New grants to strengthen safety in Early Childhood Education and Care
A $2.46 million funding injection will support child safety across the state, helping Early Childhood Education and Care providers bolster their existing practices.
The Child Safety Grants are a one-off grant for services to help strengthen their child safety practices in line with national legislative changes.
The amended Education and Care Services National Law has imposed a range of new child safety conditions on the early childhood education and care sector, including additional compulsory training, a national mandatory educator register, more stringent device restrictions and increased offences for inappropriate conduct.
The grants will be available to support South Australian services to implement the national reforms in a number of ways including:
- reviewing site policies and procedures for compliance
- supporting staff to further embed child safety practices in their work; and
- minor physical improvements to centres that address common safety failures.
The grants will range from $3,000 to $5,000 per service, depending on its size, with approved providers able to access grant funding for each service they operate.
The grants will be available from this month for centre based long day care and nongovernment preschool services, including Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations, and will be administered by the Office for Early Childhood Development.
Department for Education preschools will also receive support to prepare for changes required under the National Law, separate to these grants.
These grants complement Federal Government funding that supports eligible providers with wage costs for workers undertaking mandatory national child safety training. This includes funding through an extension of the Professional Development Subsidy to cover staff backfilling or to pay allowances when training is undertaken outside of regular work hours.
Quotes attributable to Blair Boyer:
Keeping children safe is non-negotiable.
That’s why the Malinauskas Labor Government is investing $2.46 million to strengthen and expand safety in Early Childhood Education and Care services.
These grants will help services strengthen their child safety practices and tailor them to the needs of their service. We know this kind of support is particularly important for smaller services.
Quotes attributable to Education Standards Board Chief Executive, Benn Gramola:
Long day care services are required to meet stringent child safety obligations nationally, and the recent changes to these laws further strengthen these requirements.
These grants will assist in supporting voluntary compliance across the sector and complement the additional state government funding for the Education Standards Board to increase the frequency of service assessment and ratings, and unannounced compliance visits.