New investigation reveals that child abuse happens more frequently at for-profit childcare centres

More news has come to light that will fill parents with dread. More stories of abuse in childcare centres have come to light, investigated by the ABC’s Adele Ferguson. She has shown the extent to which paedophiles have infiltrated Australia’s childcare industry.

One important factor that is not getting enough attention is the fact that most of the abuse occurs in for-profit centres.

Ms Ferguson says that this is occurring because for-profit centres always have one eye on the bottom line, and this creates more incentives for cost cutting. They have higher staff turnover and are more likely to routinely breach or game child-to-staff ratios that leave supervision dangerously thin.

If we want to keep our children safe, then we need care that is 100% focused on them. Providers shouldn’t be thinking about how they can also maximise profits. Long ago we worked out that education and profit shouldn’t mix. There is no profit motive driving school education in Australia.

Private schools in Australia are not-for-profit. They are run by school boards that are supposed to be focused on providing the best education for their students.

How does the Government keep the for-profit sector out of school education? A for-profit school is ineligible for Government funding. We need to do the same for childcare.

But when it comes to childcare, Australia is going in the opposite direction. 95% of all growth in childcare has been in the for-profit sector.

This is not to say there are not good for-profit centres providing quality services that have the welfare of children as their highest priority. But the billions of dollars the Government is pouring into the sector is attracting all sorts.

Childcare has become big business. The biggest for-profit providers are worth hundreds of millions of dollars who pay their CEOs millions of dollars a year.

We need to take profit out of childcare.

This will not happen overnight. Especially because the for-profit sector makes up 70% of care. But if we don’t start now, we are going to struggle to make it better.

The solution is for more state and not-for-profit centres. To do this we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

We should look to the model we already have for primary schools. In almost every suburb there is a local government run primary school. The same could be true of childcare centres.

Where practical, these childcare centres could be built at primary schools. This would benefit the many parents who have both preschool and primary school aged children. They would only have to drop off and pick up the kids from one location.

By incorporating childcare into the school system, the industry can be professionalised and provide real career paths for childcare workers. This would stabilise employment in the industry, which, at the moment, is plagued by casual, short-term, insecure work.

Parents should expect that when they send their kids to childcare that they are safe and receiving top quality education and care. This is not consistent with the profit motive.

The Government is already spending billions of dollars on childcare. Let’s use that money to give them the best start in life.