Maroondah Childcare: Dodgy Ringwood, Warranwood centres exposed in statewide review

Childcare centres in Maroondah have been named and shamed for shocking safety failures. See if your local centre has made the list.

Three Maroondah childcare centres have been exposed for safety breaches. File picture.

Three Maroondah childcare centres have been named and shamed for damning childcare safety breaches in the past two years.

And one of them — Warranwood’s Kidz Paradise Family Day Care — was shut down after the government determined it didn’t have “a fit and proper person” to manage the centre.

More than 230 childcare providers were closed or issued with serious safety notices by the state government from 2018 to 2020, including more than 110 family day care centres found to have an “unacceptable risk to the safety, health and wellbeing of children”.

Kidz Paradise and its provider Betty Twumwaa Kwarteng, was stripped of its accreditation on March 23, 2020, following three serious safety breaches.

Inspectors found the centre, located on Delaneys Rd, had a manager who was “not a fit and proper person” to provide the service, and it had not operated for more than 12 months.

On April 17, Ringwood’s Swan Childcare, operated by Loni Education, was issued a compliance notice following nine safety breaches.

They included slip-ups with its emergency and evacuation procedures, child interactions, and delivery of its required programs.

In 2019, A Step Ahead Ringwood, operated by Affinity Education Group, was put on notice on February 7 for 11 concerns related to food and hygiene, inadequate supervision, dodgy furniture and poor interactions with children.

It was then issued a compliance notice nearly four months later, on June 5, for three serious breaches including failure to ensure child safety, inadequate supervision and delivery of learning.

Early Childhood Minister Ingrid Stitt said the vast majority of the state’s 4500 early childhood services did a fantastic job.

“But we want parents to rest assured action is taken if providers do the wrong thing,” she said.

Family Day Care chief executive Andrew Paterson acknowledged a number of services been removed or monitored but said there was “a lot of good work being done” to ensure compliance.

Community Childcare Association executive director Julie Price said it was hard for parents to choose quality care.

“Parents need to ask who owns the service and how it is run,” she said. “Many private centres make profits that do not go back into improving the quality of care.”