Arrested childcare worker accused of contaminating food with bodily fluids as authorities unveil crackdown

Read the latest update on the Melbourne childcare crisis here.

Victoria will become the first jurisdiction in Australia to force childcare workers to surrender their phones and track their employment history as further disturbing details emerged about alleged abuse at Melbourne early education centres.

Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences, including recklessly contaminating goods to cause alarm or anxiety, which relates to allegations he used bodily fluid to tamper with food. He worked at 20 facilities from 2017 until May this year.

Childcare worker Joshua Brown has been charged with child sexual abuse offences.

A second man has now been charged with dozens of sex crimes against children, including rape, as part of a major investigation that uncovered the separate abuse allegations at a Melbourne childcare centre.

Repeated reviews of child safety over the past decade recommended reforms to both state systems and the national framework, with childcare sex abuse scandals rocking Sydney and Brisbane, devastating stories of abuse and neglect at for-profit centres around the country, corporate collapses and accusations of financial misconduct.

Robert Fitzgerald, a commissioner for the 2015 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said on Wednesday it was time for government to act.

Brown at a childcare centre in Essendon where he worked from February until a few days before his arrest in May.

“This is not a time for panic or fear. It is a time to actually complete the work needed to make the safeguarding system as strong as it can possibly be,” Fitzgerald told this masthead.

“It is not about more reviews. It’s about getting the job done.”

The royal commission recommended a nationally consistent working with children scheme.

“The Commonwealth and the states had the opportunity in 2015 to work towards a nationally coordinated scheme, and failed to do so,” Fitzgerald said.

Working with children checks will be the top of the agenda at a standing council of the country’s top lawmakers next month, with Federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland writing to her state and territory counterparts to press the need for reform.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan announced her government would not wait for national agreement to introduce other safeguards.

“I appreciate there is a substantial amount of work that is already under way across the Commonwealth and state and territory governments to strengthen the safety in the sector here in Victoria, [but] I won’t wait,” Allan said. “Families cannot wait.”

Victoria will introduce a mandatory ban on personal devices in early learning centres and establish a state-based register for childcare workers.

The state government already records workers in its free kinder program, but will extend that to all people working in childcare. Teachers are already recorded on a registry.

Police said Brown had a valid working with children check and no criminal history while working in 20 centres over an eight-year period, before his May 12 arrest.

“There is a degree of casual employment in the education workforce … So the fact that someone moves around and might have a number of registered employers is not necessarily in and of itself an indicator of bad behaviour,” Victorian Minister for Children Lizzie Blandthorn said.

“But we do want to know where people have been and where they’re going and how many times they’ve moved in their role as an educator.”

The Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority had called for a national register to be established, among other recommendations yet to be implemented, back in 2023.

Allan said an urgent review would examine safeguards and opportunities for reform across the childcare system, and that it would look at whether CCTV cameras should be rolled out. The snap review will report its findings and make recommendations to government next month.

Allan and Blandthorn both expressed frustration about the slowness of a national agreement on changes to working with children checks. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the checks could never be a “silver bullet”.

But he accepted work to implement child safety changes following the royal commission was “too slow”.

Clare said he was a friend of a mother of two girls directly impacted. “My friend is mad because of all of the stress and the trauma and the crap that she and her girls are going to have to go through in the weeks ahead,” he said.

Clare told ABC Radio National that he put child safety on the agenda last Friday during a meeting with all his state-based counterparts after he was briefed on the allegations.

The Victorian Ombudsman recommended in 2022 that working with children checks should be expanded beyond a person’s criminal history to account for any other relevant information.

Victoria has not yet implemented that change. Allan, who became premier in late 2023, defended the delay.

“I just say this. I’m the premier today, and I’m taking action today in recognising we do need to do more to strengthen the working with children check, not just in terms of the state’s action, and we are already doing that in terms of strengthening the worker screening checks that will be in place from next month,” Allan said.

She said the checks should be strengthened as part of a national framework.

The state opposition’s education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said the government had for years failed to implement recommended reforms to clearance checks.

“And it’s important that as part of this review, the government acts quickly. Now is a time for action. We have seen the delay from the Allan Labor government when it comes to the working with children check.”

The ban on smartphones will be enforced from September 26 in Victoria. If a provider does not sign up, they will have conditions added to their licence, and breaches could attract fines of up to $50,000.

Phone bans have already been part of a national framework since July last year, but providers are not required to sign up to the ban.

The scramble to bolster child safety measures follows Brown’s alleged abuse of eight children aged between five months and two years old at the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook between April 2022 and January 2023.

A children’s occupational therapy clinic where Brown was employed for five weeks said there was no indication of problems on the alleged abuser’s resume.

Brown worked at D.O.T.S Occupational Therapy for Children at Footscray for 26 days, the clinic’s director Hannah Dunn confirmed on Wednesday.

Dunn told The Age Brown was not part of the clinical occupational therapy team and that he only lasted a few weeks at the service.

“We terminated his contract as he was not a good fit for our practice within five weeks of commencing.”

The police and health responses to Brown’s charges are ongoing, with 1200 children advised to be tested for infectious diseases “out of an abundance of caution”.

Chief Health Officer Dr Christian McGrath said the referrals were based on a risk assessment conducted on a case-by-case basis, and that additional call-takers were stood up after hours-long delays on the government hotline on Tuesday.

McGrath said he was comfortable with the decision to inform parents and families of the risk on Tuesday – seven weeks after Brown was arrested – to gather and cross-check information, carry out risk assessments, and establish support services.

Allan said health and education authorities had to avoid interfering with a police investigation, and that a huge amount of work was done in the lead-up to the announcement.

A suppression order was also in place until Tuesday morning.

Parents and guardians of the eight children allegedly abused by Brown were informed last week, after police worked for weeks to identify victims in alleged child abuse material.

The Victorian government has also ordered the early childhood regulator to investigate the conduct of the childcare operators for whom Brown worked.

Janine Bush, chief executive of the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse, also said it was time to take action.

“It is time to act on what we know works – prioritising preventative measures that drive sector-wide responsibility.”

Brown is due to face court on September 15.

With Olivia Ireland and Broede Carmody

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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