Kids at risk as childcare standards plunge
Childcare centres are breaching legal ratios as numbers rise during the easing of lockdown restrictions, with some forced to drop programs in order to keep up with hygiene demands.
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Childcare centres are reporting children are at risk with many centres forced to breach the legal ratios and the quality of care slipping dramatically over the COVID-19 period.
With attendance now rising as Australia opens back up, childcare workers say they cannot continue to look after children, perform extra cleaning and maintain safe ratios with dwindling incomes.
Some centres have not been cleaned in a week while others say they are over ratio with too many children and not enough staff. In many cases education programs have had to be dropped in the wake of the coronavirus crisis with educators forcing to choose between care and education or hygiene.
The federal government is under increased pressure to continue the free childcare package with some speculation it will be extended until July. News Corp Australia understands the decision is expected this week.
But many centres say they cannot survive under the relief package and early education union, the United Workers Union conducted a survey of 1000 childcare workers and found more than 70 per cent of centres reported having to compromise the quality of care regularly and 53 per cent said there was a daily impact on standards during the pandemic.
Childcares have remained open during the coronavirus crisis but many have reported the crisis package was not enough to keep them afloat and eight in 10 educators surveyed say they cannot afford the staff to maintain adequate health and hygiene practices.
One NSW centre reported: “our centre has barely been cleaned all week” and a South Australian provider admitted they don’t have enough staff to legally cover the amount of children they are caring for.
“Last week we had more children than our staff numbers were meant to cover under our ratios. It’s not right,” they said.
Sandy, an educator from Queensland said: “we are barely scraping in under the ratios, instead of focusing on delivering quality early education and care. We don’t have the staff to pull off the floor to do the extra cleaning that we know we need to do.”
Helen Gibbons, United Workers Union director of early learning said the relaxing of ratios was worrying and comes as South Australia has officially moved to a 1 educator for 11 children ratio from 1.10. She said she was worried other states would follow and said it was “incredibly bad timing to add to the stress and workload of educators when so much is at stake.”
While the federal government handed private and catholic schools $10 million for additional hygiene practices, and most state governments have given public schools additional resources for extra cleaning, early childhood say they have had to find ways to operate running on half the income.
News Corp Australia recently reported many services were forced to fundraise to pay staff, offering free babysitting for parents who supported them financially and had to lay off staff or cut down days.
Ms Gibbons said childcare educators need to return to their main job of providing education and care programs, not be hamstrung by cleaning.
“They need to be able to focus on the care and education of the children. Financial support is needed to ensure enhanced cleaning practices continue to keep children, families and educators safe,” she said, pointing out that the federal government gave $9.3 million to non-government schools for hygiene practices.
“Early learning services are in dire need of similar support.”
A federal government spokesman told News Corp Australia that it was a state issue.
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