KOORANA REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT TO CHILD SAFETY FOLLOWING FOUR CORNERS EXPOSÉ ON CHILDCARE CRISIS.
The Four Corners episode that aired Monday, 17th March 2025, on ‘Betrayal of Trust: Australia’s Childcare Crisis’ was a frightening glimpse into the unspoken realities that exist in corners of our sector. As a dedicated provider in the early childhood education and care sector, Koorana reaffirms its commitment to upholding a high standard of child safety and operational compliance. We strongly denounce any form of mistreatment or abuse of children and are committed in ensuring that such practices have no place in our services.
Every child deserves safe and nurturing environments. And every parent deserves to have comfort that their children are being looked after with love, respect and professionalism.
At Koorana, we take our responsibility seriously to ensure that all children, of all abilities, in our care, experience a sense of safety and belonging with us.
To achieve this:
- We are committed to the National Child Safe Standards and have an active action plan we continuously review to ensure we continue to meet these standards and have these child safe practices ever-embedded in how we work.
- We are committed to the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of a Child and children’s rights, preferences and needs are core to our preschool philosophies.
- We operate above the educator: child ratio requirement, to ensure our educators are supported in their day-to-day roles and responsibilities.
- We have clear performance expectations of our team that places emphasis on child safety, wellbeing and outcomes.
- We offer regular professional development to our team, and we address development gaps when they arise.
- We are transparent with families and the regulator when there are incidents, and transparent about how we are resolving them.
- We pay our educators above the Award to ensure their valuable role is recognised and rewarded appropriately.
We are committed to ensuring that our environments are safe, nurturing and provide children with a sense of belonging and inclusion. We cannot, and will not, settle for any less.
We strongly support the efforts of governments at all levels and sector advocates in addressing child misconduct and profit-focused practices that lack a foundation in quality. We support efforts to raise the standards of practice. to ensure all parents can trust in the care their children receive.
We also wish to acknowledge the wonderful educators who do meet these standards and who do this work, often without the thanks or recognition they deserve. You choose each day to support children to thrive and grow, and we wish to see the value of early education elevated, better recognised, and the complex policy issues that sit behind these systemic failures addressed. Whilst there is much positive support being offered to the sector at present, it does not address the complexity of the workforce challenges, the regulatory challenges, the pressures from other industries such as health and disability, or the underlying drivers that sit behind some of these
issues. We hope that this elevates the need for policy reform and can pave the way for meaningful changes in our space.
