childcare workers

NQF: Reflective journeys

Rattler talks to a DEC preschool, a communitybased service and private long day care centre about the long and winding road to quality improvement. By Ingrid Maack.

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.

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A great place to work for women

In a female-dominated profession known for employing women in their childbearing years, family-friendly staffing arrangements are a priority at the University of New South Wales’ three long day care centres—Kanga’s House, The House at Pooh Corner and Tigger’s Honeypot.

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.

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Growing up in coal country

On the brink of a mining boom, the town of Mudgee is questioning how its fossil fuel-driven future will reshape the early childhood education landscape. Ingrid Maack visits Mudgee Preschool—one of the biggest early education and care services in NSW.

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.

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Connecting with children

Quality Area 5 of the National Quality Standard (NQS) focuses on respectful and equitable relationships between educators and children. Dr Leonie Arthur explores why educator–child interactions should always be respectful, responsible and reciprocal.

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?

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Are staff keeping children safe?

Children’s services staff play a vital role in child protection, but do we have the skills and resources to properly fulfil our role as mandatory reporters under Keep Them Safe? Ingrid Maack reports.

While Keep Them Safe (KTS) has been welcomed as the necessary first step to better child protection, there are calls for clarity on the role children’s services are expected to now play. Continue Reading →