Prioritising Child Safety and Wellbeing Every Day, In Every Way

Child safety and well-being are the essential elements of early childhood education. All children have the right to experience high-quality education and care in an environment that promotes opportunities to thrive with educators who safeguard and advocate for their health, safety, security and wellbeing. 

At Sydney Early Education Centres, child safety and wellbeing is at the heart of every decision and action we take. We understand families trust us with their precious children, and we take this responsibility seriously. We embed a culture of child protection and safety into our everyday practices, from recruitment to meeting agendas, safety checks, programs, and involving children in decision-making.

Our teams

We believe a core element of a quality early childhood service is the management and leadership team. A quality leadership team is crucial as they drive the values and culture of a service and ensure compliance with the laws and regulations. Sydney Early Education Centres has a leadership team of highly qualified and experienced early childhood teachers who collaboratively use their knowledge and experience to ensure effective and benchmark systems, practices and safeguards are in place.

Our educators:

• Are chosen from a rigorous recruitment procedure including interviews with different management and staff members; child safety questions and scenarios, Working with Children Checks/National Police criminal checks; trial days; reference checks; and feedback from staff and children/families.
• Complete a comprehensive induction process and ongoing training and professional development. All undertake regular child protection training and further child safety knowledge and reflections in team meetings.
• Exceed the required educator-to-child ratios and required number of university-trained early childhood teachers and qualified educators. SEEC always ensures there is a minimum of 2 educators actively supervising children together at all times. Supervision plans and risk assessments are reviewed regularly.
• Are valued, supported, and given above award wages/conditions which encourages our high staff retention rates within our organisation.

Our environments

SEEC’s early education centres have all been designed by early childhood teachers with optimal safety and supervision as our number one priority. We know what is needed to safeguard children and are consistently reviewing learning spaces and environmental factors. That’s not to say that we don’t value and plan for healthy risky play experiences, but we plan risk-mitigation procedures to help manage risks or alleviate the hazards and we empower the children to take responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others.

SEEC has strict policies and practices to ensure our environments are safe, secure and always well maintained. Some of these include:

• Our centres’ buildings have been designed with lots of glass! This helps to ensure our natural and clear lines of sight across all indoor and outdoor areas and visibility and accessibility of other staff and children.
• Each centre has a security access system and procedures permitting only authorised people to enter.
• We have CCTV cameras for security and child protection purposes. The footage is governed by strict privacy and confidentiality policies and procedures.
• All children’s indoor and outdoor learning environments have supervision plans, safety checks and risk assessments which are regularly reviewed in team meetings.
• Regular cleaning and maintenance of our indoor and outdoor environments by external contractors. We include specialist organisations such as Kidsafe NSW in our safety checks to help identify potential hazards and help with up-to-date research.
• SEEC adopts the National Model Code and guidelines in our child safe practices, eg: staff and volunteers are not allowed personal electronic devices in the children’s environments.

Our programs

Child safety is taught within our educational programs and daily practices in an age-appropriate and respectful way. Some ways our educators do this include:

• Incorporating the NSW Governments Safe Series protective behaviours program

• Empowering the children to have a voice:
  • we listen to children and take what they say seriously
  • we teach them about their rights in child-friendly ways and how they can make a complaint or who to talk to if they are concerned. For example, we teach them about their 5 heros
  • we involve them in decisions that affect them. For example, we ask them who they would like to change their nappy.
• Teaching children age-appropriate personal safety and protective behaviours.
• Respecting diversity and promoting equality and inclusion. Our programs make sure they are designed for all people and for all abilities.

Our community

SEEC promotes a culture of openness and transparency within our community, and we value the importance of engaging in meaningful connections and relationships. We involve our staff, children, families and community members in our child safety policies and practices, for example, through:

• Our monthly quality assurance review process, eg: interactive displays, surveys, children drawing or writing their ideas, newsletters, etc.
• Our SEEC Child Safe Action group meets at least quarterly to discuss and review the implementation of the Child Safe Standards, our child safe policies, procedures, code of conducts and action plans. This group includes management, educators, parents and child protection personnel.
• Educator/family meetings
• Children’s meetings and in their programmed experiences
• Foyer displays
• Our Child Safe Commitment

Advice for families

To ensure your children are as safe as possible in an early education and care service, we recommend questioning:

• Who owns, manages and/or leads the service? Are they early childhood trained and experienced?
• What are the staff-to-child ratios?
• What are the staff qualifications?
• What is the service’s rating?
• How does the service feel when you walk into it? Does it appear safe and welcoming?
• What are the service’s policies and procedures on child safety?
• How do they teach the children about child safety?
• How are families involved in the service’s policies and practices?

If you would like to discuss or see any of what has been discussed in our Sydney Early Education Centres, please book a visit or contact us.