A string of sexual abuse allegations against a childcare worker in Melbourne have brought regulation of the early childhood sector back into the national conversation.
Advocates for children’s rights and prevention of abuse say oversight of the system is flawed, and that robust federal intervention is needed to ensure the safety of society’s youngest while in care.
The Victorian government has announced it will fast-track reforms into the childcare sector and has commissioned an urgent review to be turned around in about six weeks.
Nationally, the system for regulating early childhood education and care falls to an independent statutory authority, but there is neither a ministry nor a regulator dedicated to it.
Here’s what we know about the regulatory framework as it currently stands.
What are the rules for child safety in childcare centres?
Victoria’s early childhood sector is regulated under a combination of Commonwealth and state-specific laws, as well as the Child Safe Standards (CSS) the state adopted in 2016 to protect children in care from harm and abuse.
There are a total of 11 standards which organisations are legally required to comply with through independent policies and procedures. They include child safety and wellbeing and suitable staff and volunteers.
Victoria has the highest number of child safety standards in Australia, and is the only state other than NSW to have established legislation following the introduction of the 10 National Principles of Child Safe Organisations federally in 2019.
The child safety and wellbeing standard focuses on incorporating risk management at the leadership level, requiring service providers to:
- Make a public commitment to child safety
- Actively monitor, review and evaluate child abuse risks
- Reduce the risk of harm and abuse to children
- Embed a child safety culture at all levels of the service, led by leaders’ behaviour
- Create an open environment where identifying and reporting harm is encouraged
- Respond appropriately to allegations or suspicions of harm or disclosures
The standard applies to long day care, family day care, kindergartens, Outside School Hours Care (OSHC), school holiday programs, limited and occasional care, and early childhood intervention services.
As for the suitable staff and volunteers standard, providers are required to clearly relay their child safety requirements in job advertisements, include specific selection criteria aligned with the industry’s legal framework, and undertake appropriate vetting of candidates — not limited to the Working with Children Check (WWCC), which is already mandatory for most roles.
Joshua Dale Brown, the Melbourne childcare worker charged with 70 child sex crime offences this week, had a valid WWCC.
The Creative Garden childcare centre in Melbourne’s Point Cook is at the centre of several alleged sex crimes. (ABC News: Samantha Jonscher)
Post recruitment, all staff, volunteers and contractors are required to undergo a child safety induction, receive ongoing training tailored to their roles, and be upskilled in how to look out for colleague behaviours that compromise child safety.
Victorian providers are also required to nominate child safety champions at their respective services.
The manner of compliance with each of the standards is laid out under state government advice for early childhood services online.
An ABC investigation in March uncovered that tens of thousands of Australian children attend childcare centres that fail national standards, with one in 10 facilities never rated by regulators.
An analysis of national data by ABC’s Four Corners the same month revealed a troubling surge in serious incidents at childcare centres — more than 26,000 cases in 2024, a 27 per cent jump in three years.
Can a child be in the supervision of a single caregiver?
Legally speaking, yes.
Across the country, early childhood services have strict obligations relating to the active supervision of children at all times, including when sleeping, in the presence of visitors, and during transportation or excursions.
The Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) also sets out the minimum educator-to-child ratios under the National Quality Framework (NQF).
They do not stipulate that more than one caregiver needs to be around a child or group of children at any given time.
From birth to 36 months the educator-to-child ratio in Victoria is 1:4, from 36 months up to preschool age (5 years) it is 1:11, and over preschool age it is 1:15.
That means a single childcare worker is legally permitted to provide care to four, 11, or 15 children at once, based on their age, without another co-worker needing to be physically present.
ACECQA’s ratios are calculated across an entire early childhood service, not individual rooms.
The ratios vary by state and territory. You can view your the ACECQA table here.
How are the rules enforced?
Early childhood services in Victoria are governed under the National Quality Framework (federal), the Victorian Children’s Services regulatory scheme (state), and the Child Safe Standards.
The state’s overall regulatory authority for the sector is the Department of Education. Under it also falls the Quality Assessment and Regulation Division (QARD), a sub-regulator created specifically to oversee compliance to the CSS in Victoria.
Nationally, the agency tasked with helping improve the quality of early childhood services is the ACECQA, which has responsibilities like setting out guidelines and helping state and territories implement the National Quality Framework.
However, it is not the national regulator, and doesn’t have powers to sanction other regulatory authorities or individual childcare centres.
There is also no federal cabinet ministry dedicated exclusively to children or early childhood services, with the responsibility falling to the Minister for Education, presently Jason Clare.
The government has long faced criticism that regulation of the childcare system lacks coherence nationally, despite strong checks and balances being in place on state and territory levels.
“We have quite robust oversight measures in Victoria. What we don’t see nationally is the connectedness of those systems,” Mina Singh, Victoria’s acting principal commissioner for children and young people, told ABC News Breakfast.
“And so [thinking about] how people are able to move around the country and able to work in different spaces, but also just that very idea of child safety front and centre everywhere you put your child … at the commission we see abuse happen in all sorts of centres wherever children and young people are.”
The Parenthood, an advocacy group for parents and carers, says over the past decade Australia’s early education sector has grown faster than the regulatory and oversight mechanisms have been able to.
What reforms have been called for?
An overwhelming number of families and advocacy groups have called for stronger curbs in early childcare settings relating to staff misconduct with children, particularly the screening of workers both prior to and during their employment.
The adequacy of Working With Children Checks — currently administered under eight separate state and territory systems — have received fresh scrutiny, with criticism of the ease in obtaining them and the lack of revocations for workers who show warning signs.
The Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF) on Tuesday urged governments across the country to swiftly embed mandatory child abuse prevention education into the scheme, an issue it has lobbied on for years.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2015 made a raft of recommendations aimed at making early childcare services safer for children including through standardising and nationalising the WWCC system.
Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds says children’s wellbeing needs to be a matter of national focus. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said a national focus on the childcare sector and targeted policy-setting was urgently needed.
“This will happen again and again, until we fix the regulatory foundations of this industry,” she told the ABC.
“Child safety and wellbeing isn’t a priority in this country. When you look at the National Cabinet … what’s on that list, you’ll find things like women and women’s safety, as it should be.
“But when you look at that list, you won’t see the word children anywhere and I really think that highlights a lack of accountability for action for evidence-based recommendations.
“The childcare sector is a shared responsibility across the federation, so National Cabinet should have its eyes on child safety and wellbeing … it could be done with the stroke of a pen.”
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on Wednesday announced the state would create a register of childcare workers for extra scrutiny, as well as ban personal devices from childcare centres from September.
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