Premier Jay Weatherill says earlier start to kindy is essential to improving child protection

CHILDREN as young as three would attend preschool under a proposal from Premier Jay Weatherill.

Supplied Editorial

CHILDREN as young as three would attend preschool under a proposal that Premier Jay Weatherill believes is essential in improving child protection.

Mr Weatherill said starting kindergarten earlier would put families on the government’s radar sooner, helping to ensure fewer children slipped through the cracks.

“I think this is the big answer to child welfare ... (and) a big opportunity to address abuse,” Mr Weatherill told The Advertiser.

The SA and NT governments are responsible for developing proposals for a national restructure of early childhood education before the next Council of Australian Governments meeting.

At the last meeting, Mr Weatherill proposed that state governments should take responsibility for early childhood and school education and hand all post-school education to the Federal Government.

Premier Jay Weatherill

He will travel to the NT tomorrow to meet Chief Minister Adam Giles to discuss the idea as well as ways in which the two governments could partner in tourism, environmental conservation and mining regulation as part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed in April.

Mr Weatherill said the current child protection system was reactionary, simply investigating and responding to abuse after it had occurred. “It’s just running a ruler over families and trying to guess what’s going wrong,” he said.

“We (the Government) don’t provide any guidance or support for parents other than some early advice, and basically disappear until the age of four.”

He said parents were expected to “muddle along by themselves” but earlier contact via schools could raise the flag before abuse occurred, allowing intervention in a supportive and non-threatening way.

“It (the school system) is not ‘I’m here to work out whether I should remove your child’ — it’s more constructive,” he said.

In SA, preschool is not compulsory but children can access up to four terms in the year before they start school through the public education system.

Aboriginal children and those under guardianship of the minister can already attend preschool once they turn three but Mr Weatherill wants that extended to all children.

Mr Weatherill’s comments followed The Advertiser’s revelation yesterday that almost 86,000 calls to the Families SA abuse hotline went unanswered over the past four years, as waiting times to make a report continue to grow.