EDITORIAL: Terrible truth about childcare system revealed

To say the abuse which is alleged to have occurred at a Victorian childcare centre is every parent’s nightmare barely scratches the surface of the horror and distress now felt by more than 1000 families around Melbourne.

Even the most anxious of parents would struggle to come up with a scenario this wicked.

A 26-year-old childcare worker has been charged with 70 child sex abuse offences relating to kids left in his care. Some of his alleged victims were just five months old.

The families of more than 1200 children are now awaiting to find out if their child has been infected with sexually transmitted diseases.

Dozens more child sex abuse charges have been laid against a second man, an associate of the first, though these charges relate to the alleged assault of a teenage boy, and do not involve a childcare centre.

Parents — and the rest of us around the country who share their fear for their children’s safety — have been left to ask: how on earth did this happen?

Millions of Australians have experienced the anxiety that comes with dropping a beloved child off at daycare for the first time.

For many of parents, that first day is the longest they’ve ever been separated from their son or daughter.

That small act requires a giant leap of faith.

Parents need to be able to trust that the workers to whom they are handing over their child is irreproachable in character; that they will provide them with the very best of care. Otherwise, how could they do it?

This case threatens to destroy that trust on which the whole system relies.

It has revealed the terrible truth about our nation’s childcare system, which is that far from having a cohesive structure, it is a hodge-podge of State-based systems in which critical information would could prevent child abusers from gaining access to more victims can be lost at the border.

There is no national system for Working with Children Checks. Each State assesses workers differently, meaning that workers who have failed to get accreditation in one jurisdiction are free to try their luck in another.

And eight years after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Australia still does not have a set of national minimum child safety standards.

Australia has mandatory safety standards for bicycle helmets, for occy straps, for chests of drawers and for basketball backboards.

But not for the safety of our society’s most vulnerable members while in care.

The case also revealed deficiencies in employee recordkeeping. The man at the centre of the allegations worked at 20 childcare facilities between 2017 and May. Tracking them all down was a slog, because there is still no register on which that information is kept.

Few families today have the luxury of having one parent at home to look after the children.

Parents have no choice but to head back to work, and that means they have to entrust the most precious part of their world to others. They need to be able to know for certain that the care their child is provided is of the highest standard.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.