Anyone who is taking care of four or more children under the age of 13 for money in the absence of parents or guardians must be a registered and approved service.
Families are considering pulling their children out of centre-based care. Credit: Virginia Star
The summary also stated the Vietnamese community knew of Luu, who had a valid Working with Children Check, either through neighbourhood networks or a weekly advertisement in a newspaper.
Parents would drop their children off at any time and pay $20 cash when picking them up, without any paperwork.
Luu, who authorities believe ran the illicit service for up to four years, admitted she did not tell parents about the restraints and did not seek their approval. She said she worried they would “swear at me” if she told them and admitted she was not taught the restraint method during the nine-month childcare course she had completed.
The 53-year-old was convicted of multiple charges, including four counts of false imprisonment, operating an unlicensed, unapproved children’s service and failing to protect children from hazards.
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The court imposed a 15-month community correction order with 200 hours of community service, ordered Luu to pay an aggregate fine of $2000 and make a $2000 contribution to the Education Department’s legal costs.
In a separate case, also prosecuted in February last year, Aree Mulada, who had previously worked in a family daycare setting, admitted to running an off-the-books childcare centre in the northern Victorian town of Robinvale in January 2022 and again in June 2022 to avoid “too much paperwork”.
In January that year, a four-month-old baby died while in her care after the infant was put to sleep in a rocker. A coroner’s report found the cause of death was undetermined.
The woman was caught running an unregistered service again in June 2022, conduct described by prosecutors as “appalling and objectively serious”.
Avinash Singh said unregulated centres were “not unusual”.
The woman was convicted of breaches of the Children’s Services Act and ordered to pay $18,000, including costs.
Astor Legal principal lawyer Avinash Singh, who has acted in many childcare-related cases, said unregulated centres were “not unusual”, but that the home-based nature of the offending “makes it more difficult to pinpoint how many there are”.
“You don’t know how many are operating until someone gets reported, but the types of centres operating where there is no approval, they don’t comply with regulations and it’s done through word of mouth or text … they aren’t flaunting their services,” he said.
“If there’s some sort of dispute that happens with parents … that’s usually the only way when the regulators will be informed of their operating.”
Singh said new regulations, legislated after the horrific child sex abuse allegations against former Melbourne daycare worker Joshua Dale Brown, could push the costs of approved childcare centres up, leaving “a gap in the market for less scrupulous operators who don’t comply with regulations” offering a cheaper service.
He also said those considering leaving centre-based care still needed to be vigilant.
“A lot of child sex offences occur where parents know the perpetrators,” he said
“You may think getting someone you know, a family friend or family member to take care of your children is safer; the statistics bear out that they are more at risk. So they should be really careful, whether they are sending their children to a childcare centre or arranging a nanny.”
Amanda Ferguson, recruitment manager at nanny agency Nanager, said she had seen an increase in inquiries for families looking for alternatives to centre-based care since the Brown scandal broke in July.
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“It has brought to light the fact that in childcare centres, you can have all of the overarching regulations – childcare is a lot more regulated in a lot of ways than individual nanny care – but there’s still so many things that in a big organisation, a big structure like that, can fall through the cracks,” she said.
“This has really triggered people, I think, to look at the different options.”
A Victorian government spokeswoman said any unlicensed services must immediately cease operating and apply for provider and service approval. The spokesperson said that the regulatory authority would investigate when they suspected unlicensed services.
The reformed Victorian Working with Children Check scheme aims to increase transparency so there can be immediate action, and a National Early Childhood Worker Register is being developed to make sure that people banned in one jurisdiction are banned in all jurisdictions.
An independent regulator for the early childhood education and care sector has been promised by the end of the year, which will conduct frequent monitoring and compliance checks, monitor complex for-profit providers, ensure services have best-practice recruitment and screening and increase transparency for parents.
The Department of Government Services was unable to say whether Luu still had a Working with Children Check.
Deakin honorary Associate Professor Anne-Marie Morrissey said childcare centres were regulated and often well set up, but even then “it’s not an absolute guarantee”.
“Unfortunately, and the hard thing is, that I do come back to with babies and toddlers, is that they can’t tell you if something’s going wrong,” Morrissey said.