Thank you for the positive messages you have been sharing with the educators and teachers who care for your children in our centres – we are all distressed and troubled by this week’s revelations.
On behalf of our in-centre teams we are closely following the changes governments at all levels are announcing and are supportive of measures which help ensure that all children are in safe, high quality early learning environments and improvements to the sector that support our professional educators and teachers.
We are very supportive of the proposed introduction of a national Working with Children Check, improved reporting and information sharing between government agencies, increased funding for regulators and the introduction of a National Early Childhood Education and Care Commission.
We take safeguarding children from abuse, neglect and harm very seriously, and we embed child safety into everything we do, from how we create our learning environments to how we recruit and supervise our people. Every Goodstart centre follows strict policies and procedures to keep children safe. These include:
Active supervision and line of sight practices which ensure children remain visible and well supported at all times. We have implemented staffing practices over and above the NQF to support safety and supervision, including additional staffing in nursery rooms.
Our educators are expected to work closely together to ensure they are in line of sight or in hearing of each other and must ensure that children remain in designated learning spaces (including classrooms, playgrounds, sleep and rest rooms), and avoid taking children to offices, staff rooms, ancillary areas, or any location without visibility to other staff.
It also means our teams are thoughtful about environmental design (for example posters on windows should not hinder clear lines of sight), effective supervision, maintaining educator to child ratios, ongoing risk assessments, and embedded child safe practices to prevent harm to children.
Rigorous recruitment processes: thorough pre-employment screening, including a minimum of two referees are required (with at least one being a direct supervisor of the candidate in last 18 months) and current Working With Children Checks, and prohibited persons checks before commencement.
Our recruitment team ask targeted screening questions and are trained to look for potential warning signs and inconsistencies and probe further if a response raises concerns, if there is hesitation, or there are gaps in employment history.
Ongoing mandatory training for all staff in child safe practices and on their reporting responsibilities.
Strong policies and procedures in place to safeguard children including a ban on the use of personal devices in our centres (implemented nationally on 1 March 2025).
A culture that listens to children, underpinned by our ‘Look, Do, Tell’ framework which ensures our team supervise, act and report.
Although there are only a small number of male teachers and educators employed in our centres, we recognise and value the important role they play in the lives and learning of children. We will continue to advocate for and encourage more men to join early childhood education.
We know we must remain vigilant in our safeguarding and look forward to working with governments across the nation to improve safeguarding for all children. Thank you again for the support you are giving our teachers, educators and centre leaders at this time.
Ros Baxter
Chief Executive Officer