Childcare centres presented as meeting national quality standards are being secretly flagged as “high risk” by regulators, leaving parents in the dark.
For the first time, the Herald can reveal one in six NSW childcare services hold a “secret” rating of high risk or very high risk – but families at these centres would have no idea.
While anyone can access a centre’s – potentially years old – National Quality Service (NQS) rating, which is displayed on a certificate outside the centre, and published on a register and federal government website Starting Blocks, the NSW regulator also issues each centre with a Regulatory Authority (RA) risk rating, which is often vastly different and more up to date.
The Herald asked the Department of Education to confirm how many centres publicly rated as “meeting” to “exceeding” standards are simultaneously internally classed as having risk.
The department declined to provide figures for each risk rating but said that as of August 1, about 82 per cent of services were rated in the very low, low or medium risk categories, while fewer than 5 per cent were in the highest risk category.
Child protection advocate Hetty Johnston said the current system was “incompetence on steroids”.
“Systems seem to want to hide information from the public,” she said. “Hiding behind privacy [concerns] has become the norm, and the penalty society pays for that is becoming ever more apparent.”
The Herald viewed documents from several cases where centres with exemplar quality ratings were flagged as high risk.
There is no way for parents to view these internal ratings, which have only now come to light due to the release of documents to parliament.
The shadow rating system was flagged by an independent review into the childcare sector by former deputy NSW Ombudsman Chris Wheeler.
The review examined 34 serious incident reports with “a difference” between the centre involved’s public quality rating, which it noted could be years old, and its risk rating at the time of the investigation.
Of the 34, one-third involved services “exceeding NQS” – the highest quality rating – but with an internal risk rating of “very high” or “high”.
[Ed: What Boyd doesn’t tell us is to what extent these high and very high risk ratings equate with the Centre having male staff.]
Source: Childcare reforms: Documents reveal ‘secret’ rating system for childcare centres
Potential class action looming here – against the government per breach of duty of care. Surely if risk is identified and known by government yet concealed from users of at risk services – whose children then suffer sexual etc abuse, the parents must have action in negligence.