Organisations that work with children have a responsibility to keep them safe from harm and abuse as described in their duty of care and in the NSW Child Safe Standards. This episode will explore this topic further with guest speakers from the ECEC sector.
About this episode
Staff in ECEC services are managing risks everyday as part of their daily work. Risks can be described as the likelihood and potential impact of harm resulting from exposure to a hazard. It is not always possible to completely eliminate every risk, and staff need to be attuned to how to best minimise or respond to risks of harm to children. This is particularly important when considering risks that may lead to the harm or abuse of children. The second part of this episode looks at conflicts of interest in ECEC organisations and the documentation and processes around risk, including involving the perspectives of children.
About our speakers
Pauline O’Kane is the CEO of Network of Community Activities, and brought extensive experience in play movement from the UK to advocate for children and educators in out of hours contexts in Australia. Network is the only training provider specifically dedicated to OOSH. Their professional development programs are meticulously crafted by experts in the field and include modules on risk, leadership courses, child protection, active supervision and behaviour management, as well as personalised professional learning for your organisation (link below).
Kerrie Maguire is a professional learning and development specialist at Community Early Learning Australia (CELA) with more than two decades of experience in children’s services and a passion for supporting educators. CELA is the voice for Australia’s early education and care sector and has successfully supported and advocated for ECEC services for nearly 50 years. CELA provides a wealth of training for educators and leaders available at the link below.
Louise Doolin worked at the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority as an Authorised Officer, specialising in the Family Day Care context. The Regulatory Authority’s primary goals are to raise quality and drive continuous improvement in the ECEC sector, ensure the safety, health and wellbeing of children attending ECEC services, and improve educational and developmental outcomes of children attending ECEC services.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Module 5 eLearning 'Hiring and Managing Child Safe Staff' - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/training-and-resources/elearning
Be You Mental Health Support for Educators - https://beyou.edu.au/
CELA training - https://www.cela.org.au/training
Network of Community Activities professional learning - https://networkofcommunityactivities.org.au/what-we-do/professional-development/
Lundy participation model -
(00:33):
1My guests today are Louise Doolan from the Regulatory Authority, who's covering family daycare contexts. Welcome waste. Good morning. I've also got Pauline O'Kane from the Network of Community Activities who's covering out of school hours contacts. Welcome, Pauline.
2Hello, Katie. I'm really excited to be here.
1Thank you. Thank you. And I've also got Karen McGuire from Community Early Learning Australia, who's representing Long Daycare and the preschool context. Welcome, Carrie.
(01:00):
3Thanks, Katie. Great to be here.
1Can we just talk very quickly about the sector as a whole? It's notoriously time poor. It can often be very emotional or it can be quite traumatic for staff and for children at point. So can we just very quickly appreciate the connection between supporting staff and lowering risk to children like can? Can we just talk about how that might work and how important it is to acknowledge that relationship?
(01:29):
2Yeah, I think that's such a valuable point that you've brought up, Katie. The wellbeing of your staff are is absolutely paramount. And it is the simple things are least costly, like checking in with people about how they're going. I mean, social workers get professional supervision. It's not. So, pertinent in our sector, but actually having a one on one and a ten minute chat with every educator, if you are a leader, is really important.
(02:07):
2I was the chair of my Bush when my kids went, and I would do that with the, center director just once a week on a Friday, how we should be weeping. And it's just that really great opportunity to allow people to impact when they actually have fancied a challenge. And if they've been put in a particular space, because that's often what can happen in our sector, is you get labeled as the act or person.
(02:41):
2And you're constantly put in those high risk areas. And every so often you needs a break from that. You want to go in and be the creative person or be the chef or be, you know, dabbling in the garden. So giving everybody that loved work can actually alleviate their stress. So they might always love being in the act or person, but they sometimes want a change from that.
(03:07):
2So really knowing your educators, checking in with them. And again you know, we've set it a lot here. But creating that environment where any conversation matters and having those robust conversations sometimes challenging, but that's when we really get to our good work.
(03:29):
3I want to come back to service leaders. Often I find that service leaders are doing all the supporting, but no one's actually supporting them. So this is a call out to a career providers, employee assistance programs, by you. And I think that's really, really important because what we what we need to understand is that a service leader is taking on, you know, the impacts of, you know, difficult situations.
(03:55):
3And is, is that professional friend for all the educators? That's a high rate of burnout for the service leader. So we've got to think about who's supporting them. And I think we have to tread very, very carefully here as well. Service leaders. Their core role is education and care. They are not counselors. They are not psychologists. So we may have staff members that do have complex mental health issues.
(04:20):
3So they need to be supported in that. And as a service director, know your role and responsibility and your limitations. Know where you can reach out and where you can refer your educators. Because if we talk about occupational health and safety again, another area that's not talked about is mental health. So it's really great that you've raised it.
1Absolutely. And we're going to put a link to a bunch of mental health services in the show notes for this episode. So do reach out if you need support. So now guys, I want to move on to conflicts of interest. Now this is quite a big conversation. Can get quite complex. And before we go into identifying them, why are conflicts of interest considered a risk?
(04:59):
1Why do we have to think about them like that?
3I think, number one, if we come back to, I sometimes call conflicts of interest, they can sometimes be ethical dilemmas in the child safe space. And there's a real lack of understanding around what's an ethical dilemma. So a conflict of interest is I have an interest and somebody else has an interest. So there's I'm big conflicted about what decision I'm supposed to make.
(05:22):
3So it might be a conflict of interest in relation to that. The actual service leader is perpetrating harm against children within the service. Now, because that that leader is, holds quite a lot of power. I've also been told that if I do say something, I could potentially lose my job. You actually have a conflict. You have a conflict between what you know is right to do and then maintaining your own position at the service.
(05:47):
3So conflict that's an ethical dilemma. So those ethics that we talk about again, we come back to, those legal frameworks that guide you to understand what your legal responsibility. But then when we go to the ethical responsibilities, of course, we've got the ACA code of ethics, we've got our codes of conduct. But again, it's that culture that we start talking about.
(06:08):
3So we've actually got to have those things guiding our service teams. Because again, I'll go back to my own values, beliefs and attitudes. And that's the thing that's going to guide me in that decision making again. So conflicts of interest can sit with the adult. And again, we're losing sight of what's it like for the child or the children within those conflicts.
(06:30):
1So to be really clear, if there is a situation that puts an educator or service provider in a position where they are in an ethical dilemma that could possibly put a child at risk of harm. So, okay, let's name some of those conflicts of interest. What kinds of things we're looking out for.
3Babysitting.
(06:50):
1A big one. Big one in the sector. Yeah.
3This was often raised, by our regional and remote services, who I love. So shout out to all the regional remote services who do such an amazing job out there. Because we have to understand that even in our large urban environments like Sydney, we have communities. So I'm part of a community pull it in the ways a part of, you know, communities.
(07:11):
3And, when we're talking about small communities, you are living and working in that community. Okay. So it is it's a bit of a no brainer. Of course, I'd babysit because the children actually come to the service I'm related to, so why wouldn't I do that? What we need to understand is that there needs to be some good systems and processes around that, so educators feel safe in those environments, whether they're stepping in the service and stepping out of the service and performing those those roles of babysit.
(07:39):
3And I think that there needs to be some really good discussions with educators about. And I think this comes into critical reflection, you know, what's the best thing that could happen? But what's the worst thing that could happen? And so what are some of the things, the mechanisms that we have in place to support you and to be able to have clear communication and conversations with families in relation to that.
3So I think that's where those conflicts of interest can sit again. So babysitting comes up a lot in relation to that. And I and I would be talking to educators and where are they going to make a decision as a service a whole of service that no, that doesn't happen. It's not as easy and straightforward in those very small remote communities.
(08:18):
3So there needs to be some really good discussions and conversations with educators, but also bringing families into those conversations and discussions about what child safety means and looks like, not just when it's in the confines of the service, but also in the community as well.
2We had a lot of impact in a number of years ago around this very topic, and it was with the commissioner, and we all came to the conclusion that educators are often the best babysitters because they have those professional boundaries. And what we didn't want it to do was go underhand. And so it's like any job, you have to declare second work.
(09:01):
2So to me, it's about an educator saying, I've been approached by this family, I have a real great relationship with those children. They've asked me to come on a Saturday, blah, blah, blah, and they're having the open conversations. Then we have the policy and procedures. We also have to empower families to understand, to do their own checks. All relationship ends when the educator finishes working for us, and you are having a new engagement with that educator, and that is a different engagement.
(09:38):
2So it's empowering the families. And I know sometimes services have per, little tip sheets for families about what makes a good babysitter and alerting them to some of the things that they should be looking at. Because, again, one of our roles in education and care is educating the community about what's good for children. And if you can give any additional help to families about how they can make those decisions, that's really good.
(10:10):
2And obviously having code of contacts so that educators know what they're signing up to so they come to you rather than you having to drag it out of them. Another conflict that comes up in our sector is when you've got close friends working together and family members working together.
(10:34):
1Can I just say it's a really common situation, a common situation. You're working in this sector. People get really close. Yes. You have to be able to support each other. Sometimes you do end up very good friends.
2Yes, but when it's family members as well and you've got family members in the leadership team, that can be really difficult for educators, because it's not only that you might be whistleblowing about the leader. You're actually up against a family because there's going to be that protective, mechanism that comes back into force when you're making a comment about a leader.
(11:17):
2And I have seen in situations where you've got the center director that is a lead at the leader, and then the sister is the assistant director. So to educators Guide, and that's where the approved provider needs to come in and have robust conversations about that and being open to those educators may be a little bit more. Taking concerns directly to the approved provider.
(11:52):
2Most scenarios are workable. You just have to be able to have the open conversations and then have the written documentation in place to back that up. So people have got a reference point.
4Yeah, that's a really great point you bring up in the family daycare space particularly, we're seeing some of those conflicts of other household members now being in the home. Quite often all day. You know, our world and our life environment from post-Covid is change where people don't have to leave the home anymore. So we're going from an educator model, being just at home with children to now having multiple adults in the home, our children in care.
(12:30):
4We're also seeing our family daycare. Educators own children in their space. It is their home. So there are some conflicts of interests that need to be unpacked again, like what you were saying with some really clear code of conduct, policies and procedures that the educators are agreeing to, but also having our parents and families of the family daycare educators aware of what's happening in that space and in that educators home so that they are aware of it to.
(12:57):
2The other thing, I just wanted to go back to a point, because in our sector, we have a large amount of services that are managed by parents. And while that presents a conflict of interest, and I've been on those committees so I can talk about it from a first hand perspective, you also are so invested in your child and your community, so you actually really strive because you want the best outcome for all children.
(13:33):
2And I think, you know, I want to give a shout out to all those parents that volunteer and get involved in this space because they add enormous value. And again, it is the parents that can have those robust conversations and recognize that we're here to build the capacity of our community. We want to actually give every child the best experience in their time out of school, and we want to invest that money back into our community to make this service the best service it can be.
(14:09):
2And happily, I see a lot of those organizations, all the ones that invest in professional development, they actually pay their educators really well. They invest any surplus back into that community to build a strong an environment, a vibrant community for all.
(14:31):
1People in in those situations where you've got parents running a service like that, what kind of measures are in place to make sure that decisions around child safety and risk are made impartially?
2So a lot of when we, do approve provides a training. We always talk about having that decision making tray. So mostly if you're working on a committee and it's not only our national quality framework and the laws, some regs say this, it's about if you were an incorporated association you have an obligation to make good decisions.
(15:09):
2So good decisions are joint decisions. So if you have your executive and they're making decisions they take it to the executive and they impact and explore that. It is also empowering our approve providers to know where they can seek external help and expertise to guide them and navigate it, because they don't necessarily have the expertise, but they have often the good intent to want to do the right thing.
(15:38):
2So when they come to our organization or they go to see LA, usually they're coming in saying, we've got a little bit of a curly situation here and we'd like some external support and help. And that's why it's so critical that we have these agencies that are there to build the capacity of our parent volunteers that are doing such great job, and communities.
(16:03):
3I think the other thing for and I totally agree with Pauline and we wouldn't be, you know, where we are without our community based organizations and parents who are volunteering on management committees. And I think one of the things is to have really clear, identified roles and responsibilities. What's my role and responsibility? As for a parent on the management committee who is seen as the approved provider?
(16:26):
3Then what are the roles and responsibilities of educators and service leaders and how have they been delegated? One of the things I always encourage and say, we always encourage management committees. You've got great systems and processes, but you just need to have some mechanisms there where you're coming back and you're checking your verifying. And, sometimes we've identified single point sensitive risks within the service.
(16:47):
3So all sectors or sectors and industry always look at risk. So we're no different to that. The difference is that we're not potentially moving boxes around the country as a logistics company. Yeah. We're actually we're actually working with children. And that's really important complex work. So really understanding where does is that single point sensitive risk. Am I so reliant on one service leader that I am not even aware of what my responsibilities are?
(17:14):
3And I think that's where conflicts actually start to happen, because no one's really clear about their role and responsibility. No one's really sure. Well, who's responsible for that? So I think having really clear, defined understandings of those roles and responsibilities, being aware of single point sensitive risks within the service as well.
2The other thing I want to say is that a lot of our services are based on school sites, and a significant proportion of our services form really great relationships with their school community. And in that school community, there is a lot of expertise and they are a parent at that school. They have a great relationship with the school principal, the deputy principal.
(17:59):
2They are experts in this space and they can really help and guide as well. And there's been a lot of great collaboration and a lot of really great example of a really great approved provides as a really outward looking. They actually tends the child protection training. They might not do the assessments and are identify and respond is run by one of our great educators.
(18:29):
2That's a real expert in this space. But she brings all of the scenarios that are in the school age context about children potentially disclosing children voice in their concerns about what's happening. I and this one organization, I know the approved provider attend that training. So they are growing their knowledge because that is how you really build capacity of community.
(18:57):
2It's not necessarily just the here and now. It's about how do you learn something and then take it into your context. And I've had parents say to me, God has learned so much about education and care by being a volunteer. They've actually gone on to be an educator. So, you know, there's lots of good things. And even Cox talks about this, about building the capacity of your community and actually acknowledging the depth of expertise, because a lot of the parents on our management committees are CEOs.
(19:34):
2They are directors. They are managers of companies. You know, they do know about process, but they might not know about the content, but they know what a good, robust process looks like for looking at this.
1So before we finish, I want to comment a little bit on documentation. Obviously, documentation is a huge part of an educator and services life, around looking after children and especially when we're talking about risk. So, I might start with, Pauline and I might ask you what kinds of documentation are essential to keeping children safe?
(20:14):
2Okay, so there's all the mandatory documentation. I guess I'm going to write Flack a couple of things that I've seen that you don't have a Po box address for a staff member, and I've seen that on a number of occasions. Okay. So you have actually all the documentation around your staff. You actually verify you're working with children, check.
(20:37):
2They don't start working until that's been verified. Okay. So there's some absolute critical, documentation that underpin our work. There is also information about children and families that we keep. But I guess what I just want to focus on when we talk about risk is the incidental documentation and sometimes how that can get lost, because I think everybody is well informed about the mandatory documentation that they need to have as part of operating and out of school hours or an education and care service.
(21:17):
2But it's those observations that educators make about children that can actually builds a picture of that child's life. And, one very young educator I think about a couple of years ago disclosed there was a child that was always run into a store cupboard, and he was hiding in the store cupboard, and he had a really great relationship with this educator.
(21:44):
2But over the days that he was constantly run into this store cupboard, he started disclosing some really critical information. And it was when that educator brought those little incidental pieces of information to the team that the whole team started saying, oh, yes, I've noticed a change in that child's behavior. So I often talk about we don't document the incidentals that happen every day, whether it's play, everybody talks about the program and the structured things that happen.
(22:23):
2But what I'm really interested in is the incidental, the little observation that you make about children. The other thing that I want to talk about documentation, is that we are over documenting. And when you over document it, all documentation becomes meaningless. And what we have to, get educators really thinking about is what are the important things that we need to document when we're doing our supervision practice?
(22:58):
2If you notice, suddenly an exit area becomes a concern. You notice, and this happened to a couple of weeks ago, someone regularly appearing outside the school gates and starting to build that subtle relationship up with children because they became a known entity. So it's those little incidental documentation pieces that can have a lot of, rich information for building a picture on what's really going on in our service.
(23:35):
3So I think that's really great that Pauline's talked about these two different dimensions of documentation that we're talking about. So if we come into sleep and rest and we come into, you know, health and safety of children, we know that there are built in risk assessments within the regulations. So that documentation, needs to be kept and maintained.
3I always come back to, why are we doing that? So we often jump to the what in the hell with that actually going? Why are we documenting that? Why do we have that risk assessment? Can I just say, outside of vulnerable times, children are the most vulnerable and marginalized in our communities. So we have to recognize that, okay.
(24:13):
3So everything that we're doing should be centered around child safety first. Again, we come back to our legal frameworks and our legal requirements. So in relation to sleep, there are specific risk assessments that we're doing on each individual child. If I come into rest. So for our five year olds it could be our six year olds in our school hours care.
3So if we come into the early childhood space, about 3 to 5 year olds who might not necessarily be sleeping, but they're resting. So where's the vulnerability in the physical environment where children are left to left on their own, that harm could potentially occur to them. So we're looking at that holistic perspective. So there's that documentation that we are required to create.
(24:54):
3I think it's important that educators do understand how to conduct a risk assessment because again, it's a skill. And we sometimes think that this is just something that you just know how to do this. This is skill building. So the more that you practice those and write those, the better you get at your situational risk. So as Pauline was saying, you become more aware of that person standing near the fence or near the toilet.
(25:18):
3That's that's unusual. That didn't happen before. Again, that type of documentation that is so important. On with Pauline. I'm very passionate about this, that educators are experts in relationships and that educators should know the story of each child. Now, that was taught to Mabuyane Kathy, who is an Aboriginal elder within her community in Glebe, and it was always know the story.
(25:46):
3Everybody has a story, know the story of that child. And incrementally you can build that. And when you start identifying and noticing that this child's well-being is not so great as what it was a week ago or two days ago, you have the capacity to change that trajectory for that child and to be that circuit breaker. So we've got the regulated requirements and they are important.
(26:08):
3But this is also important.
4I think they've really great point that you've both brought up in in the family daycare space. We're seeing some really proactive approved providers walking away from those two conflict boxes. The 5 to 6 risk assessments on everything that they're doing outside their space. And we're really seeing some of our educators empowering to document, obviously, what they eat, children eat every day and the bottles they drink and the sleep they have.
(26:35):
4But it's more than that. We're seeing at the end of the week. They're summarizing if there's been a change in pattern of a child and that behavior, and they're taking those types of observations back to their, educational leaders and they coordinators to unpack and have those discussions, am I looking into something too much? It's the child is sick this week or is this a regular pattern that I'm seeing?
(26:57):
4So because they're on their own, these educators, we're really seeing some of our providers changing that practice. And it's really great to see that proactive approach, to what we're seeing in this space.
1Amazing. Now, we talked a little bit about educators working together or approved providers working with their leadership team to, complete that risk focused documentation. How are services and how are educators, including children, in documenting risk?
(27:26):
2Well, in our sector, because you're often based on the school site, it's, really great if you can go in and set the environment from a child's perspective and you automatically mitigate risks. And I'll give you a little example. School aged children are fat may say are faddish about everything. So it could be handball, it could be marbles, it could be whatever.
(27:54):
2If you move the handball court, they will gravitate to that. And that could set up a risk because you've constantly got children going over to that environment, which is out of bounds. So I really encourage educators to involve kids in those conversation because they now have their environment where it's better than you. And we had this situation when I was the president of our Bush and all the older kids, K-6 kids, half of them would come into wash and half of them weren't.
(28:30):
2And they used to have like the gym where after school I could really relate to that. I was a kid in Wagga in year six, and so they thought, let's have the chin wag. But they weren't coming up to us and getting signs in. So then it was causing educators great. So I said, well, let's sit down with the sixes and say, bring your friends, sign yourself in and we'll give you the chin.
(28:56):
2My corner. So really, you can actually really involve kids in mitigating risks because it's a risk to educators if they don't know that they've got their cohort of children there for the afternoon. But when you've got the chin markers, they're always going to go when their priorities the chin again. So you have to work with the children to how you can mitigate that risk.
(29:26):
3So if we think about think about children again I'm going to go to the brain. Children don't have a capacity to risk assessment. They're not going to do that. Not that's not going to become quite sophisticated until they start around that starts around the age of ten and not really fully developed until, you know, on average, 24, 27.
3So it's part of our responsibility. But if I go to and pull in, you would be a strong advocate for this. If I go to Simon Nicholson's, you know, theory of least parts, that most environments actually don't work for children because they're designed by adults. All right. So the thing is, if we have children coming into those environments, either space actually has to work for them because if they're not enabled to set up those spaces that best we call it, you know, this flexible environment enables a flexible, adaptable mind.
(30:14):
3At the same time, children can undertake risks that they're unaware that that that's actually a risk. So we've actually got to empower children to be able to problem solve and make those decisions and have those flexible environments and then having those conversations in discussion. So educators are there to support them when they're creating those spaces. And sometimes it's for adult created spaces that I find create risk.
(30:39):
3And I think what's really important, if we have spaces in our services where children are being drawn to, instead of putting up barricades and going, no, you can't go there, start reflecting on why that is. What are they actually seeking? How can we support that? How can we build that into our environment? So children, because they're communicating to you all the time.
(31:00):
3And then again we go to that adverse risk. There we go. No they're not allowed there or they're not allowed in that environment. They can't do this and they can't do that. They're going to seek it anyway. They'll seek it. And because they haven't got a risk, assessing Brian is actually is probably going to be of a higher risk.
3So think about why they're doing it before the what in the hell.
1That's so interesting. We've taken a full circle right back to risky play at the very start of this course.
(31:25):
2And of course, I love risky play. And I'm really impressed that more of more of our educators are using the risk benefit analysis rather than just weighing up all the negatives. They're actually saying, how can we do this in a safe way to actually provides children with the challenges so that they can make good decisions in the future?
(31:49):
1We've come to the end of our episode. Thank you so much for such an amazing conversation. I really appreciate all of you for being part of it. Thank you.
3Thanks. Thanks, boys. Thanks to waste.
2Yes. Thank you.
1Thank you so much for listening to part two of Policy and Practice in Focus identifying and Managing Risks in early childhood education and care Contexts. You can find the rest of the episodes in this series by going to The Office at the Children's Guardian website, but also wherever you get your podcasts. All the resources mentioned in this episode can be found at the links in our show.
(32:21):
1Notes. This mini series was produced by the office of the Children's Guardian and funded by the New South Wales Department of Education.