Child safety experts are warning parents to be vigilant when hiring babysitters and nannies, as families reject formal daycare settings amid ongoing revelations of abuse and neglect.<\/p>\n
Parents are increasingly looking at alternative forms of childcare as governments grapple with how to improve child safety in daycare centres.<\/p>\n
“I sent my older two to daycare at eight months,” said Sydney mother, Sarah, who didn’t want to use her real name.<\/p>\n
“But by the time I had my third child, there’s been all the allegations and stuff, so I was really reluctant to send her somewhere that I didn’t have a personal recommendation for.<\/p>\n
“So we have been paying for a nanny. But the cost of using a nanny is not ideal.”<\/p>\n
The ABC has spoken with dozens of parents reporting the same thing, and even Facebook parenting groups show a flurry of activity as people hunt for babysitters and nannies.<\/p>\n
Professional nannying services are also seeing an increase in business.<\/p>\n
“Lots of families do seem like they are losing faith in the childcare system and they’re just not willing to roll the dice of these terrible things that are happening,” said Lauren Brown, the owner and founder of Nanager and a volunteer board member of the Australian Nanny Association.<\/p>\n
“So across the board, we are noticing that inquiries are growing.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jen Flemming, the co-founder of For Parents, with her family. (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n
A group called For Parents is taking it one step further and has called on the federal government with a Change.org petition to expand the child care subsidy scheme to cover the use of babysitters, nannies and grandparents for care at home.<\/p>\n
“I think parents around the country we’ve heard from are losing trust in the system, but they don’t have another choice,” said Jen Flemming, the co-founder of For Parents.<\/p>\n
“We would really like fundamentally for parents to have more choice over who is looking after their children.”<\/p>\n
There is a subsidised in-home care scheme available to 3,200 families only, who have unique circumstances<\/a> such as geographic isolation, unusual working hours or complex family situations that make regular childcare unavailable or not suitable.<\/p>\n Mrs Flemming wants that extended.<\/p>\n “What we’re asking for is the scheme that all kids are eligible for within those parameters that currently exist to give those families more choice.<\/p>\n “We believe that there are a lot of low and middle-income families who would significantly stand to benefit from this change,” she said, arguing against the subsidies going to a lot of “for-profit childcare centres”.<\/p>\n Unregulated space<\/p>\n Outside of professional nanny agencies, nannies, babysitters, and au pairs who are hired casually are not at all regulated by government agencies.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the Australian Nanny Organisation says it is a requirement for nannies to have a Working with Children Check, it is not policed or enforced in casual settings.<\/p>\n Babysitters and nannies don’t have to have a police check, first aid certificate or even a tax file number, since many transactions are often cash-based.<\/p>\n National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds says people who are providing in-home child care should be registered. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)<\/p>\n National Children’s Commissioner <\/strong>Anne Hollonds said any care inside someone’s home, whether it was family daycare or with a nanny, had “risks that need to be attended to”.<\/p>\n “We need to have the same high standards for child safety and wellbeing, whatever the type of care it is,” she said.<\/p>\n As Ms Brown points out, this type of care, if not managed properly, can pose an even bigger risk because families are basically “welcoming a stranger into their home”.<\/p>\n “There are those carers that might not be in it for the right reasons. They’re in it to go and meet their friend for a play date or, you know, maybe more sinister reasons,” she said.<\/p>\n In June, a Perth man was charged with sexual offences<\/a> against children he babysat and in November last year, South Australian police charged a young female babysitter with criminal neglect<\/a> of a toddler after he was found with suspicious injuries.<\/p>\n Professor Michael Salter, director of Child Light at UNSW, which is part of the Global Child Safety Institute, pointed out that there were long-standing issues around the provision of care at home because there was less oversight.<\/p>\n “There’s less surveillance, there’s less regulation, so it’s not the case that care at home is necessarily safer than a childcare centre.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In his line of work, Dr Salter said he had come across decades of examples of abuse and neglect at the hands of babysitters or nannies.<\/p>\n “It is quite common when we’re interviewing or speaking with survivors of child abuse and neglect that some of them will talk about abuse that’s being perpetrated, whether it’s by a babysitter, whether it’s by somebody who’s provided in-home care.”<\/p>\n Is it possible to regulate this space?<\/p>\n Babysitters, nannies and au pairs are often essential for families, given the lack of intergenerational living and ‘the village’.<\/p>\n So, is it possible to make it safer?<\/p>\n Jen Flemming with her daughters (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n The group For Parents wants the federal government to include nannies and babysitters in a national register if the subsidy were to be extended to this cohort.<\/p>\n Mrs Flemming said it would be similar to OFSTED in the UK, where carers receive a registration number once they have submitted the necessary checks.<\/p>\n “It gives parents that sense of reassurance that the person they are talking to has been through a government registration programme,” she added.<\/p>\n Ms Hollonds agreed.<\/p>\n “If we’re expanding in any way the use of nannies or other home-based care, then I think those people who are providing the care should be registered and should be checked for their suitability as we have for early childhood educators in other settings,” she said.<\/p>\n But it would require a lot more resourcing for regulators.<\/p>\n Ms Hollonds also warned parents when using nannies or babysitters, particularly if they were found informally, to be “extremely cautious in who they choose to care for their children”.<\/p>\n That would include ensuring they have a valid and current working-with-children check and police check.<\/p>\n Professional nanny Lauren Brown said parents should also check for first aid and CPR certificates, and even run a social media scan.<\/p>\n “But I stress this to everyone: call references, speak to someone who knows this person who’s worked with this person.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Child safety experts are warning parents to be vigilant when hiring babysitters and nannies, as families reject formal…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":153909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[89994,4740,89992,20020,42427,37853,37278,25090,89991,89993,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-153908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-anne-hollonds","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-babysitters","11":"tag-child-abuse","12":"tag-child-neglect","13":"tag-child-protection","14":"tag-child-safety","15":"tag-childcare","16":"tag-nannies","17":"tag-nanny-safety","18":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115045875420839739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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