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Queensland childcare workers will have mandatory safety training each year in an Australian-first, as the state government calls for a national register for employees.
Education minister John-Paul Langbroek held a roundtable in Cairns with early childhood stakeholders, the Queensland Family and Child Commissioner and the Australian Early Childhood Quality Authority on Wednesday morning.
The meeting was convened following allegations made against Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown, who was charged with more than 70 offences last week.
It was also informed by an ongoing independent review into one of the nation’s worst paedophiles, Ashley Paul Griffith, and how he was able to offend for almost 20 years.
The training will teach workers how to identify warning signs of potential predatory behaviour, both in the hiring process and at work, as well as how to raise concerns safely.
Currently, mandatory training for childcare workers revolves solely around identifying signs of abuse outside of the centre by parents or guardians.
Mr Langbroek said the government wanted to roll out the initiative as quickly as possible.
“As the sector changes and as predators change their behaviours, it’s important for the staff to be trained regularly in these types of issues, as happens in other professions,” he said.
He said Queensland would be pushing for a Commonwealth register of childcare employees at a meeting in August with federal education minister Jason Clare and other state ministers.
“We’ve already seen from some of the cases that have been in the past that someone could just leave a state and go to another state jurisdiction and work,” he said.
In a statement, Mr Clare said ministers had “agreed to accelerate work already underway to develop nationwide registration of early educators”.
Complexities around CCTV and phone bans
On Tuesday, Australia’s biggest private childcare operator G8 Education announced it would install CCTV in all 400 of its centres following child abuse charges being laid against Joshua Dale Brown.
Goodstart Early Learning chief executive Ros Baxter said the not-for-profit, which runs 650 centres nationwide, was trialling the usage of CCTV.
However, she noted there were complexities around the technology and civil liberties.
“The conversation is about what and when, and how should we use CCTV, not let’s mandate CCTV tomorrow,”
she said.
“I think for all of us who have children, we understand that children have rights and dignity as well, and we need to think about these measures within the context of those rights and that dignity.”
Mr Langbroek was questioned on whether the government would consider stopping childcare workers from using their phones at work, to further protect children.
“A phone ban is much more complex. We’ve got four different ways of people doing early childhood [care], including family daycare centres, which means that they’re in someone’s home,” he said.
“Are we going to tell that person they can’t have their own phone?”
He said more investigation was needed into solutions that people saw as “a simple answer to a complex problem”.
Mr Langbroek labelled suggestions for a ban on males working in the sector as a “knee-jerk reaction”.
“We have to make sure that we’re doing things that space that are based on research, and then we can make appropriate decisions,” he said.
Consistent approach to training vital
Goodstart centres already implement mandatory training for their employees, but Dr Baxter said a consistent statewide approach was needed.
“There is also already a lot of work and thinking that goes into keeping your children safe when they are at our centres,” she said.
“This is a really important extra piece of the puzzle. All of our hearts are breaking at the moment.
“It’s a terrible moment for those who have children and young children, for those of us who work in the sector.”
Federal eduction minister Jason Clare says there has been an agreement to accelerate work underway to develop nationwide registration of early educators” (ABC News: Maren Preuss)
Creche and Kindergarten Association chief executive Sandra Cheeseman said the roundtable had kick-started important conversations.
“This is a really important, foundational step in ensuring that everybody who works with young children has the core knowledge that they need to be able to understand how to keep children safe, and how to develop an organisational and a statewide culture of keeping children safe,” she said.
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