Gender identity trumps safety in childcare
Childcare workers are given lessons on diversity and gender identity before they learn about child health and safety in government-sanctioned training.
Childcare workers are given lessons on diversity and gender identity before they learn about child health and safety in government-sanctioned training.
Despite the child safety crisis sparked by the recent arrest of an alleged serial pedophile, and 18,000 serious safety incidents in daycare centres last year, the federal government’s national training register shows that “supporting inclusion and diversity’’ tops the list of 15 compulsory units of study for childcare staff.
Students must have knowledge of how people are affected by “culture, race, ethnicity, disability, gender and gender identification, intergenerational disadvantage, family types, sexual orientation and sexual identity and socio-economic circumstances’’, the training material states.
An assessment task is to “use a process of reflection to explore the impact of own values and biases in relation to practices with families and children, and discuss the reflection process with a workplace or leading supervisor on two occasions”.
The training template for a Certificate III in childcare, which combines 17 units of study with 160 hours of work experience, places diversity and inclusion ahead of the training module on children’s health, safety and wellbeing – which covers hygiene, food safety, illness, safe sleeping practices, infection control and toy safety.
Australian Childcare Alliance vice-president Nesha Hutchinson, representing centre owners, said that children’s safety must be the priority in childcare training.
She called for childcare qualifications to include more training in the detection and mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse.
“At the moment the mandatory reporting training covers the bare basics,’’ she said.
“Child safety should be the first module every educator does in every course, and it should be refreshed regularly.’’
Ms Hutchinson warned the installation of CCTV cameras by childcare giants Goodstart Early Learning, G8 Education and Affinity Education was not a “silver bullet’’ to prevent abuse.
She said cameras could not be legally installed in nappy-changing areas or toilets, and demanded governments fast-track a national register of childcare workers to show their qualifications, work history and any regulatory investigations or compliance action.
A national “working with vulnerable people’’ register should contain real-time information about workers’ criminal charges or convictions, she said, and employers must be alerted to any changes.
Queensland Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek announced mandatory annual safety training for all childcare workers in his state on Wednesday.
Staff will be taught to identify warning signs of potential predatory behaviour by job applicants and colleague.
“We’re going to have mandatory child safety learnings for the staff in childcare centres, that will be carried out every year,’’ he said.’
“As predators change their behaviours, it’s important for the staff to be trained regularly in these types of issues.’’
Mr Langbroek warned of “civil liberty issues and unintended consequences ’’ from installing CCTV in childcare centres. “Unless you monitor it properly, it could be the predators themselves who get access to the CCTV,’’ he said.
Regardless of camera surveillance, he said, “if there’s not two sets of eyes on kids all the time, that’s when things can happen’’.
Goodstart Early Learning chief executive Ros Baxter – a former deputy secretary of the federal Education Department – said it was “absolutely important’’ for the federal government to urgently set up a national register of early childhood educators.
The private Affinity Education Group – which owns half of the 20 childcare centres where alleged pedophile Joshua Dale Brown, 26, is known to have worked – announced on Wednesday that it would spend $10m to install CCTV cameras in all 400 centres. Plus, all staff must put mobile phones in lockboxes while they are working.
Affinity CEO Tim Hickey said mobile phones had been banned in all centres since 2023.
He said staff were “deeply distressed’’ by the nature of the charges against their former colleague, which have resulted in 1200 children being tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
He said the layout of daycare centres would be reviewed to “rectify blind spots’’, and all staff would be given mandatory refresher training on child safety.
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