Federal Government commits to strengthening safety and quality in ECEC

The Federal Government has pledged to crack down on what it terms “unscrupulous early childhood education and care providers” and to strengthen integrity across the care economy, including early childhood education and care (ECEC). 

“There’s no room for any dodgy operators in our early childhood education and care sector or in any part of the care sector,” Federal Minister for Early Childhood Education Dr Anne Aly said.

“We’re taking swift and decisive action to ensure child safety and improve quality in the early childhood education sector. I expect state and territory governments to fulfil their regulatory obligations and ensure early childhood education services in their jurisdictions are meeting our world leading quality standards.”

The Minister acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of services and people in the sector do the right thing, warning those who are in the minority that “if you’re failing to deliver quality and safe early childhood education you shouldn’t have access to government funding and you shouldn’t be working in the sector.”

While state and territory governments are responsible for ensuring early childhood providers are meeting minimum standards and operating within the Education and Care National Law, the Commonwealth warned that it is able to leverage its significant investment in the sector to improve quality and penalise the small number of providers doing the wrong thing.

The Federal Government promised (should it be re-elected) that it will strengthen Commonwealth regulatory and enforcement powers to deal with providers that put profit over quality and child safety at risk by exploring measures to:

• Prevent providers who persistently fail to meet minimum standards and repetitively breach the National Law from opening new Child Care Subsidy approved services.
• Take compliance action against existing providers with egregious and continued breaches, including the option to cut off access to Child Care Subsidy funding where appropriate.
• Strengthen powers to deal with providers that pose an integrity risk.

In order to ensure these measures are effective the Government pledged to consult closely with the sector and with states and territories to ensure the changes don’t negatively impact families and quality providers, only targeting the small number of providers doing the wrong thing.

As was the case identified in the recent Four Corners expose into the sector, there are occasions where a provider is detected and removed from one aspect of the care economy – such as ECEC – and elects to operate in another segment – such as the NDIS.

To stamp this out the Government will also investigate stronger cross-sector banning order arrangements to stop people who have breached safety and quality standards in one part of the care economy from operating in other care sectors. 

“Cross-sector banning orders will help enable coordination and flexibility in preventing banned entities from operating in other parts of the care economy and I look forward to working with states and territories to make them a reality,” Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth said.

“If you’ve done the wrong thing in one part of the care sector, we are going to stop you taking advantage of people in any other area. We don’t want to see dodgy providers in the care economy simply pop up in another.”

The Commonwealth will work closely with state and territory governments to put these strengthened arrangements in place.

To learn more about the full range of reforms proposed by the Federal Government please see here.