Education ministers agree to national worker register

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A national register of childcare workers will be created following allegations of abuse in the sector.  Paul Mondo is President of the Australian Childcare Alliance which represents early learning providers. He says it’s good to see comprehensive changes being made.

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00:00We're really, really pleased to see that the federal government and the state governments

00:07have made some wonderful commitments to improving safeguarding measures for the sector. We really

00:13think that the suite of things on offer are really very comprehensive, led by the National

00:18Early Childhood Educator Register amongst a whole raft of other measures. We think that

00:26what we want to see are measures in place that allow everybody in the sector to have

00:30full visibility of the people we're putting in front of our children. That includes our

00:34regulators, it includes our employers, so that we can have the best possible protections available to

00:39them. How much of a setback has confidence had in the sector of late? Look, it's undeniable that

00:48the last few months have broken the trust of many, many families out there and we all have a

00:55responsibility, anybody contributing to this sector to build that confidence again. It needs strong

00:59leadership from governments, it needs providers and to be able to commit to priorities and prioritising

01:06child safety and it needs our workforce as well to be built, to build their capacity so that they can

01:12work and understand what behaviours need to be reported. Paul, I think many parents would be

01:18staggered to learn that there aren't mandatory child safety training guidelines already. Why aren't

01:25there and do the people you represent, do the bodies you represent do it anyway? Yeah look, there is a

01:32whole lot of training around child safety. What we know in Australia is that there are different

01:36regulatory functions from one state to another. Some have child safe standards, some don't have child

01:42safe standards. There is child protection training which is mandatory which is slightly different to

01:47child safety training there and so I think that we're in a position now where there is strong

01:53leadership to be able to drive this and ensure that what is happening in best practice services is

01:59happening at all services. You'll know there's been criticism that some child care providers have put

02:05profit over child safety and welfare. I know many of your people you represent are for-profit organisations.

02:15Where can the for-profit organisations make a difference to what they're doing and not put

02:20profits before child care? Look, I think if we try to oversimplify the problem we're not going to deal

02:28with all of the solutions that are needed. Issues and incidents in services are not limited to one

02:34governance type or another and so what we really really need and what we need for everybody because

02:39there are a large number of providers doing amazing work out there is for every provider in the sector

02:45to be committing 100% to child safety in every way and if that is the goal and that is the overarching

02:51principle for people the rest of the governance issues around how a service is run become a second

02:56part of that problem. A couple of things that some in the sector have perhaps criticised the

03:03the announcement today is it doesn't talk about ratios as in the number of staff per child and

03:08it doesn't talk about the problem with getting enough staff a shortage of staff in the sector are

03:13they two aspects that you will be pushing for for the for any new regulations to look at?

03:21I think one of the key things that was announced today was for a secret to review things like ratios

03:26and things like under the roof lines and how that might work in practice and what are the things that

03:30need to be done to be able to tighten any gaps in that way I believe that they will be reporting back

03:35to education ministers before the end of the year so I think there is already an action in place to

03:41review the frameworks around how we operate each and every day our workforce supply is absolutely has

03:47been an ongoing challenge for the sector albeit there have been improvements over the last 12 months

03:51in terms of the number of educators and teachers available to the sector this is a long-term approach and

03:58really one of the things that's critical for us right now is that in order to ensure that our workforce

04:05has the capacity it needs we need to retain them and we need to build and scaffold on their experience

04:10month on month and year on year because it is a strong experienced workforce that allows us to

04:16mitigate many of the risks that are out there Paul the members of that workforce the people

04:21that you are representing worry about having CCTV in some centres worry about the mobile phone ban in

04:28centres mobile phone bans have actually been policy in many many services across the country for a very

04:35long time and so I think the change to banning mobile personal mobile phones when people are providing

04:41education and care to children is going to be less of a transition for some services than it will be for

04:47others out there CCTV is is a complicated when I say complicated there are people with different

04:55perspectives on whether CCTV is is the right method to be able to improve child safety and I think that

05:02the government's approach of trialling uh trialling CCTV and early education services is really important so

05:08that that way we can truly understand in the context of an early childhood setting exactly whether the risks of CCTV

05:15um are more significant or less significant than the rewards of having them but what we do know with CCTV

05:22and what's been really clear from many of the um reports back from police through this last little bit is

05:28its best function is as an investigative tool and maybe not quite so much as a deterrent so I think that

05:34it's really important for us to use evidence to inform any decisions around CCTV in the future and that the trial is

05:40is a contextual evidence base that can help inform policy decisions. Paul Mondo from the Australian Childcare

05:47Alliance thank you for talking to us. Thank you.

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