New reforms to strengthen Child Safety in Early Learning

Are families provided the opportunity to be involved in the service including shared decision-making about their child’s learning and wellbeing?

Yes! not only are you welcomed and encouraged to chat with our team when you are in our service but you can also play an active role in the planning, learning and assessment of your child in a range of ways including:

• Engaging with the XPLOR posts your child is tagged in, You can comment on EVERY post we publish for your child and communicate directly with the educators about their engagement and learning.

• Answer the call for family input. NOTHING families do is too boring of insignificant to share with our team. When you tell us what your child likes, how they send their time at home and what your world outside the centre looks like, our skilled educators use this information, this tells us what your child currently knows, what they can do and what they understand- this is an AMAZING spring board for us, it is a key head start to jumping straight in with meaningful learning and engagement. EVERY SINGLE piece of context you give us about your Childs world helps us extend their thinking, build their knowledge and encourage a love of learning that will serve them well not just for now.. but for life.

• Contribute to the goals and learning table for your child. Each time a goal is achieved, or a child takes a step towards achieving a goal, we document that in their learning table. This is also the case when new goals are set. We pull goals from everywhere, our observations of your children, our discussions with you the culture questionnaires and forms we ask you to complete from time to time and from any other documentation or feedback you provide us with. Again each time these documents are published you can access them whether in your XPLOR home app or you can even access them on your computer through the XPLOR home web browser. You can read about comment on and contribute to the goals and planning for your child.

• Provide us with your feedback, in a service this size we understand that we will not get ALL the things right for every child or family all of the time. Please come to us, don't ever be afraid to share your experience, speak your mind or tell us where we let you down or made things more difficult for you. We will always do or very best to take your feedback on and make changes. We Value GROWTH and will try to see every piece of feedback as an opportunity to reflect, respond and learn together. Our current parent survey has been live for 3 months and MANY families have not taken this opportunity to give us their feedback.

• It is so important to us that the decisions impacting your child are made BY YOU as their parents, we will always reach out and consult with you as decisions needs to be made and respect your role and your right to make decisions for you children that align with your personal beliefs values and preferences.

What supervision plans do you have in place to ensure children are supervised effectively?

Each of our spaces has an individual supervision plan in place. The plans are on display in the space and families are welcome to provide feedback.

Supervision plans are tailored to the needs of the team and children in each space, they detail the positioning of educators, specific high risk or "Red Zone" areas for special attention and the high risk times for accidents throughout the day.

As you will know, when an injury occurs our team completes a detailed incident report. These reports are audited monthly to ensure that any patterns or ongoing risks can be identified and planned for. These findings inform updates and changes to supervision plans to ensure our practices are responsive and as effective and meaningful as possible.

How do you prioritise child safety during your recruitment and induction of new staff?

Our recruitment process is extensive. Educators knowledge and understanding of child safe laws, policies and practices are assessed from very first contact with a series of questions in the interview. Once a candidate is selected they go through a screening process that exceed the requirement of current regulations requiring not only a working with children check but also a national police check.

We also have a minimum requirement of 2 industry reference checks for all qualified educators wishing to join our team and conduct an extensive induction and training process before the educator ever enters a classroom to start their role with our children. 

Are there natural and clear lines of sight across all indoor and outdoor areas to ensure visibility and accessibility of other staff and children?

Our services' purpose built design ensured that our play spaces were created with supervision in mind. Where our fixed equipment creates blind spots or corners these are labelled as red zones and planned for in our supervision plans.

How do you regularly communicate with families about your commitment and approach to child safety?

we try to keep our communications with families as open as possible, while also trying to respect that families are busy and don't need constant messages and feedback requests from the centre.

These monthly newsletters are our opportunity to speak to our families as a group and more targeted individual communications occur at a room level through the XPLOR app and on individual level through communication with families through morning and afternoon handover and conversations.

How has your service implemented the restriction on the use of personal devices?

Our team have never been permitted to have personal phones or devices in the classrooms every hand held device you see in our rooms is service supplied and does not contain a sim card.

With the the new guidelines in place we have taken even further action including:

• no smart watches or wearables are permitted without expressed approval only available with a written request form a medical professional.

• service devices are labelled with fluro orange stickers, offering ease of identification and peace of mind for families.

• a service device register is kept and maintained, this lists the serial number and details of every device used in our service.

• as many of you know we have also changed the parent code of conduct and enrolment conditions to ensure that parental use of devices also follow the new reforms and ensure our children are protected in our environment. This includes the new guides around celebrations and special events having a "photo booth" set up in the foyer so there is no need for the use of personal devices amongst the children in the celebration.

All of our families have the opportunity to specify in detail what level of photography they are comfortable with for their child and you are all welcome to update these preferences at any time. We revisit ALL photograph consents annually through the updated culture questionnaires we request from all families.

What information do you provide to families around the roles, responsibilities and skills of staff, including what to expect from staff at the service and timely communication of staff changes?

The positions, basic roles and room allocations of our educators are communicated to families at routine times throughout the year as the roster changes to reflect the changing needs of our children and community. The January newsletter each year details to teaching team in each room and the leadership structure of those individual teams.

This usually occurs again in July with mid year transitions often seeing some changes in the roster and staffing as we aim to promote continuity of care for children who may be moving rooms or age groups at this time.

When unforeseen circumstances see changes happen more quickly and less notice is available we use the XPLOR platform to update families through the "ADMIN POSTS". This allows us to select groups or rooms of children to communicate with them about the changes that impact their child or family specifically.

In our centre foyer we have a display of educators in each room including a "biography" they have provided. This give families the opportunity to learn a little about each of the educators their child spends their days with and helps to build the relationships and trust between our educators and our families.

Are children of all cultures and abilities welcomed and celebrated?

YES!! We love to see children learning from their peers and their friendships. We love to meet families who are willing to bring their cultural customs and identity into the service and help us understand how to incorporate items, experiences and learning environments that are reflective of their ways of being living and knowing.

Our deep desire to promote inclusion of all kinds is reflective not only in our enrolments but also in our recruitment, the opportunity to work alongside a broad range of educators with unique life experiences and such diverse talents is such a joy and a gift.