Childcare loophole sees dodgy operators buy centres without safety audit

A BIZARRE flaw in childcare centre safety auditing is allowing dodgy operators to buy centres without scrutiny placing thousands of children at risk across the nation.

Several childcare centres have continued to operate despite failing child safety audits. Picture: iStock

THOUSANDS of kids have been put at risk by a bizarre childcare loophole that lets dodgy operators buy centres without a new safety audit.

The Daily Telegraph can today reveal the flaw — which federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham has vowed to pursue — has let some of the most controversial childcare providers into public schools.

More than 1080 childcare and after-school care centres around the country have not been audited to make sure they are operated properly after the arrival of new owners. In one example Camp Australia, which was black-listed by the NSW government in late 2016 after a string of shocking incidents, was allowed to take over two facilities in public schools only months later.

Some of the centres transferred to Camp Australia in 2016 have not had their quality certificates checked since 2013.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham has vowed to pursue the flaw.

Senator Birmingham said he was “disappointed to see out-of-date registers despite the hundreds of millions of dollars the Commonwealth had delivered to help state and territories administer (childcare standards)”.

“It’s entirely up to states and territories to assess and rate early childhood education and I’ll be raising this issue with my state and territory colleagues,” he said.

Experts are now warning parents have little idea who is actually running the centres they send their kids to.

Robyn Monro Miller, the chief executive of the non-profit industry group Network of Community Activities, said the quality ratings were “no longer an accurate reflection”.

“It’s becoming an issue because of these providers with poor reputations are winning the tenders in schools,” she said. “Parents trust that public schools would only take providers who are of a certain quality and that’s reasonable.

“It’s really easy for some providers to sell an image but when you look at the service delivery level you quickly see the quality is not there.”

Five facilities have been transferred to Camp Australia since April 2016, when the company caught the attention of regulators after a seven-year-old child with Down syndrome wandered away without anyone noticing.

The most recent transfers were at Mater Dei Catholic Primary School at Blakehurst and the Narellan Vale Public School in January 2017. Camp Australia did not respond to requests for comment.

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Victorian regulators took action against the company four times last year for “serious” noncompliance with quality standards, including for breaches “in relation to the protection of children from harm and hazards”.

The NSW Education Department said there was now “a process to establish the ability of organisations to provide a quality service”.