As parents, we want answers and action, not excuses and delays. Culture change doesn’t happen overnight, but safeguarding improvements can begin immediately. The technology exists. The solutions are proven. Some organisations are already using them.
The conversation with your childcare centre starts today. Your children’s safety is their right.
Government action and what parents need now
Wide-ranging legislation to cut funding for childcare centres that don’t meet quality and safety standards sends a clear message about children’s safety. The proposed national Working With Children Check linked to reportable conduct represents progress but executing this will take time we don’t have.
As a parent myself, I want to know my child’s daycare, kinder, school, and sports clubs are doing everything they can, today, to keep children safe. It can’t wait.
The reality check on fragmented systems
The recent case exposed everything broken about child protection. Valid credentials, movement across 20+ centres over 8 years, no system connecting the dots. Yes, there’s risk everywhere, but surely preventing it from coming through the front door is the most important action we can take.
Every level attempts to do good: government registers issue credentials, law enforcement run investigations, organisations care for kids. But the obligation to deploy suitable people legally sits with organisations, and they rely on systems of record being up to date.
Manual checking processes are expensive and error prone. A single abuse claim can cost organisations $150K-$2.6M, while automation technology costs less than $4 per child per year.
5 things you can ask for today
1. National and continuous monitoring of working with children checks
Only checking at recruitment where qualifications and right-to-work checks are often just sighted at the front door, but not linking with registers or checking after that, is like leaving all the doors and windows open to risk and predators.
Ask them: “Are you verifying credentials at recruitment or ongoing as well? Do you simply sight the card? or do you link it to the register? How often are you checking?”
2. Robust qualifications and reference checks
There are too many dodgy training providers, falsified qualifications and inconsistent verification processes. Poorly trained educators and carers create risk in these environments, separate to but related to predatory behaviour.
Ask them: “How do you verify that staff qualifications are genuine and current? Do you call previous employers directly to ask about any concerns with behaviour towards children?”
3. Centralised workforce compliance
Pushing down compliance checks to site supervisors in childcare and volunteers in sport is looking for trouble. They don’t have time, skills or access to easy systems to monitor. Workforce compliance and safeguarding has stronger outcomes when it’s centralised, enabling immediate response.
Ask them: “Who is specifically responsible for monitoring staff and/or volunteer credentials, and what systems do they use? ”
4. Quality education environments and child protection training
Your children deserve educators who know what concerning behaviour looks like and can create environments that naturally discourage predators while supporting healthy development.
Ask them: “What ongoing training do your educators receive on recognising inappropriate behaviour and child protection? Do you have clear policies about bathroom supervision, physical contact, and isolated activities with children?
5. Effective incident reporting and response systems
Ask them: “What’s your process if someone raises a concern about staff behaviour, and how quickly do you act? Do all staff know how to report concerns and to whom?”
Asking the right questions at the time of recruitment about a person’s behaviours towards children, and having clear processes and systems for reporting, managing and overseeing trends in code of conduct breaches, is an automatic way of identifying and addressing problematic behaviours that pose risk to children.
What this means for you
Government registers are good at issuing credentials. Law enforcement agencies are good at running investigations. Organisations are good at caring for kids. But the gaps between these fragmented systems are where bad actors hide.
For-purpose tech companies like Oho have been running ahead of government policy change to solve problems that fall into the messy middle. We’re one of few for-profit companies that don’t make a profit—our mission is protecting vulnerable people and organisations from abuse and its impacts.
Smart organisations have taken this into their own hands and found solutions that plug gaps to keep kids safe. You have the right to ask whether your child’s organisation is one of them.
The bottom line
We should support but not wait for perfect legislation or ideal systems. We can demand that organisations caring for our children use every available tool to keep them safe right now.
Since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Oho has been providing national solutions for 4 years as a for-purpose technology company. We created a system to run checks continuously because it was a gap then and it’s still a gap now. Since then, we’ve uncovered over 500 red flags—checks that were revoked or became invalid, and in many instances, Oho notified the organisations before the register sent snail mail.
If government wants childcare centres to raise their standards overnight, the question becomes: should they get emergency funding to do it, or is protecting children part of the service they’re already being paid to provide?
And will organisations implement proven solutions while we build better systems for tomorrow? Your children’s safety can’t wait for perfect systems. It starts with the questions you ask today.
Become a Women’s Agenda Foundation member and support our work! We are 100% independent and women-owned. Every day, we cover the news from a women’s perspective, advocating for women’s safety, economic security, health and opportunities. Foundation memberships are currently just $5 a month.
Bonus: you’ll receive our weekly editor’s wrap of the key stories to know every Saturday.