Childcare reforms count on tech too much to stop abuse
Jack Gramenz and Farid Farid |
Governments are being urged to hold for-profit childcare providers to account amid concerns an over-reliance on technology will not curb abusive behaviour.
Federal, state and territory education ministers have agreed to a $189 million trial of CCTV at 300 small and medium childcare operators.
A national register for childcare workers is expected to roll out in February.
Mobile phones will be banned from September, site visits will increase and workers will have mandatory training to detect and report suspected grooming and abuse.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said the laudable measures could work as potential deterrents to predators but emphasised they must be matched with compulsory courses.
“My concern would be that we would overly rely on technology when what is more important is the mandatory child safety training of everyone from the boardroom to the sandpit,” she told ABC on Saturday.
“It’s the human elements that will really help to keep children safer.”
The crisis meeting came after Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown was charged with sexually abusing eight children under the age of two.
Brown was known to have worked at 24 facilities between 2017 and 2025.
Early childhood education consultant Lisa Bryant said cameras were good at helping police find perpetrators of abuse that had already happened.
“But I don’t think that they actually stop people from abusing children and so I’m worried about the focus on that,” Ms Bryant said.
She highlighted a high turnover of inexperienced staff who were paid “really poorly” at for-profit providers.
In her submission to a NSW inquiry into the sector earlier in August, Ms Bryant said media attention and criminal charges had prompted a rush of solutions and levers such as CCTV and phone bans, which were the “wrong answers” to the broader issue.
“The better question is what changed in the sector to make abuse more possible and more likely?” Ms Bryant said.
“The entrance and dominance of private equity and corporate providers is what fundamentally changed this sector.”
Tasmanian Education Minister Jo Palmer said on Friday governments can legislate and tighten laws but do not have a lever to mandate “human decency.”
The Independent Education Union’s NSW secretary, Carol Matthews, called for centre owners and operators to be included in mandatory training, as they often had the final say in referring child safety reports to authorities.
“It is high time that for-profit providers were held to account for failing to ensure the safety of children in their care,” she said.
“The focus on profits rather than high-quality education and care is a big reason behind safety breaches.”
The federal government has vowed to cut off funding to for-profit providers that fail to meet national safety and quality standards.
Childcare worker wages are being increased by 15 per cent over two years under laws that passed federal parliament in November.
Education Minister Jason Clare said restoring confidence among parents would be an ongoing challenge.
“The awful truth is this work will never end because there will always be bad people who try to poke holes in the system and find vulnerabilities,” he said.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
AAP
