A centre “exceeding” national quality standards despite receiving four enforcement actions. An educator investigated for inappropriate and physically aggressive behaviour towards children who had been convicted of assaulting a child in NSW 10 years earlier. A child who ate a death cap mushroom they found in their centre’s garden.
These are just some of the incidents reported, investigated and acted upon at Canberra’s children’s centres, family daycare services, early learning centres, out-of-hours school care and other early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres since 2020.
Hundreds upon hundreds of documents relating to emergency action notices, prohibition notices, suspension and compliance notices, enforceable undertakings and notifications of complaints and incidents at ECEC centres are being uploaded to the Legislative Assembly’s website.
But the scope of the document’s contents originally also included documents relating to active investigations, police reports and correspondence between complainants and the Children’s Education and Care Assurance (CECA) regulator.
Kurrajong Independent MLA Thomas Emerson (who used legislated powers to force the production of the documents) said this meant that, despite the documents being released, parents and the community were still in the dark.
“Multiple cases of alleged child sexual abuse included in the documents that have been released are completely stripped of detail, leaving families none the wiser as to what has happened,” he said.
“Without sufficient scrutiny and transparency, we risk seeing all centres – good and bad – being tarred with the same brush. We need to differentiate the fantastic centres from the dodgy operators who are prioritising profit over children’s safety.”