Why won't THEY do something...

Is it time that 'we' became the 'they' we are waiting for?

I can only begin to imagine how educators and teachers who work with babies and children feel this morning if you watched the 4 Corners episode Hunting Ground last night.

But of course it is children who are the real victims here.

And like every other time the media has exposed what is happening in our sector we wait for a government response. We wait for a nefarious other to fix it. Whether it be government, regulators, ACECQA. We ask why aren’t THEY doing something?

But we know by now whatever THEY do, it will be reactive (CCTV cameras, banning mobile phones) and not focused on things that actually matter (ratios, wages, training, corporate and private equity provision).

THEY cannot even give educators/ services a single phone number to use to report a suspected paedophile operating in a centre.

THEY are continuing to fund the centres where abuse is most likely to happen.

So if our sector is a hunting ground for paedophiles what can WE do?

Obviously this is not our problem in that we did not create it. But in every centre that was spoken about last night, there were other educators. Educators that were not paedophiles who worked with one that was.

So let’s start there.

Empower your educators to speak up. Go back over the basics of supervision. Make damn sure your centre is child safe. And if you are an educator, see it, say it. Call the police, call the Department, call ACECQA. Call everybody on their overly bloody complex lists.

Because if THEY keep funding it, if THEY won’t make the changes needed, then WE need to do whatever WE can to keep children safe.