongoing systemic issues around staffing, oversight and safety inside the billion-dollar enterprise. It is one of many disturbing revelations in a 7.30 investigation into one of Australia's biggest childcare operators, Affinity. Owned by private equity, Affinity runs 250 centres nationwide, including the brands Papilio, Milestones and Kids Academy. It is part of a system where profit is too often prioritised over safety and care and the regulator is not up to the job, experts warn. Over recent months the ABC has gained access to the largest cache of internal regulatory documents ever released in NSW, triggered by a parliamentary order obtained by Greens MP Abigail Boyd. Together with leaked company files and video footage obtained by the ABC, the investigation reveals a sector in crisis, where child-to-staff ratios are routinely breached, supervision is poor, and the quality of experience and education is declining. This has contributed to an increase in reported serious incidents, instances of inappropriate discipline, and concerns about record keeping in some centres. Ms Boyd and insiders said, in too many cases, the regulator's response was limited to paperwork and warnings despite it having a broad range of enforcement tools at its disposal including enforceable undertakings, fines, prohibition notices, suspension and cancellation of provider approvals. As the newly elected federal government moves toward universal childcare, parents, educators and experts are demanding that quality be made a priority, not just affordability. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sees early childhood education as part of his legacy. But so far, his focus has been on expanding subsidies, not fixing the cracks in care, staffing and regulation that put children at risk daily. Former Affinity employees such as Loretta Dodwell, who worked at a centre in Queensland, describe a culture that is toxic. "The cost cutting and the lack of staff really caused serious incidents in the centre," she told 7.30. Ms Dodwell said at Affinity it was always about keeping costs down, including wages, which are the biggest cost of running a centre. "They were also putting on lots of trainees, like young trainees that were cheap to employ and that put a lot of pressure on the qualified staff," she said. She said the baby-slapping video was a symptom of hiring the wrong people and not enough supervision or checks and balances. Affinity said in a statement it acted quickly after being notified of the incident by the police. It said it had zero tolerance for any form of child harm. "The safety, wellbeing, and development of every child must always come first," Affinity CEO Tim Hickey said in a statement after declining an interview. "I want to express again how profoundly sorry I am that something like this could occur to any child in our care," he said, noting that while a single failing was one too many, "these incidents are not representative of the dedicated, professional team who care for children every day across thousands of centres." One worker was sacked and the other resigned. The educator who hit the baby was convicted of common assault and handed a community corrections order — no fine, no jail. In response to the incident and breaches, the regulator required Affinity to conduct refresher training for managers on child protection and reporting obligations, amend some policies and provide evidence that all staff had completed an online module titled Nurturing, Safe and Positive Interactions. It banned the worker who abused the baby from working in child care for a year. In a compliance notice sent to Affinity in August 2023, the regulator said during the investigation the two educators had "obstructed" officers by providing false and misleading statements through internal documents. Ms Dodwell said terminating individual staff members did not address the broader environment and cultural issues. "They [Affinity] are just not suitable to be in the childcare industry because they are just so greedy," she said. "They cut staff, they put the staff under so much pressure … they're just a big company that wants to make money out of children." Another former Affinity worker, Chey Carter, said Affinity was always about business outcomes, not child safety. "I observed a lot of good, but also bad. Children were being hurt … noncompliance and maintenance just being ignored and a toxic culture being promoted. "We were encouraged to compete against each other for the highest occupancy or who can do better out of business outcomes which harms the staff and the children. And I participated in that myself," she said. Ms Carter worked across more than 10 Affinity centres before leaving in 2021. She now runs a childcare consultancy and says many workers discuss low pay, bad working conditions and a fear of making incident reports when something goes wrong or they see rules being breached. She said there was too much under-reporting across child care, including when she worked at Affinity. "When workers tried to raise concerns, they were punished," she said. "Every time you tried to report something, you were penalised." In one recent case, a mother said she picked up her 17-month-old son from an Affinity centre in Canberra and immediately knew something was wrong. "He usually runs to us, and he took a couple of steps and got upset," she said. She said she asked the educator how he was and was told everything was fine. Affinity said in a statement it told the boy's parents the child was not himself and asked if they would like to pick him up. She said when she got home her son was lethargic, staring into space and did not want dinner. The next day his arm had swollen to twice its normal size, so she took him to hospital for some tests. At the hospital, scans confirmed a spiral fracture, an injury that can be caused by forceful twisting, which can snap the bone. She said she called the centre and they were adamant it did not happen there. "The orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital said it wasn't the kind of injury from falling and the suggestion was someone had hurt him." "I still don't know how he got the fracture," she said. She said they lost all trust in the centre and pulled him out. Affinity said it notified the department and launched an investigation. It said there had been no regulatory notices or concerns raised in relation to the incident. At a centre in Elderslie, in south-west Sydney, CCTV showed a toddler being yanked by the arm by an educator and pushed across a room in 2023. Documents show that in 2024 the same centre had issues with expired food, hygiene and paperwork breaches. Another shocking video at a centre in Epping, in Sydney's north-west, captures an educator forcefully grabbing the wrist of a child, dragging them backwards and causing a dislocation of the elbow, requiring medical attention. Hundreds of regulatory documents for Affinity centres paint a disturbing picture of what is happening behind closed doors. A compliance notice issued by the NSW regulator in July 2023 to the Epping centre referred to the dislocated elbow and said Affinity had racked up 79 breaches of inappropriate discipline and 51 compliance actions across its NSW network since 2021. It said the compliance history showed it had failed to take reasonable steps to ensure staff and supervisors followed required policies under Regulation 168, which mandated that all services had specific procedures in place. It said it needed to take steps to address this. The worker was banned for 12 months. At Milestones Raby, in south-west Sydney, a disturbing pattern of behaviour spans years. CCTV from 2022 shows a worker towering over a crying boy, then grabbing him from behind and lifting him roughly. That educator remained on staff and was issued only a warning. In 2023 an educator was terminated after CCTV revealed she had used a child to mop up vomit. In 2024, regulatory documents reveal another worker was banned for 12 months after dragging a child 8 metres, including up a cement ramp. Between 2021 and 2024, Affinity centres in NSW were hit with more than 1,700 regulatory breaches, averaging more than one a day. Despite this, the NSW regulator issued just nine infringement notices, totalling less than $2,000 in penalties. Ms Boyd said from the documents she has read and parents she has spoken with, she was concerned the regulator, the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority, was not doing enough to hold providers — and some educators — accountable. "The regulator isn't effective," she said. "The regulatory system here is about encouraging businesses and investment in a sector. "It's not about keeping kids safe. "And that's really, really obvious from all of the documents, the lack of consequences, the dismissive way in which the regulator is dealing with these operators," she said. Regulatory documents reveal Affinity centres being breached for hygiene issues, expired food and milk on the premises, broken furniture, staff out of ratio, and deficient paperwork including expired working-with-children checks, qualifications of staff and medical histories of children. In most cases, they are told to do better by the regulator. The list of incidents is long. At a Milestones centre in Armidale in NSW's northern tablelands in January 2023, a toddler was put down to rest and then vomited up two metal hooks used to hang fairy lights. At a centre in Cooma in the Snowy Mountains, a child was found wandering in the car park and the regulator was not informed. Police sources told us a male educator at another centre was recently charged with nine counts of sexually touching a child. In Bathurst, Mikaela Cummings said her daughter Willow was violently shaken by an educator at Affinity's Papilio centre a few days before her third birthday in January this year. She said, months later, her daughter was still getting night terrors. "I was told that she [the educator] chased her in from outside," she said. "She yelled at her, picked her up above her head and shook her violently. … Shaking a child, let alone a little toddler, isn't healthy for them, and then also to know that there was no medical attention given to her just to see if she was OK afterwards …" The family was not informed for nine days, which is a breach of the regulations. When the family requested the incident report, it did not include Willow's name. It had been written the day they asked for it. Ms Cummings said when she asked to freeze payments while an investigation was conducted, she was hit with bills. "I'm over $1,000 in arrears," she said. Mikaela's mother Lucinda said the centre treated children "like numbers on a spreadsheet". "No-one ever reached out about Willow's wellbeing. They only cared about the money." After 7.30 contacted Affinity, it wiped the debt. Affinity said it apologised to the family for a failure to inform them of the incident in a timely manner. It said it launched an investigation and notified the regulator. It said when such breaches occurred, staff were subject to "appropriate remedial measures" which could include additional training, counselling or dismissal. In this case it said it took "appropriate action to address the lapse" and there had been changes to management. It said the parents had not paid any fees since January and it continued to keep their place open at their request. In south-west Sydney, Frankie Scott said her daughter Stevie carried physical and emotional scars from her time at Affinity's Spring Farm centre between 2020 and 2023. She said when Affinity bought the centre in 2022 things went downhill. Good staff left and turnover was high, she said. "They were getting two-minute noodles … The toys there were broken, and I'd pick her up at 5:30 or 6pm and she would be in the same pull-up, and it would be heavily soiled." She said her daughter would come home with unexplained bruises and cuts. One time she had to take her to hospital for treatment to a cut on her head. "She was just so distressed going there [to the centre] … it wasn't safe. "And it really damaged her, her mental health as well as her physical health," she said, noting that as a single mother she had no other option. "They'd always keep the front area, like the foyer, very presentable, clean, meticulous. But you'd go into the rooms, and it would just be a nightmare." Within a year of Affinity taking over, the centre's rating plunged from "exceeding" to failing the National Quality Standards — the benchmark for safety, staffing and education. Breaches included unqualified staff, medication lapses, children left unsupervised and fake credentials. The centre was finally suspended for three months. Ms Boyd said the regulator acted only after media pressure. "If that doesn't tell you all that's wrong with this sector, I don't know what does," she said. Affinity said COVID-19 was partly to blame for the decline in ratings. It said it had been working with the regulator to improve compliance and had improved its safety. It said the regulator suspended its licence for three months, effective May 5. "The decision is disappointing as we have been working directly with the regulator to improve systems and processes to facilitate ongoing compliance at Spring Farm," it said. Affinity is not alone. Three-quarters of long daycare centres in Australia are now run for profit. Gabrielle Meagher, an emeritus professor at Macquarie University and a leading expert on privatised social services, warned this came at the expense of quality. She pointed to overwhelming evidence showing that for-profit providers delivered lower-quality services on average compared with their non-profit equivalents. Of the 300 to 400 new centres opening in Australia each year, 95 per cent are for-profit. Only one of the 10 largest providers is non-profit. The other nine are controlled by private equity firms, publicly listed companies and international investment groups, all driven by profit rather than child welfare. For investors, the childcare sector is an attractive opportunity, thanks to billions of dollars in government subsidies and grants underwriting the business. Since private equity firm Quadrant bought Affinity in 2021 for $650 million, it has expanded from 150 to 250 centres, or an average of one extra centre every two weeks. In 2021, its rate of compliance actions per centre was more than double the NSW average. By 2024, that gap had widened even further, with Affinity recording more than triple the rate of regulatory action compared to other providers. In 2021, Affinity's confirmed breaches per centre were about 30 per cent higher than the NSW average. By 2024, that gap had widened to more than 70 per cent. "They have almost double the amount of serious incidents in their centres compared to everyone else and yet they're allowed to have over double the amount of staffing waivers," Ms Boyd said. A staffing waiver is formal exemption granted by the regulator that allows a service to temporarily operate without meeting the usual staffing requirements such as presence of early childhood teachers. "That's down to the regulator. The regulator keeps giving them a free pass despite their performance being so much worse than everyone else. "They're allowed to expand and expand and expand." The NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority declined to be interviewed but said in a statement the safety of children was its highest priority and the foundation of all its work. It said: "NSW is in discussions with all other jurisdictions that the fines and penalty infringement notices in the National Law are inadequate and require significant review." It said that when considering service approvals and transfers, it took into account the provider's compliance history and quality trend across all of its services and it said waivers were only issued in limited circumstances, with child safety the most important consideration. It said it had a number of regulatory tools available including infringement notices, banning orders, enforceable undertakings, prosecutions and centre closures. Last year it banned 60 people from the industry and cancelled the service or provider approvals of 63 due to compliance or safety risks. Under the National Quality Standards, which set the benchmark for safety, education, staffing and wellbeing, centres with staffing waivers are not meeting the requirements for qualified educators. "If you have a waiver on staffing, you're not meeting the quality standard that relates to staffing," Professor Meagher said. She estimated that Affinity held staffing waivers for 23 per cent of its centres, which is well above the sector average and is despite it operating no centres in remote areas, where staffing shortages are more common. She said on average, those waivers lasted 17 months, with some stretching to two or three years, which is much longer than the sector-wide average of 13 months. Affinity said almost 18 per cent of its centres had a waiver, with the majority of those in NSW. It said it never used waivers as a cost-saving measure and that waivers helped support a challenging workforce market. It said more than 90 per cent of its centres met or exceeded the national quality standards. Professor Meagher's research shows for-profit providers rely more heavily on staffing waivers, but also keep them in place longer, and employ fewer qualified educators than non-profit centres. Nationally, Professor Meagher estimates that nearly 30 per cent of centres are either working towards meeting the national quality standards, have never been rated, or are operating under a waiver. With reassessments of centres occurring once every four years on average, she said parents could not rely on quality ratings as a true reflection of care. "You do wonder why they are allowed to keep opening new centres when they can't staff the centres that they've already got," she said. Professor Meagher said the government needed to do more. "Governments aren't paying enough attention to the kinds of providers that are coming into the system because it's quick and easy for them to leave it to the private sector," she said, noting it was hard to regulate it without enough resources, which made it hard for parents to know if the care their children were getting was high quality. For parents like Mikaela Cummings, who is now too afraid to send her child to childcare, the failures of Australia's childcare system are profound. "The trust that's been broken is unforgivable," she said. Her mother, Lucinda, said what happened to her granddaughter Willow and the way Affinity handled it opened her eyes to the state of child care in this country. "I think families in Australia need to understand the crisis that child care is currently in, so a complete and immediate overhaul of the whole system takes place for the sake of the safety and wellbeing of these children." Watch this story tonight on 7.30 on ABC TV and iview

NHL 25 adds new Patrick Kane and playoff Supernatural cards in major HUT update
NHL 25 adds new Patrick Kane and playoff Supernatural cards in major HUT update

Time of India

time23-04-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Time of India

NHL 25 adds new Patrick Kane and playoff Supernatural cards in major HUT update

NHL 25 Playoff Simulation for the Stanley Cup (via @EASPORTSNHL on X) NHL 25 Hockey Ultimate Team introduced an exciting new wave of player cards on April 22, featuring stars like Patrick Kane, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, and playoff performers including Tomas Hertl and Mark Scheifele. With Supernatural, Frozen Forces, Milestones, and Fantasy cards all dropping at once, players and fans are buzzing over the variety and power of this week's HUT content update. Patrick Kane headlines Milestones while Tomas Hertl and Mark Scheifele feature in NHL 25 Supernatural release Tuesday's HUT content drop honors both career achievements and playoff excellence. The Milestones set, created to recognize legendary endurance in the league, includes a 94 overall Patrick Kane, alongside 93 overall Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Jordan Staal, all celebrating the rare feat of 1,300 career games. Meanwhile, Frozen Forces cards pay tribute to recently retired players, including Alec Martinez, Patrick Maroon, and Chaz Lucius, each boasting a 93 OVR rating in what may be their final appearances in HUT form. The Supernatural set, based on standout Game 1 performances from the 2024–25 NHL Playoffs, features Tomas Hertl, Anthony Stolarz, Logan Stankoven, Mackenzie Blackwood, and Mark Scheifele — all rated 93 overall. These cards are now live in packs. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Brazilian Bikinis 2025 Expertinspector Click Here Undo Fan reactions are mixed as Fantasy cards shine while TOTS gets sidelined Over on Reddit's r/NHLHUT, the community reaction has been loud and passionate. While many celebrate the new Fantasy drop, some aren't thrilled about the direction of the 'Team of the Season' content. 'Stanley Cup Playoffs fantasy cards, tho… I know everyone's pissed about tots honorable mentions but we got new fantasy cards at least,' wrote a user. Meanwhile, another pointed out the odd timing of certain inclusions, joking, 'They gave Bjorkstrand a card. He's listed as week-to-week [laughing emoji].' Others are excited about the Fantasy potential—a user wrote, 'I got BND PLD and will probably build Jake Neighbours on the last day. I think FH cards for playoffs are much more exciting than TOTS cards that won't get upgraded for months.' Also read: Lane Hutson's incredible Rookie Rise: Why the Montreal Canadiens have found a Blue-Line star As the NHL 25 HUT landscape evolves, EA's willingness to experiment with playoff-based upgrades and dynamic Fantasy content has been a hit for many—even if it comes at the cost of more traditional seasonal drops. With big names like Patrick Kane getting the spotlight and young talent like Logan Stankoven earning high OVR cards, fans have plenty to chase this week. Get the latest IPL 2025 updates on Times of India , including match schedules , team squads , points table and IPL live score for CSK , MI , RCB , KKR , SRH , LSG , DC , GT , PBKS , and RR . Don't miss the list of players in the race for IPL Orange Cap and IPL Purple cap .

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