Quotes attributable to United Workers Union Early Education Director Carolyn Smith:<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cWe have seen a range of quick fix responses to safety issues across centres that fail to address the underlying issue of understaffing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are to achieve the wellbeing and safety that children deserve, no amount of CCTV can replace the oversight of skilled, trained educators who are able to give children the necessary time and attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that reforms address loopholes like the under-the-roof ratio, that is being used by unscrupulous providers to short-change educators, children and families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is also consistent feedback from educators that a failure to provide necessary levels of support for children who need additional support means that educators are stretched and children are missing out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quotes from early childhood educators:<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 when it comes down to making a decision that puts profits against quality care, profits always win. Management are also ignorant to the struggles within the room, especially in the increasing number of megacentres that keep popping up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- New South Wales educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cWe are constantly running on survival mode\u2026We want to do our best for these kids and we are overworked. It\u2019s disheartening to not be able to meet the needs of the children when you need to because you have multiple things to do at once… Children are not able to get consistent attention and focus to support them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Northern Territory\u00a0educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cUnder-the-roof ratio has to be cancelled. It creates the biggest problem\u2026 under-the-roof ratio is wrong and only benefits to the companies who want to make more money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Northern Territory\u00a0educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cStaff are constantly walking in and out of our sector and we always have no staff so it becomes a mad rush to work out the day, and no amount of planning or caring can account for not having enough staff members.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Queensland educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cThere is such a high burnout educators are moving out of the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- South Australian\u00a0educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cRatios need to be lowered to benefit the children and minimise educators stress.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- South Australian educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cThere was never enough suitably experienced staff on the floor at ANY time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Victorian educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cUnder-roof-ratios are the biggest obstacle for providing quality care and education for children below five years of age.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Victorian educator<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201c[I want to] advocate for educators to be recognised for the dedication and inspiration they provide our next generation in their most formative years. We deserve more so we can give the children the absolute best foundation for their future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- West Australian educator\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Early education reforms must solve widespread unsafe staffing issues, with early childhood educators demanding an end to a misused staffing loophole and more inclusion support for children who need additional support. The demands…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":67266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-67126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-release","tag-early-childhood-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67126"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67129,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67126\/revisions\/67129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}