Childcare workers should not be allowed to carry a phone that can take pictures while working with children and parental authority should be required for workers to take pictures of children, a report has recommended.
Care providers should also ensure premises are designed in a way that allows children to be supervised at all times, including in toilet and nappy change facilities, according to the report released on Thursday.
The review of the national quality framework, which mandates safety standards for childcare facilities in Australia, was requested by the early childhood minister, Anne Aly, and the education minister, Jason Clare, and began in May. The Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority was asked to review the national childcare safety standards with a “focus on reducing harm, abuse and neglect”.
While the Child Safety Arrangements review did “not address the facts of any particular alleged incident”, the report found its “need and urgency” was highlighted by recent allegations, including an Australian childcare worker being charged with 1,623 child abuse offences against 91 children.
The report makes 16 recommendations, including recommendations on how and when children can be recorded in childcare centres.
Many centres offer parents a daily photo diary of their child throughout the day. The review is critical of the practice, which it says “reduces educators’ abilities to effectively supervise, interact with and engage with children in their learning”.
The review also raises concerns about who can access those images – either through digital applications used for sharing the images with a child’s approved family, or “inappropriately posted online or shared through other applications” – and on whose device the photos are being taken.
“There is a very real risk that unscrupulous persons within a service could use their own personal device to take images of a child and share these images inappropriately with others who are not educators or parents,” the report said.
“This risk includes taking inappropriate images, in particular where physical or sexual abuse is occurring to the child or sexualised images of the child are produced. In these circumstances, an approved provider has no way of managing and monitoring what images are being taken and where or to whom they are being sent.”
The report recommends amending the national regulations to mandate documentation of children, including their images, “must only occur on devices owned, monitored and secured by the approved provider” with “strict controls” in place for the storage of images.
The report also makes recommendations around teacher registration and accreditation and improving reporting of child safety concerns.
The report was presented to education ministers last week and the sector will be consulted on the report’s recommendations. Early childhood ministers from across the nation will meet early in the new year to agree on an implementation plan for the new regulations.
Clare said the safety and protection of children attending early childhood education “continues to be a high priority for national, state and territory governments”.
“Australia has a very good system of early childhood education and care, but more can be done to ensure the NQF remains contemporary and fit-for-purpose in the context of child safety,” he said.
Aly said the report highlighted that the NQF could be better.
“The Australian government is absolutely committed to making it better so that our children have a positive, rewarding and safe early childhood education.”
More than 1.4 million children attend 17,000 childcare centres in Australia every year.
