As Victoria and Australia are left reeling in the wake of shocking allegations of child abuse by early childhood educator Joshua Brown, the wheels have already begun turning on reform to hopefully stop similar cases from occurring again.
One of Mr Brown’s previous employers is for-profit early education provider G8 Education, which operates over 400 childcare centres around the country, including five in the Outer East. G8 Education announced a number of new safety measures on Tuesday 8 July to quickly enact across their centres, including rolling out CCTV across all their centres, expanding individual learning plans (ILPs) to give parents more choice in their child’s care (such as preferences for who managers their child’s nappy changes or toileting) and commissioning a further independent review into their incidents with Mr Brown following the conclusion of criminal proceedings.
Managing Director and CEO Pejman Okhovat said the G8 Education team is horrified and appalled by the distressing nature of the allegations.
“These allegations are deeply disturbing, and our hearts go out to the children and families involved. I am deeply sorry for the unimaginable pain caused to our families and what they are going through,” he said.
“Our primary focus right now is on supporting all families who are impacted, as well as our team members in Victoria. My team and I have met personally with families in Victoria and will continue to be available. We have also provided confidential counselling and support through G8 Education’s dedicated provider,”
“We are continuing to work with Victoria Police, the Victorian government and other authorities as part of their ongoing investigation and are doing everything we can to give them the best chance of achieving justice for the children and families involved.”
G8 Education operates the Community Kids Chirnside Park Early Education Centre, Manchester Road Early Learning Centre in Mooroolbark, Croydon World of Learning, Headstart Early Learning Centre Croydon and Steel Street Children’s Centre in Healesville.
General Manager of ChildSafe Australia and Outer East local Neil Milton said the issues have been there in the sector for along time but a tragic event like this abuse and the widespread impact it has had was definitely going to shake people.
“It has shone a bright light on the need to see change and more done to protect children, a tokenistic approach to child safety was never good enough, and now we can see the impact of this on the sector, the victims and their families,” he said.
“Parents should be able to trust early childhood education centres that when they drop off their children that they will be safe, that the centres have put everything in place including the child safety standards that are law,”
“As a parent, your right is to ask questions and to only bring your child there if you are satisfied with the answers and you trust your gut, if you don’t feel a place is right then please don’t bring them there.”
Mr Milton identified some key areas for reform he would like to see implemented:
Educating educators, parents and children in understanding body safety and consent to empower children with the tools to know what is right and wrong when it comes to touch, secrets, feelings and body parts, better ratios of adult to child, supervision of educators particularly when changing a child, a national Working with Children’s Check so that abusers can’t skip state and proper screening processes in place.
He also provided some key questions parents should ask their early childhood education centre to hold them accountable:
Do you have a child safe policy?
How do you involve children in the decision-making processes regarding child safety?
Where will data be stored of my child and who has access?
What do you do if there is an incident?
Mr Milton said they have had some conversations with childcare centres and he thinks measures such as putting CCTV cameras up are something many will do.
“My only concerns are more around who will view the footage, where is it being stored and how it will be monitored, after these incidents, owners are wanting to put them out in places where change tables are to catch out any abuse that could occur but it’s important there are strict rules in place regarding viewing, storing, and access,” he said.
“I think knee-jerk reactions are not the solution to a widespread problem, it needs to be analysed what went wrong and what is going wrong in the sector and then start from there in preventing these incidents,”
“This sector is one of the most regulated and if this is happening in this sector you can bet it is happening in other sectors (sporting, disability, religious etc), when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was done, there was not one sector where abuse had not occurred historically.”
Premier Jacinta Allan announced an urgent review of childcare safety in the state (due to report back by 15 August), requiring a ban on the use of personal devices in all childcare centres by Friday 26 September, reviewing the Working with Children’s Check system and establishing a register of early childhood educators with plans to link to a national register once established.
The federal government has fast-tracked legislation for the first sitting week starting 22 July that will cut funding to childcare centres that fail to meet minimum safety standards, preventing those who do so persistently from opening new centres, remove childcare subsidy funding for providers with severe offences or who are repeat offenders, increased powers to address providers with integrity risks and the provision of new powers of entry which allow authorised officers to conduct spot checks or unannounced visits at childcare centres.
Mr Milton said in light of the recent events, every sector should be thinking ‘it could happen here but we don’t want it to, so we should do everything in our power to stop it.’
“The starting place for any organisation regarding child safety is not regulations, law or policies, it’s impact,” he said.
“We don’t want to see any child impacted from abuse in anyway as we know that if a child is impacted by abuse it can rewire there brain, it can impact there physical abilities (depending what age), it slow the development, it can impact them later in life with job, financial security, ability to parent etc,”
“If we don’t want to see an impact like this on a child then we need to do everything we can to prevent this, this includes following the law, the requirements, the standards, ACEQUA (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority) and NQS (National Quality Standard) framework etc, but we must understand the impact as the starting point, then we can see sectors change.”
