‘Kids dragged along floors’: Minister announces childcare review

A daycare operator that recorded 502 breaches has maintained its quality rating accreditation in what has been labelled a failure of the state’s childcare regulator to be adequately transparent with parents.

Education Minister Prue Car has announced an independent review to examine a rise in safety breaches in NSW daycare centres and how they are handled by the regulator, the Early Childhood and Care Regulatory Authority.

NSW upper house Greens MP Abigail Boyd told a budget estimates hearing on Tuesday that Kids Academy Spring Farm childcare centre in Sydney’s south-west had recorded numerous breaches.

Documents from the Department of Education’s Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority show childcare provider Affinity, which operates 101 services including Kids Academy Spring Farm, had 502 confirmed breaches of inappropriate discipline in the past four years and more than 2000 cases failing to protect children from hazards. There were dozens of cases where Affinity’s centres failed to inform authorities of cases where serious incidents occurred.

“We’re talking about wrists being pulled and hair being pulled and kids being dragged along floors,” Boyd said.

Boyd’s office later clarified that she was speaking about shocking examples across the NSW childcare system generally.

“That’s just the minor stuff, and yet this is still a service that if a parent looked [at] on site, they would see it as meeting standards.”

A Department of Education spokesman said the documents provided to parliament were incorrectly titled. “It was human error when providing 12 boxes of documents. We are unable to alter it,” he said.

A Kids Academy Spring Farm spokesperson said they were committed to upholding the safety, rights and wellbeing of all children. In the event of a safety breach, they said they would proactively contact a child’s family, conduct a full investigation and terminate staff in serious cases.