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Natasha Bita

Childcare safety scandals put spotlight on quality

Natasha Bita
More educators in childcare centres would improve child safety. Picture: Supplied
More educators in childcare centres would improve child safety. Picture: Supplied

Banning blokes from daycare is a sexist suggestion that tarnishes all men as monsters.

The solution for child safety is a “four eyes” approach, so no child is left alone with any adult.

The ratios of carers to children in long daycare centres are too low to guarantee safety; staff need eyes in the back of their heads.

Daycare centres must employ one carer for every four babies, and one carer for every five two-year-old toddlers. Once children turn three, one staffer has to look after 11 at once.

Even so, one in every seven daycare centres is operating without the required number of qualified staff, sanctioned as a “regulatory waiver’’.

Whenever a baby or toddler needs a nappy change, it is likely they will be left alone with one carer.

Installing CCTV cameras in bathrooms and nappy change areas is a creepy concept that would only expose daycare operators to cyber attacks from criminals trying to steal intimate images for what used to be known as child pornography, but is best described as child sexual exploitation material.

The ban on mobile phones – due to start on September 1 – should have been mandated two years ago, after a Brisbane childcare teacher was arrested for filming his sexual assaults of dozens of children in daycare centres over 20 years.

Improving the adult-to-child ratios in daycare would ensure that no child is left alone – prioritising quality and safety over the cost of care.

This would be so expensive, however, it might be more sensible for Australia to switch to a European-style system that pays parents to stay home with their own babies.

Some children will always need daycare, including the kids of single parents.

For too many children, childcare is a refuge from family dysfunction. But for most children, parents provide the safest care until they can walk, talk and play with other kids.

Italy provides parental pay until children start school at the age of three-and-a-half.

In Australia, paid parental leave runs out at 24 weeks, forcing (mostly) mothers back to work before their babies have been weaned.

Taxpayers still pick up the tab for this – families with a combined income of $80,000 have 90 per cent of their childcare fees subsidised, costing the federal government $39,000 a year to subsidise parents paying $180 a day for full-time care.

For two parents earning an average wage, the subsidy costs taxpayers $33,000 a year.

“Care” seems to have become a dirty word in daycare. The terms “childcare” and “daycare” are politically incorrect: staff are described as “early childhood educators’’.

But caring must be at the heart of the early childhood sector. Most parents want their children to be nurtured, rather than taught to recite a welcome to country.

Governments must take the blame for failing to fix flaws in the child safety system that were identified by a royal commission 10 years ago, and spelled out to education ministers in alarming detail 18 months ago.

Political turf wars and bureaucratic dithering – the curse of Australia’s federation – are putting helpless children in harm’s way.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/childcare-safety-scandals-put-spotlight-on-quality/news-story/af4fc9f5fdca4ee434055887b0c8a1e0