Facebook: Share, and share a Like

No matter if you use it to share your service’s rich history or to highlight news and events taking place day-to-day, Facebook offers a very affordable tool to stay in touch with your community.

Camille Howard talks to three services embracing the social media tool to stay in touch.

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Early Childhood Education and Care – no boys allowed?

According to the latest statistics from the Productivity Commission, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector collectively employs around 140,000 people, of which only 3 per cent are male.

That’s just 4,200 men across the whole country. Practically an endangered species.

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Q&A with Helen Conway: Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace

As director of Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace, Helen Conway is leading the charge to address gender bias in the workplace.

She talks to Rattler about her efforts to ensure that equality becomes a reality.

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NQF: Reflective journeys

Rattler talks to a DEC preschool, a community-based 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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Equal pay for teachers please!

When it comes to pay packets, not all teachers are equal. Suzanne Kowalski-Roth from the NSW/ACT Independent Education Union (IEU), explores this much-needed campaign, and outlines why pay parity needn’t be a utopian daydream.

In a utopian Australia, young children would be valued by our society, and the role of early childhood teachers in nurturing and educating children would be truly understood, articulated and affirmed.

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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 →

The selling out of children’s services

Corporatised institutions have a stronger presence in most areas of everyday life in Australia. With the privatisation of many government services over the past decade, is there a place for corporate competitiveness and profit motivations in children’s services? Eddy Jokovich looks at the key issues in the political debate about corporatising childcare and why community-based services need to be concerned. Continue Reading →