7 days ago
Documents reveal childcare workers without knowledge or training to keep kids safe
Children are being exposed to childcare staff who lack basic training in first aid, child protection or hygiene practices.
In some cases these failures have resulted in serious injury and presented "suffocation risks", documents have revealed.
Experts say the failures are driven by substandard training, lax and poorly resourced regulation and the rapid expansion of private operators cutting corners to protect their bottom line.
These failures are part of a deepening childcare crisis in Australia.
The revelations follow an ABC investigation that uncovered how thousands of students are enrolling in fast-tracked childcare courses, some buying fake qualifications, others using the sector as a pathway to permanent residency.
The scale of the problem is laid bare in a cache of regulatory documents seen by 7.30. Across centre after centre, the same issues repeat: educators entering services without the knowledge or training to keep children safe.
They include:
● Educators failing to follow safe-sleep guidelines, including placing babies face-down or wrapped unsafely.
● Children left alone in bathrooms and outdoor areas.
● Injuries and other serious incidents not reported to families, despite mandatory reporting laws.
● Staff without child protection training and unable to recognise signs of harm, or who to report it to.
● Staff with expired or missing Working With Children Checks.
● Poor understanding of hygiene and health, including unwashed hands, expired asthma plans and mishandled medication.
● Educators falling asleep on shift.
A regulatory insider, who has visited dozens of childcare centres, said many educators don't know the basic rules for keeping children safe.
"There are no real consequences for services that breach [safety standards]," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
"They get a letter, make a few changes on paper, and we close the case. It doesn't change anything.
"Unless approved providers are held accountable — and most of them never even set foot in a service — nothing will change."
The childcare crisis was thrust into the national spotlight with the arrest of Joshua Dale Brown, a Melbourne childcare worker charged with more than 70 child abuse offences, including against babies as young as five-months-old.
Since 2017 Mr Brown worked at 20 different centres, all for-profit — including nine run by Affinity Education, four by the ASX-listed G8 Education, which operates more than 20 brands (since Brown's arrest, G8's shares have tanked almost 20 per cent), and one owned by Only About Children, a subsidiary of US-listed Bright Horizons.
His case follows mounting public alarm over the state of the sector, fuelled by a series of ABC investigations including Four Corners' 'Betrayal of Trust' and multiple 7.30 reports revealing a litany of abuse, cover-ups, the rise of private operators putting profit first, and a regulatory system failing to protect children.
Governments have since introduced reforms but the crisis is far from contained.
Among some of the more damning cases exposed in the regulatory documents is that of 3 Bears, a private operator run by Dinh Trang, who operated three centres over a decade before being shut down in 2024. In that time, the services racked up 363 breaches.
The 3 Bears rap sheet is long: "Inadequate knowledge of the requirements under the child protection law, inadequate health and hygiene practices, inappropriate educator interactions with children, inaccurate record keeping in relation to enrolment records, children's attendance records, staff and students records and records of educators working directly with children."
In July 2023, the regulator asked for proof that staff had completed safe-sleep training. One educator had completed the full 85-minute course. Two submitted certificates showing it was done in just two minutes. Others hadn't done it at all.
The consequences of poor training were soon evident. In September 2023, a child at the centre suffered a serious knee injury, requiring specialist surgery.
Staff told the child to elevate their leg — no first aid, no ambulance. The parents called emergency services when they arrived and saw how serious the injury was.
Then in February 2024, a child with known dairy and nut allergies had a severe allergic reaction, including swollen lips, welts, and distress. Educators treated it by applying moisturiser for dry skin.
The regulatory documents are damning — and they all point to the same failure: A broken system where underqualified staff are tasked with protecting children, and little is done to stop it.
Mr Trang denies any wrongdoing.
At Bright Achievers, which is also privately owned, regulators found staff lacked any evidence of child protection training, failed to follow basic hygiene practices, and had no systems in place to manage food safety — posing direct health risks to children.
At Squiggler Academy, compliance reports include children seen eating by the regulator without washing their hands, and educators failing to prompt them.
Medication logs were incomplete, and one child's asthma plan had expired a year earlier. When asked if asthma plans existed, the responsible person replied, "I don't think so." No staff had up-to-date asthma or anaphylaxis training.
At Shepherd Early Learning in Mays Hill an emergency action notice in 2024 revealed several issues after a regulatory inspector visited the centre.
Those issues include a toddler found being face down with a hooded jumper on. In another room there was a similar issue where a child was asleep with a hooded jumper on, lying face down.
The centre did not respond to questions.
"This presents a potential suffocation risk," the document states.
It said that in a cupboard accessible to children a can of Glen 20 was stored and that the child-safe lock on the cupboard was broken.
An electrical outlet in the cot room was uncovered and in the children's bathroom plastic bags were stored in open containers accessible to children.
In April 2024 the family of a child complained that clothing was placed directly into the child's bag with faeces on it and not into a plastic bag, raising hygiene concerns.
Bright Achievers, Squiggler Academy and Shepherd Early Learning in Mays Hill were all contacted for comment but did not respond.
At the now closed Strawberry Fields Early Learning Centre in Kanwal, NSW a compliance notice was sent by the regulator listing issues relating to safe-sleep, including that "an enrolled child was put to sleep with a dummy chain which became wrapped around his neck".
At the same centre a child was locked in a shed and left unsupervised. The nominated supervisor told the regulator they were aware of the incident but did not follow mandatory reporting obligations.
At G8 Education's First Grammar in Sydney's Condell Park, a child was left unsupervised for 20 minutes in 2022 and found playing in an outdoor trough of rainwater that had not been drained. The child's parents were not notified in the required time.
G8 Education posted a net profit of more than $67 million on the back of revenue of more than $1 billion last year.
In 2020 G8 Education admitted it had underpaid 27,000 workers by up to $80 million. Five years on, the case is still under investigation.
The regulatory documents, reported between 2020 and 2024, were released in response to a powerful parliamentary order brought by NSW Greens MP Abigail Boyd.
"There's this trail of a lack of understanding of all the people involved in these centres. They don't understand the regulations, they don't understand what their requirements are. And the consequences of that can be catastrophic."
Veteran Melbourne childcare worker turned childcare trainer Lynette Rieck says it is these types of serious incidents which can quickly turn into tragedy.
"The elderly and children are the most vulnerable members of our society and we are letting our children down," Ms Rieck said.
"If you judge a society by the way we treat our children, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
"I've been in this industry for quite a while and I've seen quite a lot. I've seen a massive amount of change and it is not good enough.
"I've got children and I've got grandchildren … and they are being let down by the adults who they are supposed to trust."
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