For the tens of thousands of NSW families who send their young children to childcare, it has been a difficult few weeks.
The news that an alleged paedophile had worked across several childcare sites in Melbourne has left parents asking: is my child safe?
As Emily Kowal and Nigel Gladstone write in today’s Sun-Herald, concerns have now been raised about the reliability of publicly available quality ratings for Australia’s childcare centres.
Parents are being warned that they cannot trust the National Quality Standard childcare centre ratings, with years passing between assessments (more than six for hundreds of centres in NSW).
In addition, NSW childcare centres in particular have become increasingly reliant on temporary waivers to excuse breaches of the standards, particularly in relation to staffing ratios.
In Sydney’s outer south-west, more than one in five centres have been excused to operate without meeting the requisite staffing level. The figure is also high in the city’s north-west, south-west and on the Central Coast.
The reality is that we do not have enough childcare workers to meet demand. The presence of these waivers means parents in the city’s western suburbs – a region where places are highly sought after – can return to work. To force centres to close until they meet staffing requirements would lock an unacceptable number of parents – especially mothers – out of the workforce.
As the heartbreaking stories in today’s article reveal, the consequence of all this is, ultimately, children’s safety: stories of injuries and improper first aid show what can happen to kids when their childcare is not providing adequate care.
The mothers who spoke to The Sun-Herald for today’s story spoke of their guilt, regret and disappointment at sending their children to poor quality centres. That centres can be waived of staffing requirements is not ideal, but demands on the sector mean this cannot be avoided.
Steps in the right direction are being taken.
The state government has agreed to implement several recommendations from the Wheeler independent review of childcare centres, to increase transparency in the sector. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare had also pledged to cut funding from childcare services that repeatedly fail to meet safety standards.
But then there is the issue of staffing.
Childcare qualifications are being offered through the fee-free TAFE program, but with such low wages, a career in childcare is a hard sell. The industry survives on casuals who may work across several centres, making incidents or reports against them more difficult to track.
Federal Minister for Early Childhood Education Jess Walsh has boasted that a 15 per cent pay rise for childcare workers saw advertised vacancies fall by 26.8 per cent in a year. However, in April, the Fair Work Commission recommended an additional 12.8 per cent pay rise to address a “gender-based undervaluation” of wages.
Such multibillion-dollar spends may fail to find support. But quality services require quality staff. More must be done to attract them.
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