Child Safety Must Be Our Priority

New campaign led by The Y calls for the raising of mandatory standards across Out of Hours School care.

Key Points:

For every 15 children in before and after school care in Australia, there must be at least two educators.

That is the bold call to the New South Wales Government from The Y, a leading Australian provider of Out of Hours School Care.

Rob Kennaugh is CEO of The Y (YMCA) in NSW. Rob told Hope Mornings that the Prioritising Child Safety Campaign is “critical” to optimal care of children in NSW.

“Currently, you can have one educator caring for up to 15 children,” Rob said about the legislated educator-child ratio.

“We believe that standard is unsatisfactory and needs to change.”

“As any parent would know, when you have 15 little ones, things happen.”

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“To have only one educator is unsafe.”

Out of Hours School Care providers are encouraged to join The Y in seeking changes to minimum standards for educator-to-child ratios.

Also, Rob urged parents and caregivers to “Sign the Pledge” as a sign of support for Prioritising Child Safety campaign.

“If [parents and caregivers] are keen, they can send a letter to their MP to let them know they are an advocate for this campaign,” Rob said.

The Y is leading by example. Already, The Y maintains two educators per 15 children at its care centres.”

“We’ve looked at our history and… 14 years ago, The Y was in the news for all the wrong reasons,” Rob said.

“We had a person charged for child sex offence at the Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse].”

“It was a situation in The Y’s history that was terrible.”

“Since then, we have done everything we can to use that as a catalyst for really strong child-safety regulations and practices – whether they are asked for or not.”
Rob acknowledged that other not-for-profit providers in this care space also provide two educators per 15 children.

Calling upon all providers to push for this mandated standard, Rob said it would come at a significant cost.

“It is going to cost money, there’s no question about that,” Rob said.

“On our side of the fence, it’s cost us about one million dollars per year.”

“We could have followed the regulation, met the standard and made an extra one million dollars.”

“But we believe that would have compromised child safety, and that is not a price worth paying.”

“What we are asking for is to put child safety before profit.”

Listen to the full conversation with Rob Kennaugh in the player above.

Feature image: Canva Pro