ARMEDIA is proud to be associated with Community Child Care Co-operative, and we have produced the quarterly Rattler magazine since late 1999.

The problem

Rattler has been the flagship publication of the community-based children’s services sector since 1987 but, although the magazine contained high-quality material, it looked a tired and old publication.

The organisation was overstretched with its workload, and staff simply didn’t have the time to oversee the production. The magazine was running at a loss and, although Community Child Care would always ensure the magazine would be published, it was subsidising the cost of publishing, drawing on the financial resources of the organisation.

Rattler was usually released past its deadlines, the writing, design, production and printing was outsourced to different service providers, typographical errors came through in the final printing, photographs were too dark.

Instead of being joy to publish, Rattler had become an onerous production, and staff dreaded the looming deadline.

ARMEDIA proposes the solution

In 1999, ARMEDIA proposed to take responsibility for the research, writing, design, advertising and printing of Rattler, and established an editorial committee as a link between Community Child Care and ARMEDIA.

This enabled the staff at Community Child Care to focus on their core tasks – representing the interests of community-based children’s services throughout NSW, and specialising in early childhood education.

ARMEDIA, with it’s professional background in journalism and expertise in publishing, managed to find ways to reduce costs, and streamline the production process.

The results

• Lower costs
• Since the time it was outsourced to ARMEDIA, the cost for producing Rattler in 2007 is still lower than the cost in 1999, under the previous arrangements.
• Increase in subscriptions
• Since our first issue in early 2000 (Rattler No.53), subscriptions have increased from 1,100 in 1999, to 1,600 in 2007– the selling price of Rattler is $12, so this represents an improvement of $7,200 in the value of subscriptions per issue.
• Increase in advertising revenue
• Advertising revenue during this time has improved from $900 per issue to $1,800.
• Professional recognition
• ARMEDIA has taken Rattler from being a black-and-white publication, to an award-winning full-colour magazine. In 2005 and 2006, Rattler was awarded the Best Business-to-Business Graphic Design, and High Commendations for Best Cover Design, and Best Custom Publishing Magazine from Publishers Australia.
• Increased revenue source for Community Child Care
• In 1999, Rattler was a loss-running publication that Community Child Care was subsidising – it now provides a constant revenue source that can be directed towards other activities within the organisation, and means that Community Child Care can focus on it core functions.

Summary

ARMEDIA provided a one-stop-shop solution to Community Child Care, resulting in a better and more-professional publication.

Could the success of this Case Study be applied to any of your publications?

The past three years has been an era of rapid change and reflection with children’s services using the reform agenda as a road map to raise quality and drive continuous improvement. Even while still in its draft form, many services began engaging with the National Quality Framework (NQF)—turning the mirror inwards, so to speak, and sparking a spirit of self-study and reflection that is effectively reshaping the sector.

For many, the journey began with in-house workshops and professional development days where educators reflected on practices while breaking down the new National Quality Standards (NQS). Others looked outwards—networking with peers via preparation working groups, training days or online using wikis, webinars and blogs.

With the requirement of draft Quality Improvement Plans (QIPs) to be completed by 30 April 2012, many services are already well down the road in the quality improvement journey.

Documenting reflection in Dubbo

Regand Park Early Childhood Education Centre is a private long day care centre in Dubbo, NSW, owned and operated by Jacqueline Benn (Mothercraft Nurse) and Justine Cook (Early Childhood Teacher). Regand Park has 141 enrolled children.

Licensee, director and teacher Justine Cook shares her team’s journey:

‘Last year I attended the ‘NQF: Preparation Working Group for Preschools and LDCs’ run by Children’s Services Central. This group met five times between August and November to work through the National Quality Standards in detail, forming networks and brainstorming as a collective group. Jacqueline and I also attended ‘Making Your Preschool or LDC NQF Ready’ run by Children’s Services Central and Community Child Care’s Really Simple Regs Info Session run by Community Child Care in late 2011.

Some examples of our reflective journey at Regand Park are: the makeover of our indoor environments, a huge renovation of our outdoor environment which incorporated ideas and suggestions from the children, a new way of gathering and documenting parent input and suggestions into our programs, rostered reflective time and a commitment to better utilise and portray our local Indigenous culture.

In-house, we provided our five rooms with their own copy of the EYLF and NQS documents and the Guide to the National Quality Standard. Educators have been working through these documents in their programming time and using the outcomes and elements as links and reflections for their learning journals.

Documenting our reflective journey ‘We have been focusing on the concept of reflective practice for some time now. The team really engaged with the concept of reflection and together we developed a reflective journal for our centre.

It is an A3-size spiral bound art book that we began in January 2011. The idea came as we worked through the EYLF and looked at what we did well and areas we could improve upon. When we came across the principle “Ongoing Learning and Reflective Practice” we knew we did [this] well, but we couldn’t show or demonstrate how we do this at a centre level. We felt it necessary to give reflection of our thoughts, ideas, beliefs and practices more importance.

I had read that educators should demonstrate how they were working through the Educator’s Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework. As a director, I was overwhelmed by the size of that document let alone giving the Guide out to my team, so the idea to work through a section at a time and have a centre reflective journal was born. Jacqueline and I spent time looking at our roster and were able to squeeze three lots of 45-minute “reflective journal” times into our weekly roster. During this time educators are replaced and leave the room to work on the journal. As a team of 24, it takes approximately six weeks for everyone to complete each section.

I used passages, paragraphs, quotes, activities and questions from the Educator’s Guide and put these into our journal for staff to read, reflect and comment upon. Each educator then signs off on a table at the front of the journal so at a glance we can see who still needs a turn. We also table 5–10 minutes at our monthly staff meeting to discuss items that have arisen. Due to the success of our reflective journal we have also implemented room reflective journals and individual journals to help educators document their thoughts on programs and practice.

Making the most of monthly meetings

‘At our monthly educator meetings we have been looking at each Quality Area in detail, focussing on one area [per] meeting.

We typically begin by reading through the overview and then brainstorming answers to three key questions.

The questions are: What is the Quality Area about? What requirements must we meet? Questions to guide reflection. We then divide into smaller groups to gather perspectives. Each group focuses on one element of the Quality Area. They are given a piece of paper with the element at the top and four headings: “Observe, Discuss, Sight, Improvements/Questions”.

‘I realised early in the NQF journey that it’s a bit like a running race.

You have people who are sprinters, those who are long distance runners, joggers and walkers.’

As they read through each element, they write down how we currently meet it under each heading. For example, under “Observe” they write things the assessor may see on a visit that support that element. Under “Discuss”, they list things they might discuss about our service with an assessor.

Under “Sight”, they list what documents and policies we need to update and display to reflect current practice. Under “Improvements/Questions”, they list various issues raised after reading through the Guide. It may be a question to pose to the whole group, a task we have to do, or something we feel we don’t currently do or could perhaps do better.

The “Improvements/Questions” section has made us really look at how we communicate as educators and how we reflect and document our reflection on our programs and procedures.

All these pieces of paper have been placed in an A3 display book that we have called “Our Journey with the NQS”. This is located in our staff room so educators can add ideas to it any time.

We have also done up question templates using questions outlined in the discuss sections of the Draft NQS. At Regand Park we have a lot of visitors from TAFE and University. They usually come with a certain focus (e.g. programming or environments) and they ask our educators many questions. I like to give question sheets to each visitor with one question on the topic they are covering. I then ask the student to pose their question to one of our educators as they move through the centre and record their answer on the sheet. At the end of their visit, I photocopy the sheets for the students. This way they leave with a bank of information and we get practice in explaining, justifying and discussing our practice with others.

Right now, we are just about to Brainstorm Quality Area 7: Leadership and Management and we’re using the Improvements/Questions sections to begin our Quality Improvement Plan. This will help us enormously when we come to formally write the QIP.

I would say the NQF preparation process has reminded us to value each Standard and Element and its impact on overall quality. Without relationships you cannot effectively intentionally teach, and unless you have considered how the environment is set up you cannot allow children to learn through play, respect diversity or investigate and problem-solve.

Instead of being caught up in the negative aspects of change, I like to remind our educators that for the first time we have a [Framework], we are being recognised as educators, and the focus is on the valuable work we do and the impact we have on the lives of children.

After all, isn’t that why we are all here!’

Continuous improvement in Central West

Mitchell Early Learning Centre in Bathurst is a community-based long day care centre located on the campus of Charles Sturt University. It has 30 staff and 59 enrolled children.

Director of Mitchell Early Learning Centre Jenell George shares her team’s journey:

‘Preparing for and implementing the National Quality Framework continues to be an exciting journey. For Mitchell ELC it’s been a relatively easy transition from the old system—we haven’t found the jump that big. While it has been overwhelming at times with the amount of information to read, the essence of it is still about quality practice and quality outcomes for children.

I realised early in the NQF journey that it is a bit like a running race. You have people who are sprinters, those who are long distance runners, joggers and walkers. We have 30 staff so it’s been important from the start that everyone has been engaged in the NQF and EYLF learning process.

Whatever crosses my desk via email— e-tips, journal articles, etc.—I have been displaying on the staff room notice board and discussing in staff meetings.

We have also been sending as many staff as possible along to training within our region and further afield.

We have paid, monthly two-hour staff meetings. The first hour has a focus on professional discussion and reflection, while the second hour is devoted to reflective practice at a room level. We often have guest speakers at our meetings, for instance to assist us with the rewriting of our philosophy, (done annually) or staff will do a presentation about training attended or something they have read in a journal.

Regularly reviewing our philosophy

Three years ago we decided to review our philosophy annually. The first year we broke down our philosophy into just four points with the help of Lorainne Madden from Semann & Slattery. The second year we made it a reflective journey for the whole community and invited the management committee, centre families and children to help.

Children made posters, now displayed in our hallway, where they wrote or drew what they like at Mitchell Early Learning such as their friendships or favourite educators.

This year we brought in facilitators from Lady Gowrie, and met with our local Multifunctional Aboriginal Children’s Service, Towri MACS, which is our new sister service. We had a combined professional development day earlier this year to focus on the NQF, review our philosophy and develop our first Quality Improvement Plan. Both services worked on our QIPs individually and then presented them to each other.

Our QIP is displayed in the staff room. I suspect it will be a “work in progress” forever as we are constantly improving and learning new things. It’s about striving for best practice always, and wanting to make the things you do to be authentic and meaningful for everybody.

We’re licensed for 70 children but we currently only have 59 children enrolled.

This is part of our improvement journey and is supported by our management committee, which sees the value in minimising numbers. We have higher staff-child ratios in every room. We changed our name last year from Mitchell Child Care Centre to Mitchell Early Learning Centre to reflect the NQF and the focus on education as well as care. We made a notice board in 2011 to involve the wider community in the name change. We also asked the children, whose suggestions included “Kid’s House” or “Fun Place”.

For some educators, the enthusiasm and commitment to continuous learning was already there, but the National Quality Framework is a great tool to encourage other educators to join in on the improvement journey.

It is the catalyst for driving people who have been in the field for a long time and have been waiting for these changes.

This is the fruit of all those hard years of work. Those whispers were always there, but now that voice is getting louder and stronger … and that is exciting!’

Feeling future positive at John Brotchie

John Brotchie Nursery School is a Department of Education and Communities preschool in the Sydney suburb of Botany. In 2010 John Brotchie Nursery School was part of the trial group for the National Quality Standards.

Preschool director, Rebecca Andrews shares her journey:

‘The Department of Education has been very supportive during this change period. We have had two state conferences both for teachers and support staff around the EYLF. We have also established a Community of Preschool network group, where local preschools meet twice a term to discuss the Framework, and we have the support of an early childhood consultant.

Participating in the NQS pilot was a valuable experience and gave us a head start, especially because we are a preschool and new to the accreditation and assessment process. The draftonly Document also gave our team an introduction to the Standards and Elements, many of which have since changed, but the experience did jumpstart our journey.

The report we got at the end of the trial gave feedback on our strengths and areas for improvement. As part of the pilot we also did a Quality Improvement Plan (QIP), but we did ours in just three weeks, whereas now I would work on a QIP over three to six months.

Two years on (February 2012), we are excited about putting the Framework into practice, and of course, we are reflecting, documenting and preparing for our QIP. We have two more Quality Areas to reflect on and discuss as a team, and we are starting to put some of our key improvements into place.

So far, I have found the QIP template easy to use. It’s kept us focused and helped break things down into achievable steps.

We’re introducing new practices

‘We have identified our strengths and what we could do differently—i.e. how we could challenge our current practice or maybe introduce new policy or procedures based on discussions and reflection. For instance, after looking at Quality Area 5: Relationships with Children, we have introduced family photo albums. On our open day each family is given a little album to allow children to reflect on their lives at home and at preschool. The albums have been a great success and have helped children settle into preschool and allowed educators to get to know children’s family and home lives.

For us, the Framework has also highlighted the importance of the Physical Environment (Quality Area 3).

We have always valued our outdoor area as a place for the children to experience nature through climbing trees, growing veggies and caring for plants and animals but I think training around the principles and practices has helped us to understand current research and make further changes within our services. [In 2011 the preschool won the 2011 SPRout Award for 'Connecting with Nature' as well as first prize in the City of Botany Council's Garden competition for School and Community gardens.]

The journey never ends

‘There is always room for improvement or things we can do differently. We discovered this when we looked at Quality Area 6. Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities.

At John Brotchie our documentation is digital and posted online so families can access children’s journals at home or in the office. However, we realised that not all parents have a computer or internet access at home. So we set up a documentation station here at the preschool where families can access a computer to check their child’s digital journal. It also means we can share activities from that particular day and not at a later date (sometime days later) online. We also looked at Quality Area 2, (2.1.2) that “each child’s comfort is provided for and there are opportunities for sleep, rest and relaxation”.

Being a preschool program, we don’t have sleep time or beds provided but we reflected on the need for children to have a quiet space in our environment where they could lie down, listen to music, read a book or have a sleep if they wished.

While change and the introduction of Standards can be overwhelming, it’s wonderful to see services embracing change and trying new practices.’

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 101, Autumn 2012

Jemma Carlisle, general manager of Early Years@UNSW University Services, says educators at the recently amalgamated group of UNSW services are offered flexible work arrangements including 36-weeks paid maternity leave (for staff employed for fives years or more) and 26 weeks for staff employed for less than five years.

Educators can negotiate the capacity of their return role and may have until their child starts primary school till they have to return to their original full-time position.

‘Nearly all of our educators return from maternity leave to work part-time and then will have a second baby within that first five years.

‘It can be hard to juggle so many part-time staff but we have long-serving staff so we don’t have retention and attraction issues. Community engagement is strong and our staff and families are so connected.’

The University of New South Wales first began the process of acquiring and amalgamating the three long day care centres under the auspices of the university when voluntary student unionism ended in 2006. Previously, two of the centres had been funded by student organisations. By the end of 2012 the three centres will come under the one management model and cater for 241 children and 75 staff.

There are many benefits to being affiliated with the university such as campus facilities, operating under the university’s workplace agreements and receiving 17 per cent superannuation as part of the university’s superannuation scheme.

‘We are on the university’s pay schedule, so our staff are very well paid. A Cert III, for example, gets $920 per week versus the modern award of $680 per week, and our Diplomas start on $981.00 per week compared to $808.00 on the modern award.

Part of Ms Carlisle’s role is to promote cross-centre collaboration and one obvious way has been to bring all educators together for training.

‘We do expect a lot in terms of out-of-hours meetings but our educators are happy to go that extra mile and enjoy getting together to collaborate.’

In May last year they had a cross-centre EYLF meeting and a series of catered breakfast meetings to flesh out the NQF. At the time of writing, Ms Carlisle was also planning an NQS session on a Friday afternoon/evening.

‘It’s a child-free day and the first day back for many educators so the meeting will be followed by ‘welcome back’ food and drinks.’

Two years ago Ms Carlisle also started a successful rewards and recognition program for which she gets staff to self-nominate.

‘I send a template to all staff asking them what they have done throughout the year that they are most proud of or where they feel they have gone above and beyond.’

It could be studying, attending professional development in their own time, reading in their lunch break, subscribing to industry journals or becoming members of peak bodies, she says.

‘The first year, one educator got $5,000 to put towards her university fees. Smaller rewards are also offered such as a $200 Myers shopping voucher.

‘Ideally, I want educators to think about it pro-actively—not just as a reflection exercise. This would encourage goal-setting and planning for the year.’

All directors are non-teaching directors with full-time administrators, and each centre has additional floaters or what the Early Years@UNSW team like to now call ‘curriculum support’ staff.

‘We feel that when they are called ‘floaters’, it implies that their main priority is solely to cover absent staff but we want to build up a strong network of casuals so the priority is programming and developing the curriculum even if people are away.’

The three children’s services will come together for a professional development day mid-year. This is typically dedicated to ‘ticking off any mandatory training’ or enjoying team-building activities such as white water rafting. However, this year the plan is to have all three services open their doors to showcase their centres to one another.’

‘All educators will be involved whether it is conducting a centre tour, cooking food or doing a presentation. I want each service to think about what makes it unique—the essence of each centre— and what they are most proud of.

Construction has also begun on a fourth long day care centre for the university. The proposed 48-place centre is due to open in the second half of 2012.

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 101, Autumn 2012

These days it is rare to see young children walking hand-in-hand in our streets and public spaces. As young children spend more hours inside children’s services and fewer services travel beyond the centre gate, children are becoming less visible in our communities.

We know excursions can expand children’s concepts of the world around them and their role in society, so why are so many services still reluctant to take a step outside their doors?

For many services in low socioeconomic areas, excursions are simply unaffordable for many families. Some services find the risk-assessments cumbersome, while others have a blanket ban on excursions.

Gerard Moon, Auburn Council’s Children’s Services Co-ordinator believes the risk assessment process in particular can be off-putting for services.

‘Even the word “risk” makes people think there is a greater risk than there is and this is misleading. If it were called ‘future planning’ or ‘excursion plans’, it wouldn’t scare as many people off.

Earlier this year, Mr Moon took groups of children over four days to the Royal Sydney Easter Show. He says it was ‘the easiest excursion’ he has ever done.

Rattler was fortunate to accompany Mr Moon and a group of children on one of these outings.

The children travelled via train to Homebush. First stop was the animal nursery where they patted and fed the animals. This was followed by a quick walk-through of the cattle pavilions before morning tea in the member’s stand, where they watched some ring events. After a quick toilet stop, the children toured the district exhibits (fruit and vegetables) before hopping back on the train and making it back to the centre by lunchtime.

Next, Mr Moon hopes to plan a trip to the Sydney Aquarium—but first he will need to find two adults (parents or staff) with bronze medallions, because the aquarium is located at Darling Harbour.

Water is a contentious issue for excursions in coastal communities, says Leo Prendergast, Director of Ballina’s Rainbow Children’s Centre.

‘In our area a child who was cared for in family day care drowned while on an excursion at Tweed Heads.

‘The Department is unwilling to define ‘near water’ but Ballina is [like] an island. No matter where you go, there is water nearby, whether it is a lake or stream, creek or river.’ Within his region, there is certainly the feeling among directors that excursions are ‘all too hard’. Plus Ballina has very little public transport and hiring a bus is expensive.

Despite this, Mr Prendergast is a believer in the many benefits of excursions, particularly in building a breadth of experience for children.

He believes there are too many children, particularly those in full-time care, who miss out on those ‘everyday experiences’ they would normally do with mum and dad such as posting a letter or buying a bottle of milk.

‘Potentially, children will spend three to four years in the same two rooms and have the same playground and same faces around them day in and day out.

‘I think it’s really important children see the community in operation and have experiences they might otherwise miss out on. It’s also good for people in the community to see children’s services in action.’

He says more than 36 per cent of the children at Rainbow Children’s Centre come from single-parent families. And very often there is not a lot of extended family about.

So children and educators at Rainbow Children’s Centre regularly walk to the nearby shopping arcade of ten shops where they have seen bakers bake bread, taken trikes to be repaired at the bike shop and bought noodles or vegetables and taken them back to the centre for the cook to make for lunch.

Getting off the beaten track

At the Point Preschool in Sydney, Director Catherine Lee says her vision is for children to build a strong sense of themselves within the community and to make meaningful connections with the world outside the gate.

‘I’m amazed at the opportunities outside our gate to strengthen children’s sense of belonging, delight in their being and take them on a journey that will influence who they are now and the adults they will become.’

Children and educators step out the gate as often as they can where, as Ms Lee says, there is so much to ‘explore, see, discover and experience’.

‘Sometimes we take just a few steps outside our gate to the reserve next to the preschool or we go walking (up to four kilometres) around our local neighbourhood with our Dharawal friends, looking for bush tucker and tracks of native animals.’

Other times, the children go much further. They may catch a train, a bus or car pool with families or meet at the destination, Ms Lee says.

‘We did this one year when we visited Taronga Zoo. We personalised the excursion so everyone could travel to the zoo the way they wanted. Some families travelled on the coach with the teachers; other families travelled by bus, train, ferry and some families drove.’

Children can make the decisions of where to go, what to do, who to invite and how to get there, she says.

‘When we decided to meet the people in the nursing home nearby, I explained they could not come to visit us as they were old and sick. One child said we should “take the preschool to them” so that’s what we did.

‘Like some of our children in early childhood centres, these grandparents are often not seen in our community.’

Ms Lee says they deliberately do not have incursions (visiting entertainment) at The Point Preschool, although they do have visitors.

‘After critical reflection we decided not to have incursions. The very meaning of the word is the reason we don’t…I wonder when ‘incursion’ crept into our vocabulary and why this word became commonplace in early childhood.’

(Noun: 1 incursion – the act of entering some territory or domain (often in large numbers); 2 incursion – an attack that penetrates into enemy territory; the act of an army that invades for conquest or plunder; – a sudden short attack. Source: Thefreedictionary.com)

‘At preschool we don’t have an act of entering or raid or an invasion or conquest. We have family, friends and visitors who are invited, usually upon the children’s suggestion. We don’t have a sudden short attack. We have family, friends and visitors who share their time with us so we can get to know them and develop a meaningful relationship.

We don’t have an infiltration or an onslaught, we don’t have an event that incurs liability. We don’t have words connected to war. We have words connected to people.

‘A colleague once told me it was just a matter of semantics whether I used the word incursions. I still don’t think so.’ Nesha O’Neil is the licensee of Top Ryde Early Learning in the Sydney suburb of Ryde. Ms O’Neil also finds the term ‘incursion’ problematic, preferring to use the term ‘on-site experience.’

‘An incursion is, in fact, a hostile entering of territory… and I don’t think that ‘watching hatching ducklings’ is all that hostile,’ she jokes.

While she believes on-site experiences have their place, she also thinks excursions provide children with emergent learning opportunities and are a form of ‘social advocacy’.

‘When children are taken out into the world, they have a voice. They are members of the community and it helps to spread the word about the importance of early childhood.’

‘Excursions give the children an opportunity to respond to diversity — in the people they see, as well as the environments in which they are immersed.

‘And they learn social skills that simply can’t be taught in the centre, about how to behave in different environments such as shopping centres, cafes, restaurants or libraries.’

Ms O’Neil says the bigger-scale excursions (zoo or aquarium) can quickly become an exercise in ‘herding children’, so she encourages regular small group outings and walking excursions that are interest-based.

‘Walking to the post office is a great excursion to tie into emergent literacy, as the children can write letters to themselves or to their parents at home or at work, and post them at the local post office. They love the anticipation and surprise of receiving letters.’

Ms O’Neil told Rattler of a recent interest that highlighted the children as civic participants in our community.

‘We had a traffic issue at the centre, and had written to local government about it. When this was ignored, we involved the children in renewed pleas to government.

‘The issue went to Council and the children went along to the chambers to see how it was being managed and even spoke to the councillors. They learnt a lot about government and we didn’t ‘dumb down’ the learning—we had high expectations of them to grasp the concepts. Traffic planners later visited the centre to talk to the children about road safety.

As the EYLF states, children are ‘connected to and contribute to their world’. Ms O’Neil believes children gain a strong sense of identity by working out where they fit in the community.

‘We had a wonderful “book pass” excursion, when the local library was moving sites. The children and hundreds of members of the community all lined up in a long human chain and passed the books hand-to-hand from the old to the new library. It helped cement the children’s position in the community.’

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 100, Summer 2011

The dominant belief in NSW has long been that the requirements demanded of NSW services were higher than those demanded of early education and care services in other states. The requirement for qualified early childhood teachers in all centre-based services bigger than 29 places, for example, is often cited as the best example of why we needed to ensure that NSW did not lose out when national regulations were framed.

Even a cursory comparison with other state and territory regulations often showed areas where the NSW regulation required more of services. So when our regulators from NSW sat down with the other states and territories to nut out the ins and outs of harmonising all their regulations into a national one, they undoubtedly had a hard ask. Fighting for the preservation of our higher standards, was no doubt difficult.

Did they succeed? Now that the regulation is finalised, we need to ask this question. When all the meetings, drafting and redrafting is over, how do children in NSW fare under the new Regulations?

Will they still be protected by strong regulations? And how do NSW children really fare when compared to children in other states and territories?

Why should NSW children fare any differently than children in other areas of Australia? After all, isn’t that the whole point of having ‘national’ regulations— that children’s services should experience the same quality education and care regardless of where they are receiving it? One only has to examine Chapter 7 of the Regulations (Jurisdiction-Specific and Transitional and Saving Provisions) to see that there will be differences in the care and education delivered to children based on their location. This section contains provisions of a ‘savings’ or ‘transitional’ nature that facilitate the change from the operation of former state and territory laws to the new National Law.

A transitional provision is essentially what is allowed to happen in an interim period of time after the Regulations become law. Most of the transitional arrangements refer to ratios and qualifications. Given that NSW had, on the whole, higher requirements in both of these areas, it is not surprising that in the short-term, NSW children will fare better than other children in other states and territories.

Unlike a transitional provision, a savings provision is more long-term—it stays in place until such time in the future that a specific amendment is made to change it. There are specific savings provisions for individual states and territories.

So what sort of provisions do the other states have? In Queensland, during rest periods, some services are allowed to have a 1:12 or 1:16 ratio for toddlers and 1:24 ratio for preschoolers. Until 2019 Queensland services will be counted as meeting required ratios even if an educator is out of the room on a ‘rest pause’. Queensland services can also get (on approval by their state regulator) permission to run at a 1:5 ratio for children aged 15 to 24 months until 2018.

Until 2020, South Australian services are exempt from the requirement to have a second teacher for services between 60 and 80 places. Similarly, family day care educators in South Australia, who currently have a ratio exemption that allows them to care for more children than allowed under the Regulations, will retain this right until 2020. Some Tasmanian services have ratios of 1:7 for children aged two and over as long as no more than three of the children in the group are under three years of age.

In Victoria, educators who have been working for five years full-time, do not have to obtain a Certificate III.

In contrast, NSW services are already on the regulatory ratio of 1:4 for babies; our 1:10 ratio for preschoolers is higher than the Regulations 1:11 and we will move on schedule to the 1:5 ratio for toddlers.

It is in the requirements for access to an early childhood teacher where NSW children will clearly do better than children in other states and territories —as long as they attend a centre above 29 places. Under a savings provision, our requirements for ECTs have been retained.

Therefore, in NSW, an early childhood teacher must be in attendance at all times that a centre is caring for 30–39 children; two teachers are needed when there is 40 to 59 children, three when there is 60 to 79 children and four when there are over 80. This is a lot higher benchmark than what the Regulations set for other states.

Essentially, the Regulations only demand of services in other states and territories that a teacher be at the service for six hours a day if the service operates for under 50 hours per week, or 60 per cent of the operating hours if it opens for more than 50 hours per week, if it educates and cares for between 25 and 59.

If the service has between 60 and 80 children, a second ECT (or another suitably qualified person!) must be there for at least three hours per day if open for less than 50 hours per week or 30 per cent of the operating of the operating hours of the service on that day, if the service operates for less than 50 hours a week.

In other words, whereas a child attending a centre with 45 other children in NSW would be at a centre required to ensure there are two teachers on the premises at all times the centre is open, a child attending a centre of this same size in any other state could be at a centre with no teachers employed, outside of a six-hour block in the middle of the day.

A centre in NSW with 75 children would have three teachers on the premises whenever it was open, whereas in other states, a similar service would only be required to have one teacher employed for six hours a day and a second for three hours. To add insult to injury, in the other states and territories, if an early childhood teacher is absent from the education and care service because of short-term illness or leave up of to 12 weeks, a diploma qualified educator can be counted as a teacher!

The National Regulations thus codify inequity of access to a teacher. A child’s access to an early childhood teacher should not depend on the state or territory they were born in or the size of the service they attend.

Even in NSW, although services licensed for over 30 children per day will be required to have teacher/s in attendance at all times, smaller services will only be required to have a teacher in attendance for six hours or less per day, and in services under 25, the teacher that is required to work with the service does not even have to work directly with children. No children should miss out on having a teacher. Every primary school child has a teacher!

Research consistently shows that early childhood teachers engage in practices that lesser qualified staff don’t and that these practices lead to higher quality early education and care. Research also shows that teachers interact more with children than other staff do, have more positive interactions and have a positive impact on children’s pre-reading and social skills.

The requirement to have an ECT in place for only part of the day points to a misunderstanding of the role of a teacher within an early childhood service. Services with teachers in attendance offer higher quality care not just because of the hours teachers deliver face to face with children, but also because of their role in leadership of other staff members. Clearly, NSW children are travelling better in many regards than children in some of the other states and territories. Have they lost anything, however, in the process of moving to National Regulations?

The lack of requirement to always have two educators on site at any one time in centre-based care is problematic, as is the allowance of educators under 18 years of age and the ability to count these for the purpose of calculating ratios. A lone educator should not be left alone with a young child at any time. This is for the protection of both the child and the educator. Interestingly, it is only in NSW where Certified and Nominated Supervisors are required to have child protection qualifications.

The new National Regulations are much more outcomes-focused than our previous state regulations—services can demonstrate that they meet a Regulation’s outcome without the Regulation specifying the exact manner of meeting the outcome required. This is particularly noticeable in the facilities requirements. However, this may lead for potential confusion to be built into the system where there is variation between best practice guidelines and operator’s handbooks. The Guide to the National Quality Standard and the Regulations: Services in NSW can be used when there is a definitive regulation but the plethora of guides that may now have to be consulted, in addition to much lengthier regulations, may cause confusion and inadvertent breaching of the Regulations.

Outcomes-based regulation can also give greater leeway to individual assessors to interpret whether a service is meeting the Regulations. Services could face assessors having differing interpretations over words such as ‘adequate’ and what this might mean in practice. Generally, this latitude in absolute requirements may work well for higher quality services and yet simultaneously give lower quality services freedom to manipulate requirements, especially in the facilities area.

All in all, however, NSW children have not fared too badly. They will still be protected by strong regulations that uphold their right to safety and wellbeing while attending early education and care services? And they have generally fared better than children in other states and territories.

This inequity is somewhat sad, given our jubilation when COAG first made the National Partnership on The National Quality Agenda For Early Childhood Education and Care all that time ago in 2009. Our NSW politicians and bureaucrats ‘did good’ in fighting for NSW children, but the fact remains that not every child in Australia will have access to same quality early education and care.

Feel a campaign coming on anyone…?

Lisa Bryant is a children’s services consultant.

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 100, Summer 2011

In publishing terms, producing 100 editions of a magazine over 25 years is the equivalent of going to the edge of the universe and back. Publishing is an incredibly fickle field and to provide an idea of how tough it can be, of all the magazines that were launched in 1987, only 5 per cent still exist. Of all the magazines that were being published in 1987, 90 per cent have disappeared.

In 1987, a publishing revolution commenced—production that previously required large-scale machinery and many staff to layout and produce a magazine, could now be published on a small computer that could sit on a desk, hence the phrase ‘desk-top publishing’.

The Board of Community Child Care Co-operative of NSW at the time agreed that it was important to have a publication as a way to communicate its own stories and information about all the many issues that were taking place in the sector.

It was decided that the magazine be called Rattler—a dual meaning, according to the minutes from 1987 in which it was proposed that the magazine’s reason for existence would be ‘to rattle the cage, to make noise, like a kid’s rattle, and be heard’. Although this seems an unambiguous title, we did once receive an enquiry about whether the magazine had anything to do with American snakes.

Rattler’s predecessor was the Community Child Care Newsletter. In Rattler’s debut editorial, Community Child Care Co-operative’s Co-ordinator at the time, Penny Ryan, wrote:

‘Try saying, “the Community Child Care Newsletter” ten times quickly and you’ll see why we decided to change it to something short, relevant and memorable.

‘Rattler will continue our policy of making a lot noise about issues that count in children’s services and shaking a few people up, as well as continuing to provide news and information to all children’s services. It rhymes with “battler” for all you hard working childcare workers and also “tattler” because we do tell a few tales…’

For a quarter of a century, Rattler’s most important role has been to act as an advocate for what is in the best interests of children and what is in the best interests of early childhood teachers and the professionals that care for children. Over the years, Rattler has tackled many of the big issues that have confronted the sector and, indeed, has rattled the cage on many occasions.

Rattler has never been afraid to confront those that act against these interests.

The transformation of early childhood education and care to a recognisable profession has been well documented within our pages over the years. And the shameful practice of holding children in immigration detention, a practice that still continues to this day, was roundly condemned with a series of articles in the early 2000s. Railing against the removal of operational subsidies by the Howard Government in 1997 was another.

Rattler strongly argued over many years that corporatised childcare was not in the public interest and we believe that we were finally vindicated collapsed in 2009. So, while these are some of the big issues affecting the overall sector, Ratter also promoted many successful campaigns that directly affect educators, including improving working conditions, better staff–child ratios (1:4 Make It Law), and the pay equity campaign.

Within this ‘big picture’, Rattler has also provided information about the many factors that influence the quality of each and every service—better quality menus, playground design, contemporary educational research, reviews of books for children and educators, music and drama for children, programming and policy development, behaviour management, working with management, Aboriginal and Indigenous issues, environmental awareness, multiculturalism, occupational health and safety, risk assessment, legal issues, the effects of new technologies on children, special and additional needs… an endless list!
And, of course, the many profiles and close-ups that we have had with many political leaders of all persuasions (even one Governor–General), children’s services leaders, academics, authors, educators and activists have added great weight to Rattler being the must-read resource for everyone in the sector.

Looking back, looking forward

Although the first issues of the magazine look completely different to the issues of today—the first issues were more strictly black and white, with a second colour on the cover to add a bit of class—the information contained within Rattler has always been high quality. Today, Rattler is a full-colour professionally designed publication and is available to be read on electronic readers, computers and over the internet.

In the same way that we can’t imagine what Rattler will be like in 2037, it’s difficult to imagine what our predecessors would have imagined back in 1987. But the most important thing is that they imagined that Rattler had a future and could be used as a driving force for change in the sector, as well as letting the world know about the good work that was taking place, not just within Community Child Care, but within the entire early childhood field.

It’s important for all of us to remember where we come from. Today, Rattler remembers its roots, from where it came from, and where it hopes to be. Let’s all remember this as we look towards the next 25 years and beyond.

Remembering Rattler’s roots

Rattler’s co-creator, Penny Ryan, now director of her own consultancy, joined Community Child Care in 1981. In 1985, she became the Community Child Care’s first official co-ordinator and began to generate income for the organisation by selling a range of publications from Australia and the United States.

‘At about the same time, my colleague Lisa Ward and I decided to upgrade the existing newsletter into two different publications. Inspired by the National Association, Rattler was to be the ‘journal’ and Broadside the monthly quick overview of what was happening. I think Lisa came up with Rattler as the title at a brainstorming meeting.’

The only other early childhood journal at the time was put out by the Australian Early Childhood Association but Ms Ryan had a different vision for what it, Rattler, should be—i.e. ‘much more practical, more focused on quality issues and resources as well as advocacy’.

‘Advocacy was integrated into everything we did—we learned policy skills and negotiation as well as grass-roots organising (we got 50,000 post cards delivered to Bob Hawke for instance), but I guess we always were completely focused on improving the quality of care.’

Ms Ryan fondly recalls Rattler’s section called ‘My Working Day’ which would profile a childcare worker.

‘At that time, there was a lot of division between differently qualified staff and I loved having profiles that demonstrated how everyone made the centre work for children and families,’ she said.

Jenepher Surbey, employed by Community Child Care as a project officer at the time, wrote several articles in Rattler’s debut edition in 1987. These days she is a business consultant but recalls how Community Child Care was an important advocacy training ground.

One article that stands out was an interview Ms Surbey did with the then NSW Nurses Association General Secretary, Bronwyn Ridgeway, who likened many of the issues faced by childcare workers with those of nurses such as poor pay, stress and funding cuts.

‘It was my second job out of university and I was passionate about industrial relations.’

Ms Surbey also wrote a publication on occupational health and safety for childcare centres.

‘Purpose-built centres were just being introduced so it was a testing ground for all sorts of OH&S issues.’

Louise Brennan was the director of Carinya Neighbourhood Centre in 1987, and was later employed at Community Child Care Co-operative where she too penned several articles for Rattler magazine.

‘In 1987, I was a graduating “mature aged” teacher stepping into my first job in the lower Blue Mountains. Neighbourhood centres operated similarly to current day multifunctional children and family services. And Rattler and the NSW Community Child Care team behind it were true lifesavers.

To make sure staff would read it, she recalls slipping Rattler into the middle of New Idea magazines. It worked!

Rattler was distributed at low-cost, carrying information that was straight forward, with contributions from practitioners, academics, management and economists, she recalls.

‘Newly released books for staff and management committee as well as children, were reviewed. And endless campaigns for change were created, promoted and analysed through Rattler.

‘I remember a photo of Louise Dungate, centre director of Dee Why Child Care, on the cover of Rattler. She was pushing babies up a hill, in a double pram out on an excursion. I had interviewed her following the centre’s experience of a validation visit. She and the team were on a high, following the centre achieving high quality through the quality improvement and accreditation process. Those were innovative and exciting times!’

Throughout the 25 years of policy shifts, and practitioner changes, Ms Brennan has moved in and around the sector undertaking a range of positions and roles. These days she works at Marrickville Council in Sydney co-ordinating early childhood services, where she says Rattler is as ‘an accessible and important publication that continues to provoke, affirm and agitate for change’.

‘Well done Rattler! These days, you can stand against any New Idea on any staff room coffee table. Keep up the great work!’

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 100, Summer 2011

When I grow up I want to be a miner’, reads the text on a child’s artwork featuring a smiling stick figure with a miner’s lamp and a bag full of coal. The artwork hangs on the wall of a gallery in an exhibition, themed ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’, organised by staff and children at Mudgee Preschool.

When Rattler visits Mudgee Preschool, this theme is echoed in the children’s play, as children gather in the playground’s dirt patch littered with child-sized shovels and begin to dig.

‘Look at the way the dirt crumbles’… ‘Why is this rock shiny do you think? … ‘What have you found there?’ asks an educator. ‘I’m digging for coal’ says a little boy.

It is a vivid reminder that many of these children are the children of miners and that Mudgee is a town with a rich mining history and indeed, a rich mining future.

The town of Mudgee, a Wiradjuri term meaning ‘Nest in the hills’, lies in the fertile valley of the Cudgegong River in the state’s Central West. Riding the crest of a food and wine-led tourism boom (olivegrowing, vineyards, sheep farms and a thriving hospitality industry), the region is set to grow further due to an expansion of its coalmines, with anticipated population growth of 23–25 per cent over the next 3–5 years.

Consisting of two services (Perry Street and South Mudgee campuses), Mudgee Preschool is currently the only community-based service in the town.

There are also three private long day care centres and a council-run family day care scheme—all of which are currently running at or close to capacity.

‘New people are coming into town all the time and I get enquiries at the preschool daily for places. It is the same story across Mudgee—all services are feeling the pressure,’ explains preschool director, Rosie Gibbs.

So what does this mean for the 80-place preschool (one of the largest in the state) that already has more than 200 children on its waiting list? ‘People say there needs to be another preschool in Mudgee. The region has been identified under the PIRP program as not having enough places.’ But bigger is not necessarily better, according to this director who is working with other agencies within the Mudgee Child and Family Network, CareWest and Council to assess how Mudgee will respond to projected population growth from mining activity.

Mudgee may well need another preschool but Rosie and the preschool’s Board of Management are reluctant to add a third service to the Mudgee Preschool banner.

‘Because we are so big, it’s difficult for us to grow further… The risk for us is that we would lose quality and what we feel makes Mudgee Preschool special.’ ‘What makes us special is that we are well connected with our families, our children and the community. To become bigger would potentially dilute this.’ The preschool’s recent art exhibition entitled ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’, widely attended by parents and members of the community, is surely the perfect example of those allimportant connections.

‘Last year an exhibition was held at a local winery, owned by one of the parents. This year, it is being held in a nearby art gallery, allowing every child to go on a walking excursion to see their photos, mosaics, clay work and drawings of families and friends on display.’ Rattler was fortunate to join hands with children on one of these outings and walk alongside parents, grandparents and educators to experience ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’ firsthand.

Centrally located and housed within an old bowling club, the beautifully-converted Perry Street campus was opened in 1956. The service was expanded in 1990 when the South Mudgee Campus opened its doors in the town’s Masonic Lodge which has been modified to include a playground, sandpit and child-sized toilets. Up until last year, the South Mudgee Campus catered mostly for three year olds, with children typically starting at the ‘little preschool’ (South Mudgee with one unit) before moving up to the ‘big preschool’ (Perry Street with 3 units).

But this changed due to the town’s rapid population growth and the need to ensure all four year olds have access.

‘Initially, there was some resistance from families when their four year old child was allocated a spot at South Mudgee, (which does not have the abundant green space of Perry Street) but parents soon realised that although different, it is still a great service.

‘We deliberately changed the name and signs from South Mudgee Preschool to Mudgee Preschool (South Mudgee Campus) to highlight the strong link between the two services,’ she says.

While the campuses are located four kilometers apart, resources and relief staff are shared. Children from the South Mudgee campus regularly visit to play in the larger playground and meet their future schoolmates.

South Mudgee also provides a more intimate setting for those children with special needs who, as Rosie explains, might be overwhelmed by the size and the numbers at Perry Street.

The preschool is particularly committed to the inclusion of children with special needs in a town where there is currently no dedicated early childhood intervention service.

Rosie says children with disabilities and their families are seriously disadvantaged in Mudgee. ‘Some families have the means and resources to look for services and can afford to travel to other regional centres, but most don’t.’

For many families, Mudgee Preschool is the only place they are getting any form of early intervention. There are currently 12 special needs children with diagnoses who require additional support and for whom the preschool receives limited funding.

‘There are, of course, others who do not have a diagnosis yet and who do not receive funding, but receive lots of support,’ explains Rosie.

Following a visit from a teacher from the Hearing Support Team, educators now use an audio system to amplify their voices during group time.

‘The teacher told us that we could assume that at any one time there would be up to 30 per cent of children suffering from conductive hearing loss (otitis media, glue ear), which would affect their behaviour, speech and language and general health and wellbeing.

‘After a trial, our teachers decided that not only did the children benefit from the sound system, but they did too. One of our assistants is hearing impaired and it has made a big difference to her!’ Supporting children with special needs is a particular passion for Britishborn and South African-bred Rosie, who worked in a preschool in a small mining community near Kimberley in South Africa for two years before emigrating to Australia and working as an early intervention teacher with a small group of children in Gulgong, NSW.

‘Having left South Africa just before the end of apartheid, it was liberating for me to come into a country where the concepts of multiculturalism and antibias were embedded in the curriculum, were explicit and were (more or less) practiced.’

With the help of the preschool’s Board of Management, Rosie has also succeeded in having a third support person (usually a special needs worker, of which there are five) allocated to each class, alongside a teacher and an assistant.

The preschool has 25 dedicated staff (23 of whom work part-time), allowing the team to enjoy a healthy worklife balance and to voluntarily pursue further study ahead of the new NQF requirements — with 11 staff currently studying through TAFE or university.

Having such a diverse team has also added layer upon layer of richness, as staff bring a range of experience, skills and interests to the job.

‘A few educators are keen gardeners and have formed a gardening committee and open garden event. Another plays the guitar beautifully and takes her class to the nursing home to sing. A few love animals and ensure we have a revolving menagerie of budgerigars, goldfish, hermit crabs, stick insects, chooks and rabbits. And our administration manager is also a qualified masseuse who helps to relieve headaches and aching backs with massage and pressure point touch!’

Rosie and her team have embraced preparing for the National Quality Framework (NQF) as an opportunity for continuous improvement.

Through discussions with staff (identifying areas of interest) and her own reading of the EYLF and NQF, Rosie has identified three areas that could be improved, changed or developed.

‘These are Cultural Competence, Information and Technology and Environment and Sustainable Practices.

All staff have chosen one of these areas of interest to work on as part of a team, identifying what we do well, what we could do better and developing a plan of action to share with others.’

And what of Mudgee’s mining rich future?… Well, Rosie was recently invited by Mudgee’s mayor to share her vision for early childhood education for the region. In her submission, she wrote about a multi-purpose early childhood hub including a preschool/long day care centre, an early intervention centre, a base for a mobile preschool unit to cater for children in outlying areas, as well as offices and therapy or meeting rooms.

‘If the Mid-Western Regional Council provided some land, the mines that are driving the growth of the region funded the building, and the relevant departments contributed some funding for staff and operating costs … then I believe anything is possible.’

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 99, Spring 2011

Relationships aren’t static; each day, our interactions shape and reshape them’ (Casper & Theilheimer, 2010, p.80). How do your interactions with children shape your relationships with them? Are there changes you can make that will strengthen these relationships?

How do you support all children to participate in interactions with others and build relationships? What else can you do to support respectful relationships and a sense of community?

Why are relationships so important?

Relationships underpin all aspects of children’s learning.

Positive, trusting relationships are essential for children’s sense of identity, connections with others, sense of wellbeing and confidence in themselves as learners.

Bernstein argues that educational settings deliver powerful messages to children through their curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices. These messages helped shape individuals’ perceptions of what they might do now and in the future, and what they might become.

When children get the message they are valued and respected, they are more likely to explore their environment and to seek out challenges that extend learning and promote feelings of competence. Respect for children and their families also promotes a sense of connectedness and belonging to the early childhood setting and facilitates relationships with others. Respectful relationships support social aspects of learning such as collaboration, co-operation, democratic participation, teamwork and active citizenship.

The attachment research of Bowlby shows that secure early relationships promote emotional and social competence later in life. While children’s first and strongest relationship is with members of their family, sensitive and positive relationships between educators and children build on this foundation.

These trusting relationships provide a secure base for children to explore their environment, try out new ideas and communicate with others.

Effective learning environments involve more than the physical environment. They also include the social environment.

The social environment, consisting of relationships and interactions, is at the heart of the curriculum. The term ‘pedagogy of relationships’ was termed by Carla Rinaldi, a pedagogical director from the Reggio Emilia centres, to capture the importance of relationships in teaching and learning.

Effective relationships include a ‘pedagogy of listening’ that focuses on openness to and respect for difference and active listening and interpretation of meanings. Children actively construct their understandings as they interact with others in their environment.

Interactions between children and adults, as well as with peers, support the acquisition of new learning and the building of relationships. In order for educator–child interactions to support learning, there needs to be respect for children’s ideas and a positive relationship. When there is a warm and respectful relationship between the child and educator, and sensitivity to children’s ideas and understandings, educators are able to interact with children in ways that scaffold new learning.

Socio-cultural theorists such as Vygotsky highlight the ways in which children learn through social interactions. It is the combination of play-based learning environments with resources that are appropriate to children’s family context, interests and understandings along with sensitive interactions between educators and children that best supports children’s learning.

Socio-cultural perspectives consider the social, historical and cultural aspects of everyday life and aim to better understand children by taking each of these dimensions into account.

Children learn about collaboration, conflict resolution and negotiation through these daily interactions.

From a socio-cultural perspective, the educator and children are viewed as equals, rather than as existing in separate, hierarchical domains. This view challenges the traditional power relationships between educators and children and encourages educators to take children’s ideas seriously. The relationship between the educator and the child mediates learning.

Respectful interactions

Janet Gonzalez–Mena says that in order to build relationships, educators’ interactions with children must be respectful, responsive and reciprocal.

Educators show respect by listening to children’s ideas, valuing diverse ways of being, doing and thinking and engaging in meaningful conversations with children. Respect means being sensitive to different communication styles, rather than assuming that all families communicate in the same way. For example, it may not be appropriate to expect a child to maintain eye contact when interacting with an educator if this is not what happens in the family and community context.

Culturally competent educators find out about and respect diverse family values and practices and use this knowledge to develop respectful relationships and culturally-appropriate interactions. They plan environments that respect children’s competencies and emerging understandings and that nurture a community of care. They adapt routines to take account of family practices and children’s growing independence. Respectful relationships also ensure that all children are included in the learning community.

When educators respect children’s ideas and preferences they view children as active contributors to the early childhood learning community. They provide an environment that encourages children to choose what, how and when they engage in experiences and who they interact with in these experiences.

Strategies such as daily group meetings, children’s participation in setting up environments and easy access to resources enable children to have a voice in determining the experiences and resources that are provided and to negotiate the curriculum with educators. This active involvement in decision-making supports children’s autonomy and agency and promotes respectful relationships where children are viewed as active constructors of their own learning.

Responsive interactions

Responsive educators view children as strong and capable and able to make meaning from diverse experiences. They understand and value children’s family and community culture, including language/s spoken at home and interaction styles. To be able to respond to children effectively they tune-in to what children are doing, saying and thinking. This means, as Siraj– Blatchford has suggested, that educators listen and observe carefully, take notice of the verbal and non-verbal language children are using in play and respond with genuine interest.

Sensitive discussions with children about their understandings and ideas and flexible approaches to curriculum enable educators to respond to children’s lead. They are then able to provide play environments that connect to children’s worlds and join in play in ways that facilitate and extend relationships and learning and foster positive dispositions.

Responsive educators observe children’s play and interactions and draw on a repertoire of practices in their interactions with children. Different practices, or pedagogies, are appropriate with different learners in different contexts. At times, it may be appropriate to provide a clear demonstration, for example how to save children’s photographs onto the computer.

and numeracy concepts and processes such as directionality of print. Some children may need the educator to support them to initiate interactions, join in play and negotiate roles. At other times, it may be appropriate to join in children’s play and model problem solving by experimenting and hypothesising and by verbalising thinking. Many pedagogies are most effective when the educator engages in conversations with children and uses questions and comments to scaffold learning.

Educators who are responsive to children’s ideas are able to interact with children in ways that extend thinking and construct new understandings. Siraj–Blatchford refers to these types of interactions as ‘sustained shared thinking’. Sustained shared thinking involves both the educator and the child, or children, actively participating in interactions about an area of interest. Responsive teaching occurs when there is a warm and responsive relationship between the educator and children and a shared focus of attention and shared purpose.

Warm, supportive, responsive relationships between educators and children are also critical to the scaffolding of new learning. In these types of relationships, children feel safe to take risks and to try out new ideas. Educators offer support and encouragement, ask questions that challenge thinking and provide feedback and explanations.

Reciprocal interactions

When educators are sensitive to children’s play and interactions and readily available to children they are able to join in play and take part in reciprocal interactions. In these contexts educators initiate and respond to children’s verbal and non-verbal communication and engage in conversations with children.

These two-way exchanges are opportunities for the sort of sustained shared thinking that scaffolds children’s learning, extends vocabulary and builds conversation skills. Siraj– Blatchford suggests that useful strategies for sustained shared thinking include recapping what a child has said, adding details that extend the interaction, inviting children to elaborate and clarify their ideas and asking open-ended questions.

How can a focus on relationships support children’s positive interactions?

Supportive environments encourage collaborative learning where children share ideas and experiences, express feelings and negotiate meanings with their peers. Educators have a critical role in modelling and scaffolding collaborative interactions and positive social behaviours.

When educators listen to diverse perspectives, verbalise feelings and give reasons for preferences in socially acceptable ways they promote positive social interactions among children.

Participation in children’s play can enable educators to model how to enter play, consider others’ perspectives, problem-solve collaboratively and negotiate with others. They can also talk with children about their feelings, scaffold children’s problemsolving and conflict-resolution skills, and assist children to learn to appreciate diverse interaction styles and perspectives.

A respectful, connected approach that focuses on understanding diverse perspectives and negotiation supports children to self-regulate their behaviour and collaborate with others. Positive relationships and inclusive language can build a sense of community amongst the children. When children have input into the expectations and responsibilities, or ‘rules’, in the early childhood setting, they develop shared understandings and relationships of care. In these environments there is a strong focus on responsibilities as well as rights, respect for others, listening to each other and sharing ideas, and building of relationships amongst children.

Mutually respectful relationships that provide for children’s agency and autonomy and opportunities to engage in meaningful experiences that connect to children’s family and community experiences enhance both social and academic learning outcomes.

As the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) states, supportive relationships enable children to develop the dispositions and skills necessary ‘to interact positively with others… to appreciate their connectedness and interdependence as learners, and to value collaboration and teamwork’ (DEEWR, 2009, p.12).

Dr Leonie Arthur is a lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Western Sydney. She was a member of the consortium contracted to develop the Early Years Learning Framework and has written a number of resource books to support educators in their work with the Framework.

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 98, Winter 2011

Australians watched in horror last December as we saw televised images of a boatload of refugees swept into the sea off Christmas Island.

Many of us were outraged when we heard of the fate of eight-year-old Seena Akhlaqi Sheikhdost, the orphan boy who, having witnessed his mother and father drown, was returned to Christmas Island the day after his parent’s funeral, instead of being released to family members living in Sydney.

At the time, few of us knew that there were in fact record numbers of children being held in Australia’s detention facilities. In January this year, the numbers peaked at 1,065—more than under the former governments of John Howard and Kevin Rudd.

At last count, there were 1,048* children in detention. And while they are no longer accommodated in high-security Immigration Detention Centres (IDCs), they are housed in other forms of secure detention on Christmas Island, in Darwin, Leonora, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth.

A lesson unlearned

In 2005, after public outcry and agitation from his own backbench, Prime Minster John Howard released asylum seeker children from IDCs into community accommodation and amended the Migration Act to include the principle that ‘children should only be detained as a measure of last resort’.

This change in policy was welcomed at the time by refugee advocates and mental health professionals who had long voiced their concerns about the damaging effects of detaining children.

Despite all this, the detention of children has continued. Indeed, it has escalated.

So how, for a time, did Australia’s return to incarcerating children escape public attention?

How to hide a human rights scandal

According to Kate Gauthier, chair of Chilout (www.chilout.org.au), the issue had largely flown under the radar thanks to the clever wording of our politicians.

The first hint the public had that there were children in detention was in October last year following the announcement by the newly-elected Labor Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, that some families and unaccompanied minors would be moved out of immigration facilities into community- based accommodation by June 2011.

Earlier, Minister Bowen had told the ABC’s Q&A program that: ‘There are no children in detention as such, so there’s no children behind razor wire’. The comments outraged Ms Gauthier, who told Rattler the Government was ‘pulling a swifty’ on the public and ‘playing a game with words’.

Children might not be held behind razor wire but their confinement is obvious, she argues.

‘They have taken this one little word to imply a whole range of changes. As though the absence of razor wire alone can make detention humane or acceptable.

Again… I would remind people that Baxter Detention Centre (now closed), which was a high-security facility did not use razor wire. And Villawood has had no razor wire since Amanda Vanstone was Minister.’

A mother, former news producer and one-time immigration policy advisor to the Democrats, Ms Gauthier is chair of Children in detention is clearly child abuse.

If any other person put their child into that environment, it would be called abuse. If there was a day care centre where children were denied access to a play area, and the play area was nothing but dirt… where there was no shade, and children were allowed access to toys only one hour a week, not only would it be shut down but the people in charge would be arrested,’ Ms Martin–Iverson told Rattler.

A spokesperson for the Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN), Ms Martin– Iverson travelled 800 kilometres with a group of 30 activists on the ‘Caravan of Compassion’ to meet with detainees, stage a peaceful protest and deliver toys. The detention facility, located in a disused mining camp in the WA gold mining town of Leonora, was first opened in June 2010 to ease overcrowding at Christmas Island.

Disturbed by the conditions she saw, Ms Martin–Iverson describes the facility as akin to ‘a third world concentration camp’ and the worst she has ever visited.

Speaking to Rattler, she paints a grim picture of what life is like for children and families in Leonora.

‘This is a hostile environment. It is hot, dusty and the guards are aggressive.’

‘As we walked through toward the visiting area, mothers were pushing up against the fences shoving their hands through the mesh. Staff at the centre had tried to block us off by hanging black material over the fences, but the detainees were trying to hand us notes and letters.

The guards warned us: “You talk to anybody but the lady who you are here to talk to and you are out of here”.’ Unlike urban detention centres where detainees are regularly visited, she fears the isolation of Leonora has allowed for ‘a culture of abuse to flourish’.

She claims RRAN has been contacted by people held in the centre with allegations of bullying and inappropriate behaviour.

‘What we have is a situation where guards are responsible for managing the daily lives of children and their families. ‘The parent’s role as caregiver is taken over by what is effectively a penal system.

She says Serco* [the private contractor hired by the Government to run detention centres] is first and foremost a security company.

‘It is run like a penal system—it is not set up to support children and families.’

At Leonora, parents are not allowed to cook for their families or walk their children to and from school.

‘Imagine you are a child, and you are living in a detention facility. Your school is only two and a half blocks away but your parents can’t walk you to school.

Every morning you are piled into a bus and driven those two blocks with guards.

‘At the detention facility, you do not have free access to the playground and soccer pitch. Guards escort you to those areas and watch you play. There is no shade.

‘As a parent, you don’t have any control over what food is served and you don’t have the activity of cooking or cleaning for your family.

‘There are no cooking facilities in the demountables. You are not allowed a broom or cleaning supplies because you could use them as weapons.’

Ms Martin–Iverson explained that one of the purposes of the Caravan of Compassion visit to Leonora in January was to deliver $2,000 worth of donated toys to children.

‘Understanding the conflicts that these children have come from, we knew many would be traumatised and have experienced loss. We wanted to ensure there was a comfort item—a blanket or stuffed toy—for every child there.

However, they were on the receiving end of extreme hostility from Serco officials, who refused to distribute the toys.

‘I spent four months harassing Serco and in the end had to threaten legal action. Their argument was that they were going to create a toy library for all families to access. My argument was that if you do not understand the difference between a child owning and loving their own stuffed toy, and taking it to bed with them each night, and going into a building where they can sit and hold that toy for one hour a week, then you are not a fit person to have a child of your own, much less be in control of anyone else’s child.’

She says the majority of the asylum seekers at Leonora are Afghans with others from Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka.

‘These people are fleeing oppressive regimes or war zones. They are traumatised.

Many have seen family members killed… And look at the environments in which we place these unfortunate lost souls and children!

‘As a visitor, over time, you watch people fall apart. One father who spoke with us, said: “Our ten year olds are like six year olds, our six year olds are like three year olds, our three year olds are like babies.

‘Another parent told us: “Our children are wetting their beds, they’re telling us they want to die”.

‘The children who come out of these environments are never the same. It is not even controversial to say that Australia’s detention centres are mental illness factories… We are damaging already damaged people.’

Chilout, a group of concerned parents and citizens which was formed more than a decade ago and recently revived.

She explains that many of the Government’s ‘Alternative Places of Detention’ (APODs), such as the Asti Hotel in Darwin, are not purpose-built for housing people for long periods, but that families are detained there for up to six months while awaiting visa processing and security clearance.

Due to the heat, children and families spend most of their days indoors and the car park where children play has no shade and no grass, she says.

‘They are fenced in and watched over by guards. Some children are now going to school (after months of waiting) but not children under five. These three and four year olds have few toys and no organised educational resources or activities. There is no playgroup, no early childhood education and there is nowhere for them to play.

‘Would you like to play in a baking hot, Northern Territory car park? And as a parent, can you imagine being stuck in a hotel room with a two-year-old child for months on end?

‘We are talking about families who have been through trauma. These children may have witnessed family members taken away at night or killed. We are not talking about children who have a normal level of emotional resilience.’ Children over 15 are not sent to school but have some on-site English lessons. Adults, however, have little recreation, she explains.

‘This is further impacted by what we call “anticipatory trauma”. They don’t know when their visa case will be heard and whether they will be sent home.

They have nothing to do but sit and fret.’

Who are the people in these detention facilities?

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, they include: ‘babies, toddlers, young children, unaccompanied teenagers, pregnant women, parents who have lost children, and children who have lost parents.’

The Australian Human Rights Commission has also voiced concerns about the impact of detention facilities on the health, education and psychological needs of children. Representatives have visited detention facilities in both Darwin and at Leonora in Western Australia.

Commission president Catherine Branson QC, visited the Asti Hotel in September last year, and released a statement in which she outlined her concerns about the consequence of ‘prolonged and indefinite’ detention on people’s mental health.

She said the Commission had met with detainees, including children who had been traumatised by events in their home country or who had attempted self-harm while in these facilities.

Sadly, we know from recent history that detention of children can cause serious mental illness and depressive disorders in children.

Monash University Professor of Psychiatry, Professor Louise Newman, has been campaigning for better health for asylum seekers for more than a decade. She also chairs an independent health group (Detention Health Advisory Group) advising the Immigration Department.

Professor Newman told Rattler she is seeing many of the same sorts of mental health issues amongst teens and children as she did in what she describes as the ‘dark days of Woomera and Baxter’.

‘Teenagers are displaying anger, frustration, depression, self-harming behaviours and signs of post-traumatic stress.

Many children show signs of developmental delays because they have been under-stimulated by the environment.

She says anyone who works with children or in child protection knows how important a child’s first three years of life are.

‘Children require stimulation, emotional direction and well-adjusted parents, but mandatory detention is a system that undermines that.

‘These are the children of stressed and often depressed parents. It is not just the child that suffers it is the entire family unit—and it can last for years.’ Sadly, she is still treating children who were at Woomera when they were young and have ongoing psychological problems.

While she welcomes Minister Bowen’s proposed release of children, families and unaccompanied minors into the community, Professor Newman says the concern is the time this has taken and that for many the ‘damage has already been done’.

‘We are urging the government to move as quickly as possible,’ she says.

Out of sight but not out of mind

As we now know, from the current number of children in detention, even the best of intentions of a Government are reversible.

There are growing calls to formally legislate against the detention of children, by amending the Migration Act, to ensure the incarceration of children doesn’t continue.

As George Williams, Professor of Law at the University of NSW, recently wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Australian law leaves the detention of asylum seeker children to government and the political process. This is a matter of great concern: the protection of children should be put beyond the politics of the day.

‘The law should be changed to respect the rights of vulnerable children while their claim to refugee status is assessed. It should ensure that children are detained as a last, and not first resort, and then only for a limited time at a place appropriate to their needs and age.’

Part of Chilout’s role is to lobby Government on the children in detention issue, but Ms Gauthier says her efforts have fallen largely on deaf ears.

‘Many politicians don’t want to rock the boat. They like to pretend that the detention of children is not happening.

When you say you’re imprisoning thousands of children they become very uncomfortable.

‘These are often parents themselves … but what they are doing is child abuse. It is not our job to make them feel better because they are engaging in institutional child abuse. They have the power to stop this and they don’t!’

Australia has a poor track record when it comes to institutional child abuse, and as Ms Gauthier says, the Government may one day find itself apologising to this group of children or faced with a class action.

‘Given we know what happened with Aboriginal children, and we know what happened with the child orphans from Great Britain… now we have a third wave of children. It’s happening right now, right under our noses.’

The story so far

Australia currently holds 1,048* children (aged under 18 years) in immigration detention.

• Of these 1,048 children, 156 are detained in the community under residence determinations, 742 in alternative temporary detention, 24 in immigration residential housing and 126 in immigration transit accommodation. 658 of those children are detained on Christmas Island.
• An Australian record of 1,065 children was reached in January 2011— higher than the numbers under the governments of John Howard and Kevin Rudd
• Almost half of the children in detention arrived without their parents. Many of these unaccompanied minors are war orphans.
• According to DIAC figures, 98 per cent of unaccompanied minors are boys.
• Of the 658* people in detention on Christmas Island, 242* are children. Here, women and children live in the ‘Construction Camp’.
• While school-age children (5–15) attend school, no child under five has access to an early childhood program while in detention.
• Children who are aged 16 and 17 do not go to school but get some English tuition within detention facilities. Many miss out.
• Children are transported to school under guard via bus. Parents are not allowed to walk them to school.
• Children have only limited access to play areas. Most outdoor play areas lack shade and grass.
• Children risk significant mental harm the longer they are detained.
• The Government has said it aims to have the majority of children and family groups out of immigration detention facilities and into community-based accommodation by June 2011. (* According to, Immigration Detention Statistics Summary. Department of Immigration and Citizenship as at 15 April 2011.)

* According to, Immigration Detention Statistics Summary. Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) as at 15 April 2011.
* Serco is now under investigation by a Government-appointed review and the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 98, Winter 2011

If an emu were to run from Broken Hill to Wilcannia it would take four hours to get there,’ says a child’s voice in the opening scenes of a film made by Wilcannia Central School students during the Wakakkiri Film festival.

‘The local people follow the stars and always know when the emu eggs are ready to be collected. They will be laying eggs very soon,’ says preschool teacher Kimberley Dove, who follows the emu cycle at the preschool with the children. It is a poignant introduction to Barlu Kurli—a NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC) preschool attached to Wilcannia Central School in the Murdi Paaki region of remote New South Wales.

Barlu Kurli means ‘children’s hut’, and as the sign at the front of the preschool says: ‘It is where the fruits of two cultures blend; where care and education mix with the heritage of an ancient culture and language.’

Located on the Darling River, Wilcannia is a desert town in the NSW far west with a population of approximately 700 people—75 per cent of whom are Aboriginal.

It is home to the Paakantji (Barkindji) people, which in the local tongue means ‘people of the river’.

Not surprisingly, the river is a symbol of life for this community. Indeed, the name Wilcannia reputedly means ‘a gap in the bank where flood waters escape’.

Wilcannia was once Australia’s third largest inland port during the great riverboat era. Known as ‘Queen city of the West’, it peaked in the 1880s when the town had a population of 3,000, 13 hotels and even a local newspaper, The Wilcannia Times.

The development of Australia’s railways saw the steamboat trade diminish and eventually dry up. Today, the main industries in Wilcannia are in education, health care and social assistance. Unemployment is an ongoing challenge.

But any metaphors about gaps in the river and ‘Closing the Gap’ rhetoric are sadly all-too familiar in this town, where agencies abound and bureaucrats regularly fly in and fly out.

The people of Wilcannia are naturally wary of journalists. They have been burnt before, with several negative articles written about the flow of government funds into the town.

When it comes to early childhood education though, the story is overwhelmingly positive, and one in which the people of Wilcannia should be proud.

Rattler spoke with Tracey Simpson, who works for the Department of Education and Communities as a Director of Community Partnerships and Early Years Director (Western NSW).

‘The people of Wilcannia have been hurt on so many levels. The impression the rest of Australia has of the town is a negative one and that hurts.

‘It is a fabulous little town. It has a rich history of two cultures, and is one of the most beautiful places in country NSW,’ she says.

Tracey’s position is unique to the region and was created to bring about real, lasting change in Aboriginal communities via early childhood education.

Wilcannia is a Remote Service Delivery site, which is part of the COAG National Partnership Agreement to provide better co-ordinated services for Aboriginal people.

‘It is a whole government approach to breaking through red tape to assist communities like Wilcannia to move forward. There have been so many different programs in Wilcannia over the years and various agencies wanting to help, but it tends to be about “doing something” for people rather than talking to people.’

Wilcannia is where the community working party concept first originated. In the 1990s, the town experimented with a unique form of governance, creating a Community Working Party (CWP).

The CWP is considered the first port of call for any government agency. It comprises community leaders, elders, community- based and Aboriginal-controlled organisations.

‘The respectful way to do anything in this town is to first make contact with the CWP.’

Representing the school, Tracey regularly attends CWP meetings along with Wilcannia Central School principal Michelle Nicholson.

While early childhood has become a real focus in Wilcannia, this was not always the case. Previous children’s services had closed including a preschool at St Teresa’s (‘the mission school’) and a private long day care centre called ‘Little Darlings’ proved unviable.

Issues around staffing and low attendance were to blame, says Tracey, explaining how the DEC model best suits Wilcannia.

‘It means we can always have a teacher in Wilcannia and still employ local people such as Aboriginal assistant ‘Aunty Tania’.

‘Some regional preschools struggle to retain early childhood staff but Wilcannia can provide a job and a house through the Teacher Housing Authority,’ she says.

There is a spirit of co-operation between Wilcannia Central and St Therese’s Infant School (established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1916), which is unique to the town.

There is a tradition of children attending Karlu Burli Preschool then ‘crossing the river’ to go to St Therese’s for Kindergarten to Year 2, before returning to the Central School.

Another success story is the marked increase in preschool attendance. ‘There has been a real push to boost numbers, and a concerted effort to make families feel welcome. We have 24 children enrolled and daily attendance ranges from 16–20,’ says Tracey.

Engaging families in the preschool program will hopefully have a flow-on effect, improving attendance into primary school and beyond.

The preschool’s 14-seat community bus has also helped break down barriers and build relationships with families.

‘The bus is almost a teaching and learning experience in itself,’ says Tracey.

‘If you are going to someone’s front door every day then you soon get to know Mum, Dad, Aunty or Nan.’

Driven by elder David Clark, the morning and afternoon bus runs allow Kimberley to meet with parents and make those important connections.

Preschool children, or ‘murrpa-ku’ as they are known, get a certificate after five consecutive days of preschool and a prize is given to the child with the highest attendance at the end of the year.

Whenever a child is born in Wilcannia, its family is issued with a donated Care Flight teddy bear by the preschool.

‘Aunty Tania always knows when a baby is born, and Kimberley is usually the first one to have a cuddle.

‘When you see a parent put a tiny baby into Kimberley’s arms you know that is trust,’ says principal Michelle Nicholson.

A song about attending preschool is also used to positively push the preschool message. Catchy lyrics composed by preschool staff and children include: ‘I listen up when Aunty speaks …I come to school five days a week!’

Together with regional language co-ordinator, ‘Uncle Murray’ Butcher, Kimberley is part of the Barkindji Learning Circle—a group of elders and other community members who are helping to preserve the local language.

‘I am honoured that the people of Wilcannia are willing to share this knowledge with me,’ says Kimberley.

Uncle Murray is one of the few fluent Barkindji speakers left. He is employed by the Department of Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) as a regional resource and has an office at Wilcannia Central School.

Along with parents and elders, he regularly takes preschool children on trips into the bush to look for emu eggs, identify animal tracks, and collect different bush foods.

Wherever possible, Kimberley and staff also try to provide children with a strong sense of identity.

‘We hope to provide children with a basic knowledge of resilience and belonging… We use praise and recognition to help address issues of shyness and shame that is faced by many of our older students,’ she says.

The preschool is visited twice a term by the Remote Mobile Resource Unit’s toy and book library, and staff work closely with the Broken Hill-based Maari Ma Health Service.

This outreach program offers dental and dietary programs as well as antenatal and postnatal clinics for young mums in the town.

As the only early childhood facility in town, the preschool is the obvious contact point for families to access other services, explains Tracey.

There are moves to construct a new building as a community hub as part of the Remote Services Delivery program.

‘We are aptly calling it the “Belonging” centre. It would have facilities for training, community meeting rooms as well as elder’s rooms. There is a women’s group and a men’s group in Wilcannia who could also use this purpose-built space. There is also discussion about offering occasional care in this space.’

The concept of the Belonging centre is just one example of the influence of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in Wilcannia.

The other is a project to link the EYLF’s Five Learning Outcomes with the Aboriginal pedagogy framework ’8 Ways of Learning’, which allows teachers to include Aboriginal learning techniques— ways of knowing, doing and being. Kimberley is already using the symbols and concepts of eight ways in the preschool program.

The EYLF is also explored on a DVD produced by Kimberley, which screened at an education forum in Cobar last year.

So what’s next? Along with the Community Working Party (CWP), Tracey and Michelle are now working with the region and school staff to turn Wilcannia Central into a Paakantiji School that embraces the lores of Paakantiji (Barkindji) culture. This is an exciting and historic move.

There is change in the air in Wilcannia.

The drought has broken and the desert peas have flowered. And as Michelle Nicholson says on Kimberley’s DVD: ‘with the smiley shiny faces, I can see the future of Wilcannia’.

This article first appeared in Rattler Magazine, Issue 98, Winter 2011