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The Advertiser
03-07-2025
- The Advertiser
The sooner we close for-profit childcare centres, the better
Is it safe to take my grandchildren to childcare? Is it? What are the odds of them becoming victims of sex abuse at the hands of a predator? I don't care what the odds are. There should be no chance that we take children to daycare and they will be violated. Penetrated. Poisoned. Victims of utter perversion. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years, later that our babies - babies, toddlers - must be tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years later that they may bear scars of trauma we did not even know about. That we couldn't possibly know about. This week, we learned that 26-year-old Melbourne man Joshua Dale Brown is charged with abusing eight children at different centres in Melbourne. Some of them were as young as five months old. He is alleged to have abused them, filmed them. He worked at 20 centres. 20 centres. He allegedly did it over years, and the alleged abuse was only just discovered. This is an absolute disgrace. And the sooner we close all childcare centres which are run for-profit, the better. Get Affinity out of the sector. It was home to nine of the 20 centres where the alleged sex offender worked. Where was he working when these charges were laid? A G8 centre, also for-profit, and God knows how many kids he may have harmed before his alleged abuse was discovered. Did you know that the text message asking parents to test their kids for sexually transmitted infections was sent to 1200 parents? How would you manage if you got that text message yourself? Brown is obviously innocent until proven guilty, but the mere fact that someone who has worked in the childcare industry for a lengthy period is accused of such horrific crimes going back some years raises real questions about the operation of the sector. I would not normally interview another journalist, but I called Adele Ferguson, a Gold Walkley award winner who has now turned her focus on childcare. Thank God. She revealed horrific images of a baby being slapped repeatedly by "carers", also an Affinity centre. Those utter vermin filmed the incident and laughed. She told us about the centre owner who kept children on a bus during a quality inspection. And what does she say about who should run childcare in this country? It should be publicly funded, not-for-profit. "It should be about learning and socialisation and not profit," she says. The continued domination of the private sector in childcare has led to a serious misalignment of values. Instead of thinking about what's best for children, owners of these centres think about what's best for their shareholders, says Ferguson. This. Must. Stop. Can we seize what might be called the means of production of labour power? Those are the places where we learn the skills to contribute to society. Invaluable institutions which need to be protected. They are not protected right now. I asked Caroline Croser-Barlow, former senior public servant and now CEO of The Front Project, which focuses on early childhood systems, if we should ban all commercial investment in childcare. Anything is possible, she says, but it would be an enormous enterprise worth billions of dollars. "Is the safety of our children more likely to be in good hands if we did that? Probably," she says. "That's worth thinking about." More. Likely. To. Be. In. Good. Hands. That should be enough, shouldn't it? We don't see schools sold off to be run by private equity, do we? Mind you, the Albanese government's appetite for socialism isn't huge. So if we can't buy out every for-profit provider (even though we should), what other suggestions does Croser-Barlow have? "You don't have to socialise to get increased not-for-profit provision - but I understand the impulse which is to say profit dynamics are impacting on the safety and quality of provision." And here's when she kills me: "It is true to say that, on average, that taken as a whole, a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be high quality than a for-profit provider and a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be providing a service to disadvantaged cohorts than are for-profit providers." I see that there is a campaign by some that men should not be allowed in childcare centres. Look, there is a lot wrong with modern men. They are responsible for most of the horrific violence in this country and they definitely need urgent help away from their barbaric practices and behaviours. But in this case, it's allowing our babies to become commodities, their care bought and sold for profit. How tight can you keep your food budget? How many lies can you tell to make it look like you have enough educators to care for the number of children at your centre? And why not pay a pathetic amount to the casual who barely has qualifications instead of hiring experienced educators. One former childcare worker tells me that children are often left alone with one educator and that the workforce is massively casualised (which has an impact on the kids). And she reminds me that most child sex abuse is perpetrated by someone the children know, often in their family. The Albanese government did a lot to improve conditions for childcare educators - but now we need much more regulation, we need policing. We need to shut down centres which don't comply. And I swear to God, seize any profits made by centres where serious breaches happen. READ MORE JENNA PRICE: Georgie Dent, CEO of The Parenthood, has some very good advice for the government. We urgently need clarification around who is responsible for what in early childhood education and care. We must stop the fragmentation which makes it so easy for a predator to slide between one centre and the next. The Parenthood and so many others are calling for a National Early Childhood Commission to oversee all of it. Strict reporting lines. Ensure quality. Assure quality. Tough regulatory settings. "We need a far more direct relationship between funding and the required outcomes," says Dent. And the most required outcome? The absolute safety and sanctity of all children. Is it safe to take my grandchildren to childcare? Is it? What are the odds of them becoming victims of sex abuse at the hands of a predator? I don't care what the odds are. There should be no chance that we take children to daycare and they will be violated. Penetrated. Poisoned. Victims of utter perversion. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years, later that our babies - babies, toddlers - must be tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years later that they may bear scars of trauma we did not even know about. That we couldn't possibly know about. This week, we learned that 26-year-old Melbourne man Joshua Dale Brown is charged with abusing eight children at different centres in Melbourne. Some of them were as young as five months old. He is alleged to have abused them, filmed them. He worked at 20 centres. 20 centres. He allegedly did it over years, and the alleged abuse was only just discovered. This is an absolute disgrace. And the sooner we close all childcare centres which are run for-profit, the better. Get Affinity out of the sector. It was home to nine of the 20 centres where the alleged sex offender worked. Where was he working when these charges were laid? A G8 centre, also for-profit, and God knows how many kids he may have harmed before his alleged abuse was discovered. Did you know that the text message asking parents to test their kids for sexually transmitted infections was sent to 1200 parents? How would you manage if you got that text message yourself? Brown is obviously innocent until proven guilty, but the mere fact that someone who has worked in the childcare industry for a lengthy period is accused of such horrific crimes going back some years raises real questions about the operation of the sector. I would not normally interview another journalist, but I called Adele Ferguson, a Gold Walkley award winner who has now turned her focus on childcare. Thank God. She revealed horrific images of a baby being slapped repeatedly by "carers", also an Affinity centre. Those utter vermin filmed the incident and laughed. She told us about the centre owner who kept children on a bus during a quality inspection. And what does she say about who should run childcare in this country? It should be publicly funded, not-for-profit. "It should be about learning and socialisation and not profit," she says. The continued domination of the private sector in childcare has led to a serious misalignment of values. Instead of thinking about what's best for children, owners of these centres think about what's best for their shareholders, says Ferguson. This. Must. Stop. Can we seize what might be called the means of production of labour power? Those are the places where we learn the skills to contribute to society. Invaluable institutions which need to be protected. They are not protected right now. I asked Caroline Croser-Barlow, former senior public servant and now CEO of The Front Project, which focuses on early childhood systems, if we should ban all commercial investment in childcare. Anything is possible, she says, but it would be an enormous enterprise worth billions of dollars. "Is the safety of our children more likely to be in good hands if we did that? Probably," she says. "That's worth thinking about." More. Likely. To. Be. In. Good. Hands. That should be enough, shouldn't it? We don't see schools sold off to be run by private equity, do we? Mind you, the Albanese government's appetite for socialism isn't huge. So if we can't buy out every for-profit provider (even though we should), what other suggestions does Croser-Barlow have? "You don't have to socialise to get increased not-for-profit provision - but I understand the impulse which is to say profit dynamics are impacting on the safety and quality of provision." And here's when she kills me: "It is true to say that, on average, that taken as a whole, a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be high quality than a for-profit provider and a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be providing a service to disadvantaged cohorts than are for-profit providers." I see that there is a campaign by some that men should not be allowed in childcare centres. Look, there is a lot wrong with modern men. They are responsible for most of the horrific violence in this country and they definitely need urgent help away from their barbaric practices and behaviours. But in this case, it's allowing our babies to become commodities, their care bought and sold for profit. How tight can you keep your food budget? How many lies can you tell to make it look like you have enough educators to care for the number of children at your centre? And why not pay a pathetic amount to the casual who barely has qualifications instead of hiring experienced educators. One former childcare worker tells me that children are often left alone with one educator and that the workforce is massively casualised (which has an impact on the kids). And she reminds me that most child sex abuse is perpetrated by someone the children know, often in their family. The Albanese government did a lot to improve conditions for childcare educators - but now we need much more regulation, we need policing. We need to shut down centres which don't comply. And I swear to God, seize any profits made by centres where serious breaches happen. READ MORE JENNA PRICE: Georgie Dent, CEO of The Parenthood, has some very good advice for the government. We urgently need clarification around who is responsible for what in early childhood education and care. We must stop the fragmentation which makes it so easy for a predator to slide between one centre and the next. The Parenthood and so many others are calling for a National Early Childhood Commission to oversee all of it. Strict reporting lines. Ensure quality. Assure quality. Tough regulatory settings. "We need a far more direct relationship between funding and the required outcomes," says Dent. And the most required outcome? The absolute safety and sanctity of all children. Is it safe to take my grandchildren to childcare? Is it? What are the odds of them becoming victims of sex abuse at the hands of a predator? I don't care what the odds are. There should be no chance that we take children to daycare and they will be violated. Penetrated. Poisoned. Victims of utter perversion. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years, later that our babies - babies, toddlers - must be tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years later that they may bear scars of trauma we did not even know about. That we couldn't possibly know about. This week, we learned that 26-year-old Melbourne man Joshua Dale Brown is charged with abusing eight children at different centres in Melbourne. Some of them were as young as five months old. He is alleged to have abused them, filmed them. He worked at 20 centres. 20 centres. He allegedly did it over years, and the alleged abuse was only just discovered. This is an absolute disgrace. And the sooner we close all childcare centres which are run for-profit, the better. Get Affinity out of the sector. It was home to nine of the 20 centres where the alleged sex offender worked. Where was he working when these charges were laid? A G8 centre, also for-profit, and God knows how many kids he may have harmed before his alleged abuse was discovered. Did you know that the text message asking parents to test their kids for sexually transmitted infections was sent to 1200 parents? How would you manage if you got that text message yourself? Brown is obviously innocent until proven guilty, but the mere fact that someone who has worked in the childcare industry for a lengthy period is accused of such horrific crimes going back some years raises real questions about the operation of the sector. I would not normally interview another journalist, but I called Adele Ferguson, a Gold Walkley award winner who has now turned her focus on childcare. Thank God. She revealed horrific images of a baby being slapped repeatedly by "carers", also an Affinity centre. Those utter vermin filmed the incident and laughed. She told us about the centre owner who kept children on a bus during a quality inspection. And what does she say about who should run childcare in this country? It should be publicly funded, not-for-profit. "It should be about learning and socialisation and not profit," she says. The continued domination of the private sector in childcare has led to a serious misalignment of values. Instead of thinking about what's best for children, owners of these centres think about what's best for their shareholders, says Ferguson. This. Must. Stop. Can we seize what might be called the means of production of labour power? Those are the places where we learn the skills to contribute to society. Invaluable institutions which need to be protected. They are not protected right now. I asked Caroline Croser-Barlow, former senior public servant and now CEO of The Front Project, which focuses on early childhood systems, if we should ban all commercial investment in childcare. Anything is possible, she says, but it would be an enormous enterprise worth billions of dollars. "Is the safety of our children more likely to be in good hands if we did that? Probably," she says. "That's worth thinking about." More. Likely. To. Be. In. Good. Hands. That should be enough, shouldn't it? We don't see schools sold off to be run by private equity, do we? Mind you, the Albanese government's appetite for socialism isn't huge. So if we can't buy out every for-profit provider (even though we should), what other suggestions does Croser-Barlow have? "You don't have to socialise to get increased not-for-profit provision - but I understand the impulse which is to say profit dynamics are impacting on the safety and quality of provision." And here's when she kills me: "It is true to say that, on average, that taken as a whole, a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be high quality than a for-profit provider and a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be providing a service to disadvantaged cohorts than are for-profit providers." I see that there is a campaign by some that men should not be allowed in childcare centres. Look, there is a lot wrong with modern men. They are responsible for most of the horrific violence in this country and they definitely need urgent help away from their barbaric practices and behaviours. But in this case, it's allowing our babies to become commodities, their care bought and sold for profit. How tight can you keep your food budget? How many lies can you tell to make it look like you have enough educators to care for the number of children at your centre? And why not pay a pathetic amount to the casual who barely has qualifications instead of hiring experienced educators. One former childcare worker tells me that children are often left alone with one educator and that the workforce is massively casualised (which has an impact on the kids). And she reminds me that most child sex abuse is perpetrated by someone the children know, often in their family. The Albanese government did a lot to improve conditions for childcare educators - but now we need much more regulation, we need policing. We need to shut down centres which don't comply. And I swear to God, seize any profits made by centres where serious breaches happen. READ MORE JENNA PRICE: Georgie Dent, CEO of The Parenthood, has some very good advice for the government. We urgently need clarification around who is responsible for what in early childhood education and care. We must stop the fragmentation which makes it so easy for a predator to slide between one centre and the next. The Parenthood and so many others are calling for a National Early Childhood Commission to oversee all of it. Strict reporting lines. Ensure quality. Assure quality. Tough regulatory settings. "We need a far more direct relationship between funding and the required outcomes," says Dent. And the most required outcome? The absolute safety and sanctity of all children. Is it safe to take my grandchildren to childcare? Is it? What are the odds of them becoming victims of sex abuse at the hands of a predator? I don't care what the odds are. There should be no chance that we take children to daycare and they will be violated. Penetrated. Poisoned. Victims of utter perversion. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years, later that our babies - babies, toddlers - must be tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea. We shouldn't have to hear weeks, months, years later that they may bear scars of trauma we did not even know about. That we couldn't possibly know about. This week, we learned that 26-year-old Melbourne man Joshua Dale Brown is charged with abusing eight children at different centres in Melbourne. Some of them were as young as five months old. He is alleged to have abused them, filmed them. He worked at 20 centres. 20 centres. He allegedly did it over years, and the alleged abuse was only just discovered. This is an absolute disgrace. And the sooner we close all childcare centres which are run for-profit, the better. Get Affinity out of the sector. It was home to nine of the 20 centres where the alleged sex offender worked. Where was he working when these charges were laid? A G8 centre, also for-profit, and God knows how many kids he may have harmed before his alleged abuse was discovered. Did you know that the text message asking parents to test their kids for sexually transmitted infections was sent to 1200 parents? How would you manage if you got that text message yourself? Brown is obviously innocent until proven guilty, but the mere fact that someone who has worked in the childcare industry for a lengthy period is accused of such horrific crimes going back some years raises real questions about the operation of the sector. I would not normally interview another journalist, but I called Adele Ferguson, a Gold Walkley award winner who has now turned her focus on childcare. Thank God. She revealed horrific images of a baby being slapped repeatedly by "carers", also an Affinity centre. Those utter vermin filmed the incident and laughed. She told us about the centre owner who kept children on a bus during a quality inspection. And what does she say about who should run childcare in this country? It should be publicly funded, not-for-profit. "It should be about learning and socialisation and not profit," she says. The continued domination of the private sector in childcare has led to a serious misalignment of values. Instead of thinking about what's best for children, owners of these centres think about what's best for their shareholders, says Ferguson. This. Must. Stop. Can we seize what might be called the means of production of labour power? Those are the places where we learn the skills to contribute to society. Invaluable institutions which need to be protected. They are not protected right now. I asked Caroline Croser-Barlow, former senior public servant and now CEO of The Front Project, which focuses on early childhood systems, if we should ban all commercial investment in childcare. Anything is possible, she says, but it would be an enormous enterprise worth billions of dollars. "Is the safety of our children more likely to be in good hands if we did that? Probably," she says. "That's worth thinking about." More. Likely. To. Be. In. Good. Hands. That should be enough, shouldn't it? We don't see schools sold off to be run by private equity, do we? Mind you, the Albanese government's appetite for socialism isn't huge. So if we can't buy out every for-profit provider (even though we should), what other suggestions does Croser-Barlow have? "You don't have to socialise to get increased not-for-profit provision - but I understand the impulse which is to say profit dynamics are impacting on the safety and quality of provision." And here's when she kills me: "It is true to say that, on average, that taken as a whole, a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be high quality than a for-profit provider and a not-for-profit provider is more likely to be providing a service to disadvantaged cohorts than are for-profit providers." I see that there is a campaign by some that men should not be allowed in childcare centres. Look, there is a lot wrong with modern men. They are responsible for most of the horrific violence in this country and they definitely need urgent help away from their barbaric practices and behaviours. But in this case, it's allowing our babies to become commodities, their care bought and sold for profit. How tight can you keep your food budget? How many lies can you tell to make it look like you have enough educators to care for the number of children at your centre? And why not pay a pathetic amount to the casual who barely has qualifications instead of hiring experienced educators. One former childcare worker tells me that children are often left alone with one educator and that the workforce is massively casualised (which has an impact on the kids). And she reminds me that most child sex abuse is perpetrated by someone the children know, often in their family. The Albanese government did a lot to improve conditions for childcare educators - but now we need much more regulation, we need policing. We need to shut down centres which don't comply. And I swear to God, seize any profits made by centres where serious breaches happen. READ MORE JENNA PRICE: Georgie Dent, CEO of The Parenthood, has some very good advice for the government. We urgently need clarification around who is responsible for what in early childhood education and care. We must stop the fragmentation which makes it so easy for a predator to slide between one centre and the next. The Parenthood and so many others are calling for a National Early Childhood Commission to oversee all of it. Strict reporting lines. Ensure quality. Assure quality. Tough regulatory settings. "We need a far more direct relationship between funding and the required outcomes," says Dent. And the most required outcome? The absolute safety and sanctity of all children.
ABC News
02-07-2025
- ABC News
Why there's no ‘silver bullet' to make childcare safe
Sydney Pead: Parents send their young children to childcare, trusting they'll return home each day safely. But thousands of families are in shock after a Victorian childcare worker was charged with 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material. The alleged victims were as young as five months old. Today, Caroline Croser-Barlow from The Front Project, which works to improve early childhood education on whether the system is safe and how governments can fix it. I'm Sydney Pead, on Gadigal land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily. Sydney Pead: Caroline, in Victoria, a man has been charged with sexual assault offences against eight children who were under his care at a facility in Melbourne's South West. News report: Police have charged 26-year-old man Joshua Brown with more than 70 offences. The charges relate to eight victims in Melbourne's West between April 2022 and January 2023. Janet Stevenson, Victoria Police Acting Commander: As soon as we identified his alleged offending, he was removed from the community. He had a valid Working With Children check, which has since been cancelled. News report: In the past eight years, Brown worked at 20 other childcare centres around Melbourne. Health authorities are urging 1,200 children to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Dr Christian McGrath, Victorian Chief Health Officer: We do understand that this is another distressing element to the situation and we're taking this approach as a precaution. Sydney Pead: They're just shocking allegations. What was your reaction? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. Many of us have left our children in early childhood settings and I just feel enormously for the families involved, for the families who don't know if they're involved, that uncertainty is really hard. For the educators who are working at that service, I can't imagine the level of guilt and horror you must feel. And to educators more generally who I know are waking up today and just feeling really, really, really sad about this terrible thing that has happened. Sydney Pead: And Victorian health authorities, they're recommending that 1,200 children linked to the case be tested for infectious diseases. The impact of these allegations, it's just huge, isn't it? Caroline Croser-Barlow: It really is. And I think it's obviously really important and really good that the government is being so forthcoming and kind of identifying and contacting families to let them know that there's a chance that their child might have been exposed. The balance of that obviously is that it creates a lot of anxiety and concern amongst families and there's just no good way forward in this. It's just a really difficult situation. Sydney Pead: Well, the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, has spoken about this. She said the allegations were sickening. Jacinta Allan, Victorian Premier: As we know, every Victorian was just so completely horrified by those sickening allegations that were made public. And I know right across the state, so many Victorians, so many parents turned to each other and asked that question, like we all did. How could this sort of offending be possible within a child care centre? Sydney Pead: She's now ordered an urgent review into child care safety, a ban on personal devices in centres to come in later this year. Jacinta Allan, Victorian Premier: To avoid delay, we'll be putting all Victorian child care centres on notice that they will be required to adopt this ban on personal devices effective from the 26th of September. Sydney Pead: And the state will now strengthen its rules around the Working with Children check. Now we understand this man had a valid Working with Children check. Can you just explain how that system works? Because parents might think that that's a pretty good guide that their children would be safe with someone who has that accreditation. Caroline Croser-Barlow: Look, a Working with Children check is a background check conducted by the government that screens for criminal history and professional conduct findings. And so it is obviously a really important step, but it is only backwards looking. So it can only catch people after they've been caught the first time. And so a Working with Children check is important, but definitely not a silver bullet. Sydney Pead: So the Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, said that the Federal Government will ban the use of personal mobile phones within centres after the arrest and the conviction of a paedophile in Queensland. And that's because of concerns raised by the National Safety Regulator about the creation of child abuse material. Is the government taking this seriously enough? Caroline Croser-Barlow: Absolutely, the government is taking this seriously, I think. So I've been around the sector a little while, and what I'm hearing in the background is that there is more movement among ministers and among public servants than there has ever been before. But I understand from the community's perspective that they're sort of saying, well, why can't government stop this? Like we are always hearing these kind of new announcements. The ban on mobile phones has been something that's been discussed a little over the last six months. The New South Wales government has announced that it's going to do a pilot of CCTV and high risk services. And I really understand that the community is like, there's all these individual measures. Why isn't it working or what will work? And so I guess when I look at it, I think we need to be careful to not think there is a single thing that will fix all of these problems. To use a kind of health analogy, I'd say we need to strengthen our immune system and not just vaccinate against one individual. So we need to think about both some of these really specific questions around tightening screening or an educator register so we can track where people are. But we also need to think about how do we ensure that we have services that have child safe cultures? And that's a bit of a bigger conversation. Sydney Pead: Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. There have been allegations of sexual abuse in centres across the country. A Four Corners report by the ABC's Adele Ferguson documented instances of poor food quality, rough handling and abuse and neglect. Is it fair to say that the government's response to the incident is not to be taken as a positive? Is it fair to say that the entire industry is in crisis? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think that isn't fair to say. So it's the vast majority of services where parents are taking their children every day are safe and indeed high quality. And what we're seeing, I think, is the way that over the last decade or so, the carrots and sticks have gotten out of balance. By which I mean that the sector has grown much faster in response to Commonwealth funding on the table through childcare subsidies than the states have been able to keep up with in terms of investing in quality and regulation. So as we embark on kind of this next phase of Prime Minister Albanese has talked about a commitment to universal early childhood education and care and expanding access. Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: This is the single biggest investment by an Australian government ever in new childcare services that will bring the opportunity of early education to regions and suburbs that have been forgotten for too long. Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think this is a moment where we need to think, let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. Let's make sure that we don't just focus on growth, that we think about how we make sure that we're growing safely and with high quality. And that's going to require the Commonwealth, which does most of the funding and the states and territories which do most of the regulatory and quality building to work closely together. Sydney Pead: If there are these huge vulnerabilities in the system that put children at risk, should we really be encouraging the expansion of a sector before these issues are addressed? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I agree that there is a challenge that if the Commonwealth incentivises more supply coming online without thinking about how to ensure quality, that we might end up with lower quality services that don't actually help and maybe harm kids. So I think the first thing that would be very helpful is for a national settlement where the Commonwealth and the states come together and say, oh, yeah, actually, between us, someone needs to be responsible for quality. Someone needs to be responsible for making sure there's enough supply everywhere so that families can have access to high quality education and care. And it is someone's job to make sure the whole system is high quality and safe. Sydney Pead: So the federal education minister, Jason Clare, says he plans to bring legislation to Parliament in the next few months to cut off funding to childcare centres that fail to meet the national quality standards. The question is, how would he or authorities know if centres are falling short? Shouldn't they? I mean, they shouldn't be operating in the first place, should they? Caroline Croser-Barlow: So Australia has a world leading national quality framework. We really are the envy of the world, although it's hard to imagine it on a day like today. We aren't delivering quality to every child in every service. What Minister Clare is saying is that where services are consistently not meeting the national quality standard, things aren't getting better. Or where a provider who has a lot of services that aren't meeting the service, he's saying those people should not be eligible for childcare subsidy. And that's he's talking about bringing legislation to the Parliament, which would obviously essentially render the business unviable because childcare subsidy is such an important part of the funding of ECEC. This is really pleasing because it shows that the Commonwealth has stopped just thinking its responsibility is to make early childhood education and care affordable. And it started thinking, actually, we also need to make sure that the system is quality. There will be some problems associated with this. It's going to be a bit tricky. So the phenomenon of phoenixing, which we see in other industries, is not uncommon in early childhood education and care. So that's where a service might shut down and then the same directors of that company might reopen a service somewhere else, even though the first one was shut down because things weren't working well. But in general, they have pretty good ability to go and assess and look at what's happening in individual services. So I don't think it's it's beyond the government's to be able to do it if they if they really put their minds to it. Sydney Pead: What about if there are concerns about an individual working at a centre, but it doesn't become a police investigation, what is stopping that person from jumping between centres? Do we have a problem with information sharing and do we need mechanisms to stop people from moving on before police can get involved, for example? Caroline Croser-Barlow: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the conversations that is happening right now is about an educator register. And that would allow there to be a body to which complaints could be made. Those sorts of registers are obviously time consuming and kind of tricky to set up, but would add a lot of value. And again, I get the sense that there's a bit of momentum coming in behind that idea. Sydney Pead: What about the quality, the pay, the training of staff? Does that all play a role here as well? Do you think we get better care and safer kids if there's a boost to pay and training in these kinds of things within the centres? Caroline Croser-Barlow: Absolutely. So the most important predictor of quality is the relationship between the educator and the child. So services that prioritise that kind of quality, that are really intentionally creating those kinds of experiences are also services that I would argue are thinking a lot about safety. They're thinking a lot about how are we with the children? You know, what are the individuals interacting with children? How are we operating? Those are questions that are much harder to tackle if you've got really inexperienced workforce who might find it hard to know that something looks a bit odd or that might find it hard to say out loud that something's a bit odd. For example, we know that there's a really high use of casual workforce in some service types and provider types. And that's really problematic because if you're a casual, both you're not kind of part of a really high quality ongoing program, but also you're kind of at the whims of the of the employer. So it's harder to raise concerns and say, well, hang on a second, I've got a worry here. And I think what we're seeing now is that actually you need to have an active effort from state and territory and Commonwealth governments to improve quality, not just regulate for safety, but actually to invest in improving quality. And we can start to see some really good things happening. Sydney Pead: There will be a lot of parents out there right now who are sending their kids to childcare today with serious concerns for their well-being. What sort of advice do you have to reassure parents? Can they ever really be 100 percent sure? Caroline Croser-Barlow: I think the first and most important thing is to talk with your educator and the room leader and your centre director about how they think about child safety. So I would be asking them things like, how do you ensure that children are supervised at all times? You know, how long have staff been here? What's your turnover like? These are not in an interrogative way, but these are really good questions for services to think about in terms of how they are keeping their child safety culture alive. And so it's really hard, I know, as a parent to live with a little bit of uncertainty about horrible things. And I don't have any any magic answer to fix that. But I think always when you're in a service, think about how do I feel? Do I feel like this service knows my child? Do I feel like the educators know my child and care about my child? Does it feel like it's purposeful? Those are the markers of services that are doing the right things and I think are less likely to have these kinds of issues. Sydney Pead: Caroline Croser-Barlow is the chief executive of early learning advocacy body The Front Project. And if you have experienced childhood trauma or abuse, you can call the Blue Knot helpline on 1300 657 380. Today's show was produced by Kara Jensen Mackinnon. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks so much.
