- by M Santos
- The Guardian
- Issue #2153
Photo: Alexander Grey – pexels.com
The charging of Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown with 70 counts related to the alleged sexual abuse of babies and toddlers in his care has set alarm bells ringing. The case has brought to the fore unresolved problems in the privatised early childhood and education (ECEC) sector.
Brown has tested positive for sexually transmitted diseases, with more than 1,200 children now needing to be tested.
Brown worked in 20 private centres, most of them owned by big private operators, including private equity-owned Affinity Education, listed ASX giant G8 Education and US-owned Only About Children.
Parents of more than half of children aged five and under rely on ECEC centres.
While at the most horrendous scale of child sexual abuse, this case is not an isolated incident. At least one report of sexual misconduct is made every day in Victoria, NSW and Western Australia. In Queensland South Australia and the Northern Territory – there is no requirement to report incidents.
ECEC has become big business to the tune of $20 billion and rising. What should be a caring service has been largely commodified with babies and toddlers a means to profit-churning. When the private, for-profit sharks move into a caring sector, a conflict of interest immediately arises.
Educators cost money. Food costs money. Centres and resources cost money. They all eat into profits resulting in cost-cutting measures that impact on the quality of care and the well-being of the child.
Private equity sharks and other private operators have been drawn into the sector by large government subsidies. The situation is similar to aged care where abuse is all too prevalent (see page 7).
BROKEN SYSTEM
The Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority warned federal and state ministers 18 months ago about the potential dangers in the shortage of appropriately qualified early childhood educators.
“This has resulted in concerns about the screening and monitoring of behaviour of people seeking to work with children and young people,” it said. “With the increased use of casual and agency relief staff, concerns have also been raised about the level of vetting being undertaken pre-employment.”
Professor Michael Salter, director of the local branch of the Global Child Safety Institute Childlight said ECEC centres were far safer now than in previous decades when there were very few checks. “But we’ve had a massive expansion of the sector, and the barriers to entry are quite low.
“There needs to be broader questions asked around the privatisation of childcare, child-to-staff ratios, as well as an awareness of reporting obligations and what constitutes boundary-violating behaviour.
“Childcare centres are a magnet for individuals, and groups of individuals, wanting access to pre-verbal children,” Salter said. “They’re targeting them because the kids can’t talk. And even when they do, the courts are generally very reluctant to accept testimony from very young children.”
The number of cases reveals the inadequacy of relying on working with children checks and lack of following through with previous employers.
There are regulations for staff-to-child ratios and quality standards like food and space, across the sector. The strict enforcement of these regulations is lacking. The regulator is under-funded and under-staffed.
The employment of individual educators in numerous centres is common, a result of the casualisation of the workforce and use of agencies to supply staffing. Children need continuity of staff and programs. Constant turnover of staff, under-staffing and lack of fully qualified educators only harms the development of the children and makes the system vulnerable to abuse.
IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION
The importance of qualified educators and planned programs cannot be overemphasised. The first four years are the most important in a child’s development. In that period 90 per cent of our brain is formed. The work of early childhood educators is undervalued and lacks the respect by employers and political leaders.
They are underpaid and carry crippling workloads, resulting in a huge turn-over.
Fully qualified EC educators have three- or four-year university degrees. The 15 per cent wage increase for early childhood (EC) educators won by unions after many years of struggle still leaves their work under-valued. Labor must now push for the full 25 per cent demanded by unions.
At present there is an estimated shortage of more than 20,000 educators. Equal pay to school teachers with the same qualifications, and an overall improvement in wages is needed to retain and attract more educators.
They are not child-minders.
Labor’s introduction of multi-employer bargaining has assisted around 30,000 EC educators to improve their wages. But there are still other centres where workers are paid the minimum award rate or are on an inferior enterprise bargaining agreement. This must be rectified.
POLICY
Ten years ago the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse called on the government to “facilitate a national model” for working with children checks. This and many of its other recommendations remain unimplemented. This too must be rectified.
Governments have been jolted into action by Brown’s alleged actions.
NSW, Victoria and South Australia are committed to reforms with three- and four-year-old preschool programs and increasing the hours of pre-school programs.
Victoria is developing a register of childcare workers and educators, a ban on personal mobile phones in centres, the tracking of ECEC educators’ employment history, and mandatory CCTV.
CCTV does not and should not replace workers. Many centres already have CCTV, but widespread use opens another can of worms. Who controls the recordings and what do they do with them?
Chayanne Carter, a consultant to childcare providers, says: “Requiring two educators to be present at all times acts as a structural safeguard against abuse. Predators thrive in isolation; when no witnesses are present, the opportunity for abuse or grooming increases significantly. By mandating dual supervision, we remove the conditions that enable predatory behaviour.”
Dual supervision should be mandatory, with a government commitment to fund the necessary staffing ratios.
“In the event of an incident or allegation, services with robust supervision protocols are better positioned to demonstrate compliance, respond promptly, and protect both staff and children,” Carter said.
The Royal Commission emphasised the need to make sure the physical environment minimises opportunity for abuse to occur. This includes glass walls around toilet and nappy change areas and no blind spots in centres. Continuity of staff is important.
Education Minister Jason Clare said he would give his department the power to pull funding from childcare centres “persistently failing” to meet safety and quality standards. But this only leaves parents with higher fees or looking for another centre when there is an acute shortage in many areas.
Effective child protection training that covers grooming behaviour and how to recognise signs that a child might be being abused is also needed.
Funding is critical. This crisis in ECEC comes at a time when the Albanese Labor government is cutting social spending to fund US war preparations, including AUKUS.
New public ECEC centres in rural, regional and remote areas are also required to alleviate the lack of ECEC centres.
NSW Greens MP Abigail Boyd, chair of a state upper house inquiry into the ECEC says: “People are doing six months’ training and then they’re put into a centre. These courses aren’t weeding out the people who don’t care what the job is, and it can be one way you get paedophiles in the industry, because it’s so easy.”
The focus of ECEC should be on education and care, on the children, their development and socialisation. Not profits. Removing the private profit layer would ultimately result in reduced costs for parents and governments.
The Labor government is considering a proposal for a fixed $10-a-day flat fee per child.
The Communist Party of Australia believes that there is no place for the private, for-profit sector in ECEC. The important role of early childhood educators in the emotional, intellectual, social and cultural development of pre-school children should be recognised. These educators should be paid a salary commensurate with their qualifications and responsibilities. All children should have access to free, safe, quality early childhood education.
Readers seeking support can ring Lifeline crisis support on 13 11 14 or text 0477 13 11 14, Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged 5 to 25). Anyone seeking information or support relating to sexual abuse can contact Bravehearts on 1800 272 831 or Blue Knot on 1300 657 380.
Backgrounder
Privatisation’s toll on childcare
M Santos
In 1993 Australia’s first national system for early childhood education and care (ECEC) was introduced by the Keating Labor government. The Quality Improvement and Accreditation System was formulated through discussions with ECEC organisations in the states and territories.
Publicly run centres were set up with federal funding and funding from local councils. Care was strictly regulated. It was based on 52 principles and recognised that “good quality care must appreciate the individuality of every child and treat all children equally.” The special needs of children with disabilities, children from non-English speaking backgrounds and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were included.
The principles set four fundamental standards of care: Unsatisfactory, Basic, Good Quality and High Quality. These took into consideration the relationship between staff and parents, staff and children, staff and staff, the programs for the children, nutrition, health and safety, centre management and staff development.
Quality of care was paramount. Staff-child ratios were set and strictly adhered to, with children under two requiring extra qualified staff.
A strong grassroots movement for the provision of quality, affordable ECEC had gathered considerable momentum by the 1980s. As a result, community-based and government-funded centres received operational subsidies and parent fee relief on a sliding scale, which allowed access for low-income families.
In 1990 the government began providing funding to the for-profit child care industry by extending fee assistance to parents using private centres.
The drive for profits by the private sector put downward pressure on quality and pressure on fees to be constantly raised. The rent and profits are factored into the fees. This meant the government, rather than parents, was largely subsidising the private sector.
Neoliberal policies of deregulation and privatisation have resulted in not only an expansion of the private sector but the commodification of ECEC. Childcare, which plays a crucial part of the lives of so many working people and their children, is used as a cash cow by corporate cowboys.
Both major parties are guilty of handing over ECEC services to the private for-profit sector.
With their main motive maximum profits, private centres increased their fees. Most refused to take children under two years of age because they didn’t want to employ the extra staff required.
In 1997, after less than a year in government, the Howard government’s hatchet men had left their own trail of destruction, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from ECEC funding. The resultant fee increases forced thousands of parents away from the community centres. Centres across Australia began closing.
Educators were made redundant or had their hours cut. Private operators reduced wages and conditions using the Howard government’s infamous Australian Workplace Agreements (individual contracts).
Food budgets were slashed, in some cases to $1 a day per child in private centres.
PROFIT AT ALL TIMES
A recent ABC report highlighted testimony from a former manager at privately owned Affinity Education described the culture as “profit at all times.”
Affinity has more than 250 early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres across Australia with 20,000 children. Private equity firm Quadrant purchased Affinity Education in 2021 paying $650 million to enter the ECEC sector. Affinity Education is just one of its many investments.
Quadrant’s investments are also in companies providing legal services, car care, IT, electronics, spine technology for surgeons, food products, property valuations, and beauty products.
Affinity’s revenue in 2023 was $553 million with a large portion of that from government subsidies. Declared profit after tax was $13.7 million.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Adele Ferguson describes Affinity as offering “a window into how the regulatory system is failing families. Between 2021 and 2024, its NSW centres racked up more than 1,100 regulatory breaches, averaging more than two a day. Yet in that time, the regulator issued just nine infringement notices, totalling less than $2,000 in fines.”
“Thousands of pages of internal regulatory documents reveal the same problems surfacing again and again: unsafe sleep practices, staff out of ratio and incomplete records ranging from expired working-with-children checks to missing staff qualifications and children’s medical histories. In most cases, they are told to do better by the regulator. Despite this, since December last year, Affinity has been allowed to expand – acquiring 13 more centres in NSW.”
Pro-corporate zealots at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) have responded to the alleged wholesale abuse by warning that “Cutting out private equity will ultimately put taxpayers on the hook for a bigger bill” and clash with “the lower-tax agenda” they think Australia needs.
That’s absolute nonsense. Profits add an additional layer to costs. Parents and taxpayers foot the higher bill for those profits.
“Unions, advocates and experts in favour of government-owned and operated childcare services have again flooded the media with claims that quality and safety are compromised by cost-cutting and understaffing in for-profit centres,” the AFR notes.
That’s right. Unions, advocates and experts are on the money here.
There are strong parallels with aged care and the role of private for-profit outfits in that area.
Greens MP and chair of a NSW upper house inquiry into the early childhood education sector Abigail Boyd is scathing of federal regulations that are poorly enforced by states and territories, suggesting that lax punishment for non-compliance has led to governance issues at for-profit centres, below legally mandated staffing ratios and other safety provisions.
“There’s a pattern of these companies cutting corners as part of their business model, waiting to get caught, because they know the response will be so lax that it makes good business sense to just continue in their ways,” Boyd says.
