ACT Minister of Education and Early Childhood Yvette Berry provided an update this week on the government’s progress on releasing childcare incident reports. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
A review of thousands of incident reports filed about the ACT’s childcare centres over the years shows current checks and balances are working, the ACT Government says.
In June this year, Independent MLA Thomas Emerson passed a motion calling for the ACT Government to release all documents related to reported incidents in ACT early childhood education and care services over the past five years.
This followed a move over the border in NSW, where, prompted by ABC Four Corners coverage, more than 200,000 documents detailing cases of child abuse and neglect have been brought before the state parliament.
“Thousands of documents are being released by the NSW Government every week, yet the ACT Government is yet to release a single document in response to my motion from four months ago,” Mr Emerson said.
“The lack of transparency in the ACT means good providers are being lumped in with dodgy operators. Everyone in early childhood is being tarred with the same brush, and that’s because of the government’s resistance to scrutiny in the face of what we’re seeing play out nationally.”
ACT Minister of Education and Early Childhood Yvette Berry told the Legislative Assembly this week that 2466 “in-scope” documents have been reviewed so far, and early signs are good.
“The documents reviewed to date have made clear that, in the ACT, we have a robust and comprehensive regulatory system,” she said.
In September, the assembly voted to extend the deadline for the documents and give the government until December 2025.
Mr Emerson said this was partly due to the ACT Government raising concerns its public servants were being “traumatised” by reading the documents captured by the order.
“Apparently, ACT Labor is more concerned about the trauma experienced by public servants reading these documents than the trauma of sexually abused children and their families,” he said.
But this week, Ms Berry said a lot of time has so far been spent removing “highly identifiable information about children and educators” before releasing them.
“To date, 2446 in scope documents have been confirmed, with review and redactions complete on 963 documents,” she said.
“Comprehensive reviewing to ensure names, dates of birth and contact details are redacted has occurred.
“This has been in addition to checking for other potentially identifiable information, such as personal health conditions and racial background, to ensure, as far as possible, we are protecting the privacy of individual children and educators.”
The ACT’s childcare watchdog is Children’s Education Care and Assurance (CECA), in the Education directorate. CECA oversees all education and care services in the ACT, including public and non-government preschools, early childhood education and care centres, family day cares, and outside-school-hour care programs.
This week, Ms Berry said the documents examined so far show that the existing reporting mechanism is working.
“The ACT leads the nation in incident reporting, a reflection of CECA’s strong engagement with the sector,” she said.
“Reviews of documents have consistently highlighted the professional and thorough work of CECA officers in safeguarding our children.”
Ms Berry has also previously flagged changes are coming to the ACT’s childcare registration system.
“At the moment, anybody can pretty much apply for registration and operate a service,” she said in May.
“We need to unpack that a bit more … Some of these services have a parent business, but then a range of other different businesses … and their purpose in early childhood education is … not about the children.
“We need to do more around our policy settings on who is appropriate and fit and proper to operate an early childhood centre.”
This would be in addition to a tranche of new national requirements, currently before the Federal Parliament, that includes allowing inspectors to conduct spot checks on centres without prior notice, installing CCTV cameras, and mandatory child safety training for all educators.
The ACT Government has until December 2025 to release all the documents.
