Thomas Emerson has a five-point action plans he feels will improve the early childhood education sector. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
Focus on children’s safety, introduce land reforms, close loopholes, increase regulator resourcing and actually impose fines for breaches: these are the five initial calls for reform that an ACT MLA wants for the early childhood education sector.
Independent Kurrajong MLA Thomas Emerson’s actions led to the release of more than 2000 pages of documents relating to incidents in Canberra’s daycares and centres.
Now he’s outlined five ways that he believes the ACT Government can boost the sector and increase child safety.
“These reforms are uncontroversial, they’re things we should be doing already,” Mr Emerson said.
“The government has been privy to the issues exposed in this document release, and has chosen to leave those issues unresolved.
“It’s time to take the steps necessary to actually put children first — without exception.”
He’s using six months of consultation with the sector and Canberra families — plus results from a survey (that closes on 9 February) — to call for:
- An update to the ACT’s Early Childhood Strategy, with a renewed focus on children’s safety;
- The introduction of land reforms with the aim of preventing corporatisation of the sector and protecting the viability of community-run centres;
- The closure of loopholes in the ACT’s Working with Vulnerable People (WWVP) scheme;
- Increased resourcing for the sector regulator, Children’s Education and Care Assurance (CECA), to boost its compliance functions;
- Fines for “egregious or repeated” child safety breaches.
Mr Emerson said it was alarming that CECA hadn’t issued a single fine in the past five years despite documents showing there had been significant breaches.
“It’s unsurprising that safety issues have persisted when the regulator has been so light-handed,” he said.
“Caution notices and second chances might be appropriate at times, but particularly egregious incidents and repeated failures must be met with genuine consequences.
“Our regulatory system has allowed dodgy operators to put children at serious risk of harm.”
Mr Emerson explained that currently, childcare centres could set up wherever appropriate land was available, meaning smaller centres could suddenly be neighbours with a larger, for-profit operation.
He pointed to planning restrictions (that aren’t without controversy) that meant chemists couldn’t set up shop within 1.5 km of each other, stating this could be an option worth exploring for childcare centres.
“Current land use policy settings have allowed major corporate for-profits to cannibalise small community-run centres, with disastrous consequences for children. This needs to change,” Mr Emerson said.
He wanted loopholes in the WWVP scheme to be closed “as a matter of urgency”.
“A system that relies on people with mal-intent to self-report cannot be expected to protect children from abuse,” Mr Emerson said.
Education and Early Childhood Minister Yvette Berry was still critical that Mr Emerson was interested in boosting the sector.
“I’m relieved that Mr Emerson has decided now to have a forward focus on reforms for the early child education and care service rather than being stuck in what had been a drip-feed of trauma for families in the early childhood education and care service,” she said.
“I’ve been advocating for change in this sector for a long time, the sector’s been advocating for change for decades, [and] finally we have governments all across the states and territories, including nationally, who are willing to listen.”
Ms Berry pointed to national work that was occurring in regard to expertise on childcare boards and changing ratios to ”by room” rather than ”under one roof” that needed attention now.
On the lack of fines issued, she pointed out that CECA was involved with both compliance and education when it came to enforcing the National Quality Framework standards.
“I think that there’s a time and place for fines … there’s no point in having a regulatory environment that wants to shut down services because educators aren’t being supported to be the best that they possibly can be,” Ms Berry said.
“Services exist because educators exist, so we have to support educators to be the best.”
Mr Emerson emphasised that the point of having the documents released was to shine a light on bad operators and failings in the system, as that would also support educators.
“Most educators are in the sector because they want to work with children, they care about their safety,” he said.
“The challenge is where educators aren’t supported to do that … [the documents show] there are educators who don’t feel they’re supported to prioritise what’s best for the children in their care.
“If the support isn’t provided by management, by the provider — that’s not [the educator’s] fault.”
Mr Emerson planned to introduce a motion with his five calls for action, plus anything else that arose from the survey results, to the Legislative Assembly later this year.
