Speaker: Michelle Milnes

Really happy to have everyone here this morning to talk about the Transition to School Digital Statement, the enhancements and the departmental resources we've developed to support the completion of the Transition to School Digital Statement.

My name is Michelle Milnes, I'm the Director of Pedagogy and Practice at the Department of Education, and I'll be joined this morning by my colleagues Ingrid Bellamy and John Walsh and supported in the background by our Transitions team from Pedagogy and Practice to support with answering questions that you might have.

While the chat section is actually not enabled for this session, the Q&A section is enabled. So if you do have questions throughout the presentation, please feel free to pop them into that Q&A chat. If there's time throughout the session, we'll attempt to address those and post the session.

We will be developing a list of frequently asked questions that'll be published alongside the recording of this session this morning.

Before we begin today, we'd just like to acknowledge country. I am dialling in from very chilly Dharawal country today and recognise the ongoing custodians, the lands and waterways where we work, live and play. I'd like to pay respect to the Elders past and present, of ongoing teachers of knowledge, song lines and stories and extend my respect to the custodians of the lands which everyone is dialling in from today. We're really striving to ensure that every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieves their full potential through education and through early education. With the work that we do in early childhood outcomes, we're in a really great position to guide children's understandings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, history and cultures.

So during this morning's ECE Connect session, we'll be exploring the Transition to School Digital Statement impact for the 2025 cohort and we're discussing the benefits of a well written statement in terms of supporting children and families to transition into their new school setting.

We'll be talking through the enhancements we've made to the statement in response to 2024 sector consultation, and we'll be exploring links between Transitions and the National Quality Standard Area Quality 6, our sub Quality Area 6, and walking through the departmental resources available to support teachers and educators to complete the statement in a really meaningful and effective way.

As mentioned earlier, if you have any questions or comments, we have moderators monitoring the chat function in the webinar and the transitions email is available for you on our screen now. So if any questions for this presentation, please feel free to make note of our transitions email and send through any questions or comments to the team directly.

OK, we're going to start with a Menti so we can get a little bit of audience participation and better understand how people are engaging with the statement itself. We'd really like to hear a little bit about your experience with the Transition to School Digital Statement. Please note we are navigating a range of different technologies here, so there may be a bit of a lag with engaging with the Menti and the results of the Menti displaying on the screen. So please feel free to scan the QR code on the screen or open menti.com in your browser and enter the code. This is anonymous, so please feel free to join in and share with us. And I can see that some of our participants are completing the Menti right now.

So our first question on the screen is 'When do you complete your Transition to School Statement?'

And we can see there's a range of different responses, September, October, November, end of Term 4, Some responses here indicating that services are completing statements earlier for children with high support learning needs or children with a range of different additional needs.

Some services looking as early as August, some people starting in July and we can see some of our most popular responses here coming up in the middle in our bold text.

So October, November, Term 3 and Term 4. And I think that's really consistent with what we've been hearing through our consultation with the ECEC sector that was conducted in 2024. Really diverse range of responses. Might move to the next question.

I'm really keen to hear people's experience with the Transition to School Digital Statement. A few words to kind of capture potentially your experiences in writing the statements in terms of engaging with families. Perhaps using it as an opportunity to share information about children and families with the schools they will be transitioning to.

But a few first timers using the statement, some finding it easy to use, some finding it time consuming, taking a long time to complete, the portal timing out. This is one of the areas that we've sought to rectify through the enhancements to the statement platform. So hopefully people will find that the statement itself is less time consuming and a little bit easier to navigate in terms of the digital platform. And I guess some of the challenges with portals timing out and spell checks being rectified.

Great to see people responding to a range of different experiences with the Transition to School Digital Statement. Be great to move to the next question please.

Really keen to hear how people are engaging with the Transition to School Statement, whether they're using the digital statement, the PDF version or a combination of both depending on the school setting or family preference.

It's a good range of responses here, majority of services engaging with a digital statement, some engaging with both.

I'm assuming because we are sending children or transitioning children to a range of different settings and some services using PDF alone. It's really helpful for us to get that feedback. Thank you. Great to move to the next question.

Have you accessed the Transition to School Digital Statement platform this year?

It is quite early in the year to be thinking about Transition to School Statements for the majority of children, but it's great to see services are already engaging with the platform, potentially having a look around and starting to set up educators ready to transition children into school settings in 2026.

Fantastic. So the majority haven't accessed the platform yet, but hopefully we'll have the opportunity to start to engage with the platform post presentation today, once we've talked through navigating the platform itself and the enhancements that we've made. It will be a great time to engage with the digital platform post session. Thanks team.

Starting kindergarten I think will be really exciting. She's really looking forward to being with her new friends and getting to know them. And I know she's also looking forward to learning to read because she's been trying to learn her letters. And I'm also looking forward to learning how to do really hard maths. And I'm also looking forward to learning about different kinds of animals and learning to do more crafts. Oh, she's been talking about what's it going to be like during the school day? So will they get to have lunch break and play in the playground? And who will her teachers be? I just really hope that she will feel nurtured and comfortable there. And I want her to feel really safe and secure. I want her to really be confident that she's making friends that are going to be with her on the journey through school. And I just want her to have a a sense that it's going to be a fun place to go every day.

All right, thanks for that team.

Starting school we know can bring a mix of excitement, nerves and in some circumstances apprehension for families and their children as they continue their learning journey in a new environment. A strong, collaborative and positive start to school is really crucial for a child's immediate and long term learning development and well being.

Key to that strong start is ensuring that the child and their individual needs are at the centre of the transition process.

We know children may become curious about making new friends and establishing new routines in school, and they might start asking questions about what their school day will look like and who their new teacher will be.

Families want to ensure that their child feels safe and secure in their new school. And to support this, the Transition to School Digital Statement provides a conduit to share information about the child, their strengths, their preferences, their individual context that kindergarten teachers, Early Stage 1 coordinators and principals use to prepare their environment and support the child's transition and commencement into school.

And it was great to see a family's perspective just then on transitioning to school. In terms of the Transition to School Digital Statement, it's also known as the TTSDS. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but is less of a mouthful.

It's an online tool used by early childhood education and care services to complete a statement that every child they have transitioning to kindergarten the following year. The tool helps services communicate a child's learning strengths, needs and background, supporting a smooth transition and a strong start to school. It is really designed to create a continuum of learning from early childhood to kindergarten, ensuring that each child is known, understood and supported from day one.

But at the heart of the statement is the child. The connections between early childhood education and care services, families, schools and education support staff really work together to give every child the best possible start to school. So having a look at the Transition to School Digital Statements stats from 2024.

Last year we had 3,566 services registered on the digital platform and of those digital statements, we created 67,898 statements. Of these, 45,669 statements were sent to NSW public schools.

Now you'll see here and we've certainly received feedback in the registration comments around the low uptake or read rate of Transition to School Digital Statements.

For us, this might look like low uptake, but the platform itself only allows us to track digital statements sent to public schools due to the shared interface that we have with our departmental schools.

Independent and Catholic school services might be downloading a completed TTSDS or this might be shared with them via PDF, in person, via mail or via email. We are certainly working to gain greater visibility on the use of statements across these settings and consultation with those sectors.

So Independent schools and Catholic schools have been consistently indicating that the Transition to School Statements have been very useful. The numbers on the screen here show the powerful collaboration and commitment across the sector to make transitions successful for every child.

I'll be handing over to my colleague John Walsh to walk us through the benefits of a well written Transition to School Digital Statement.

Speaker John Walsh

Thanks Michelle. There are many benefits of a well written Transition to School Statement including supporting teachers to identify and support dispositions for learning, supporting continuity of learning and development, supporting kindergarten teachers to consider strategies to foster strengths and meet individual needs in the school setting and build a child's sense of belonging as they are known and valued prior to starting school.

Practices that build a child centred transition include two-way communication between the early youth service and the school. Completion of all sections of the Transition to School statement.

Ongoing visits to the school setting, meeting the teachers and becoming familiar with the school environment. Ongoing visits to the early learning services, observing and engaging in conversations with the child, teachers and educators.

The Transition to School Statement shares critical information that schools can utilise to build a child's sense of belonging, particularly in the About the Child's section of the statement.

In this section you can include important people in a child's life.

Does the child have siblings or other family members who already attend the school? Who lives in the household? Who are the important adults in the child's life? What are their cultural values? Does the child attend activities outside of their home or early years setting, such as sporting events, dance, or other social activities?

Information like this allows kindergarten teachers to begin meaningful conversations with the child.

Does the child speak or understand multiple languages? What are the child's dispositions for learning? How does the child learn best and what motivates them?

Every child is an individual and when we have a good understanding of the child as an individual, it paves the way for a positive transition resulting in the opportunity to thrive in the new learning environment.

The Transition to School Statement is a vehicle to acknowledge the child and family's worlds, their feelings, their voice. Children and families need to feel understood to belong.

The Transition to School Statement also provides an opportunity for the continuity of learning. It provides kindergarten teachers with information on what the child knows and can do, and therefore where to next for the child's learning and development.

Building on the child's prior current experiences helps them to feel secure, confident and connected to the new environment. When teachers have a good understanding of the child, they can enact strategies that foster the child's strengths and effectively meet their needs.

In 2024, the Transitions team conducted extensive consultation with early childhood educators, primary school teachers, principals and learning support staff across NSW. From these conversations, we heard clear and consistent feedback.

The transitions lacked vital information that would support a smoother transition for school.

Educators requested more targeted questions about social and emotional development, individual triggers, and intentional teaching strategies.

The current format was seen as too lengthy and time consuming, taking valuable time away from other priorities.

There were also concerns about outdated photos and duplicated content, particularly in the learning outcome section.

Usability issues were raised, including the absence of key features like spell check and autosave. From primary school principals

We received feedback highlighting the absence of a streamlined, system wide way to access and act on transition data.

Principals and school executives needed a tool that would allow them to quickly identify key information and better prepare for incoming students.

As a result, the department has worked to integrate the Transition to School Digital Statement into the existing Scout Dashboard, a platform school leaders are already familiar with and use regularly for data and reporting. Integration is designed to make the transition data more accessible and useful for schools.

Present each child's transition data in a streamlined, user friendly format. Support tailored strategies to meet individual needs and to bridge the gap between early childhood and primary education by enabling stronger data informed collaboration.

By embedding transition to school data into Scout, we aim to improve the number of statements accessed by schools, ensuring the time and care invested by educators is used meaningfully to support a child's transition.

The new Scout report will be available during Term 4 of 2025 and provide a snapshot of each child's development within their ECE context, practical strategies and insights to support the continuity of learning and finally a more efficient and effective planning process for schools.

Ultimately, our goal is to support families, children and educators with the transition process that is informed, cohesive and child centred.

Integration of the Transition to School Digital Statement and the Scout Dashboard is seen as one way to achieve this.

Enhancements to the Transition to School Digital Statement went live on the 1 May 2025. The following comprehensive consultation process that was conducted in 2024.

Our aim was to directly address the practical changes, challenges raised by early childhood education and care professionals, particularly around ease of use, data duplication, administrative burden and technical issues. The consultation resulted in a number of recommendations.

On the screen. You can now see the enhancements made to the statement in response to ECEC sector feedback.

Number one was spell check. A spell check feature has been added to reduce editing time and improve the overall professionalism of statements. Number 2 reduce data duplication.

A review of the data captured across both the School enrolment form and the Transition to School Digital Statement was conducted. Where possible, overlapping questions have been streamlined or removed to reduce repetition and save educators time. Number 3, a follow up call indicated. Services can now indicate whether a follow up call is recommended for a child. This helps ensure timely, appropriate support as children transition into school. Number 4 Scout Dashboard integration.

As previously mentioned, the Transition to School Digital Statement platform is integrating with the Scout Dashboard. This is a system already used in public schools and directly responds to feedback that statements were not streamlined in a way that allowed for easy access to key information. Number 5 Technical fixes.

An autosave feature begins before timeout and the system now supports double sided printing of the statement. Reducing the paper usage for services.

Number 6 the consent form. Families now have an option to consent to the service providing additional information about the child's personal or health information with NSW Government schools via the follow up call. We are also currently scoping to provide access for Family daycare services.

These enhancements are the direct result of meaningful feedback from the ECEC sector, gathered through face to face engagement that aim to reduce administrative burden, enhance the educator experience and ensure that the important information captured in the statement is both accessible and actionable for those who support a child's transition to school.

We remain committed to ongoing collaboration with the sector to continue refining the platform for the benefit of children, families, educators and schools. Back to you, Michelle.

Speaker: Michelle Mines

Thanks, John. If I can just skip to the next slide, we're going to have a go at another Menti.

We know that the Transition to School Digital Statement is just one key transition practice that educators engage with in terms of transitioning children from one setting to another.

So quite keen to better understand what practices each service has in place to support children's transition. This might extend beyond the Transition to School Digital Statement.

Great to see partnerships being created between schools and two way visits between the school and the service or the school to the service. Visits from previous students is always really effective. It's wonderful for children to hear student experience first hand and really foster those collaborative partnerships between preschool students and kindergarten students. Phone calls to the school, lunch box days.

Preparation activities, bringing a uniform to preschool day or long day care, school readiness program. Social stories is a great experience for students, something they can hold on to reading stories, chats.

Great to see such a diverse range of transition practices being captured here. So good to see so many positive relationships with local schools. Fantastic. Thank you very much to everyone contributing to this Menti. It's been really interesting to see just how many different transition practices we have that sit alongside our Transition to School Digital Statement. Please feel free to continue contributing to the Menti. We might just skip on to the next slide if that's ok.

We know completing the Transition to School Digital Statement is more than a task, it's really powerful work and we'd really like participants to consider and reflect on how we embed quality transition practises into our day to day service delivery.

One way to do this is your self assessment. So services can reflect on how this aligns with Standard 6.2.1- Transitions and continuity of learning for each child being supported by sharing of information and clarifying responsibilities.

Can your service team articulate this practice confidently in an Assessment and Rating visit and does this work contribute to Exceeding Theme 3 practices-shaped by meaningful engagement with families and community?

Consider how you establish the practice of completing the statement.

How do you ensure it's a genuine reflection of each child's journey, identity, strength and needs?

How do we partner with families and schools to make it really meaningful and impactful for each individual child?

And can this work be further strengthened and included in your quality improvement plan?

Take a moment to pause and ask yourself, or you know the participants with you from your service. Are we capturing all of this information in our Self Assessment and Quality Improvement plan. And if not, it's a really great place to start.

The Transition to School Digital Statement is one avenue for communicating children's learning and development.

What else does your service do to support a successful transition? And some of those ideas we've seen reflected in the Menti that we looked at previously.

But some of these ideas can include partnership and collaboration between schools. So regular visits between your service and local schools and vice versa. School teachers and students visiting your service, transition to school forums with local schools. Reading groups, kindy reading groups, library groups and play groups are always great places to start to foster our collaborative partnerships with local schools.

Children and families at the service, we can be starting to include children's voices and reflections in the statement and using the statement for families to share and discuss each child's learning journey.

Programming and planning is also a good place to start. So social stories, which we saw reflected in the Menti just previously with real school images and potentially images of children that we may have relationships with from the service if we have consent to do so.

Kindergarten video and Zoom calls can always be a good fun idea and resource provocations that reflects real school life like props and dress ups.

And we saw lunch box days as well. Books and conversations about starting school and attending school run orientation programmes, you know, where resourcing permits.

We're now going to explore the impact of the Transition to School Digital Statement in a public school context. And I'll hand over to my colleague Ingrid.

Speaker: Ingrid Bellamy

Thank you So yes, I have just stepped out of school space and working with the Department of Education as a Transition Support Officer.

And so I wanted to be able to share not only some of the reflections that we have had through our transition support that we're delivering in schools, but also from my experience from my school network. So it's really important to consider that the Transition to School Statement provides information about children's strengths and interests and preferred ways of learning. And it's then used by the school to help teachers prepare for both transition programs and kindergarten and to support that continuity of learning.

So you can see there on the diagram that we take a number of different parts of data or information that we collect together to support our transition programs in schools. So it's really important that everybody understands that the Transition to School Digital Statement sits within one of the key practices of ongoing, sustained collaborative partnerships that we talk about when we're working with schools.

So it's used in conjunction with other forms of data and monitoring and such as enrolment forms, contact with families such as meetings or interviews including multidisciplinary teams, orientation program, observations by teachers or assistant principals, learning and support or school counsellors where needed.

The obvious the best start information that we collect on literacy and numeracy indicators when children are beginning school. So the statement itself is important, but as it was great to see in the menti answers just before, it's really important that the conversations that are had with early childhood education and care colleagues as that's invaluable because you as the ECEC educators bring a unique perspective and experience of the child that is invaluable to the transition period and carries through into kindergarten.

So we rely on your knowledge that you may have built over a number of years for that to be transferred into the school space. So it's really valuable information that schools take on board, particularly because some of you have been working with children for such an extended period of time.

So the statement gives us a holistic view of the child and this gives us insight into the background and the family information that may not have been shared through the enrolment process.

So schools have a variety of processes that they implement alongside the enrolment form and quite often there can be information that may not be provided in those avenues.

So it's really great to be able to access the information through the Transition to School Digital Statement. And because we know that children's identities change as they move from one setting to another. So it's really important that we have the perspective of parents and information that's shared from the home setting, but we also have information shared from the educational setting where you are the knowledge holders.

So it's really important to be able to have an avenue for us to be able to receive that. And the strengths and interests as well as strategies for learning are helpful to plan transition activities and beyond that, the teaching and learning activities into kindergarten. So it's a really great wealth of knowledge for teachers in school spaces to not only be able to prepare for that transition process, but also then be thinking about teaching learning into the kindergarten year.

So here I have called out some of the areas that the Transition to School Digital Statement supports school planning.

So in my school setting, our school level process was to have discussions with our local first and foremost, have discussions with our early education and care partners through our network that we had created. So it was great to be able to build those relationships and have those conversations.

And so our first port of call was really having that discussion around completion times. So by getting to know and having that networking platform with our local services, we're able to have that discussion around having those statements delivered to the school and be able to access those before our orientation program began, which was in Term 4.

So quite often we had most of our statements by the end of Term 3 or around Term 4, beginning of Term 4 so that we could utilise that information. So some centres preferred to send them, to publish them in a bulk lot and we got them all in one go. Or some centres started with children who may have had, may need some additional planning or required some additional support.

And those statements were coming through first through the portal for us to access at school, to be able to reach out to families or be able to start thinking about accessing further supports in the school space or for, or even before that, for the transition program.

So some centres sent them through gradually and a few at a time. So as a supervisor for early stage one at my school, I would receive the statement. So a number of people in the school would have access to be able to look at those statements. I would receive the statement and I always planned time to read through them. So that was part of my role as the leader in the early stage 1 space.

And if there were any follow up questions that I might have had, I reached out to centres because we already had that network space and had built relationships between early education centres and schools.

But it's great to see, we're really happy that there is that little ticker box now that you can indicate that you'd like a follow up phone call.

So we're really pleased to see that enhancement and it's been really well received with the schools we've worked with as well. So they're looking forward to that. So any follow up questions I might have I could contact services and discuss.

The statements were then discussed during grade meetings with all early stage one staff. So which that also may have included our Aboriginal education officer, our English language support teachers and learning support teachers.

So being able to share that information was really important, not just with my kindergarten staff, but with the broader staff within the school. So what we did is we downloaded the statements and then kept them in student files.

Once I had read through and downloaded them, they were kept on our school level systems in student files that we were creating, collecting information about our new kindergarten friends that were coming into school.

So we kept information in there along with the Transition to School Digital Statement, we had a photo and family interview information. Any additional reports, any orientation observation notes, and these files were then reviewed by each teacher who would be planning an orientation session to see if there were those little gems that you share with us to be able to build on those to support continuity of learning when children were coming for those orientation sessions.

So by having them online, it was also a great way to ensure that no matter what my staffing might look like the following year, we had those Transition to School Digital Statements as part of a student file that teachers could access once the class allocations were made.

So it was really important not just to have access at the end of the previous year, but during the year that children were attending kindergarten. So really important for staff to be able to access that across that end of year time frame.

So the Transition to School Digital Statement provides supporting schools.

As mentioned earlier in the presentation, the learning dispositions is really important so that we have an insight into how children are learning, have learnt, and been learning in their early education and care space. And that's really important for teachers to gain insight into how their new students might be learning for the teaching and learning.

So understanding the learning dispositions as well as the progress towards the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) outcome support analysis of Best Start.

So we bring all of those data points together to be able to analyse and support children coming into our school and informs our teaching and learning programs.

So continuity of learning, again, that information all comes together in a from a number of areas and it's important for schools to plan for experiences that are familiar and provide opportunities for children to demonstrate their funds of knowledge and their mastery of learning.

And it also, as mentioned before, the well being planning is really important.

So particularly for those students who might need additional supports put in place for the transition program or for also into the kindergarten school year, it was really important that we had that information from early education and care services so that we can we have a time frame to be able to work towards.

So making sure that we are in a situation where we can have supports in place ready for day one of kindergarten. We're not just sort of starting that process once the the children come into the kindergarten space. The organisational planning is also really helpful.

So the information in the Transition to School Digital Statement also supports us with particularly our CUP class or cohort creation.

But it can also inform us in terms of information around our staffing needs, what days of the week we might offer transition programs or what time of the day might also be most suited.

And for our orientation planning, what kinds of activities are going to most suit the needs and strengths of the children. So the school can plan activities based on the interest children have shared about coming to school. And it's really important, we always say to schools, that's really important that you have a look at that information because quite often children have been in, they've had contact with known educators for a long time and feel comfortable and safe with them sharing their true feelings about school.

Whereas when they're meeting new people coming to school, they quite often say, oh, yes, we're looking forward to it, but that might not be the true information that they wanted to share.

So it's really important that information that you're sharing with schools helps us to be able to build those relationships and understand the children that are coming into our kindergarten space.

So I'm going to hand back to John. Thank you.

Speaker: John Walsh

Thanks, Ingrid. So on the screen now you can see some resources to support teachers and educators to complete the Transition to School Digital Statement and reflect on transition practices in your service. So these include a comprehensive user guide which steps through how to navigate the platform.

So once again, I have noticed that there's quite a few people that did comment that they were new to the service. So once again, please have a look at that user guide. It will help you navigate the platform.

There is a demonstration video as well, which provides a visual walk through of the Digital Statement. Once again, this may be able to assist with some of those questions. A quick guide for directors with clear steps to set up logins and add educators to the platform.

There's also a detailed guide to completing the statement, which helps educators highlight a child's development, strengths, interests, learning style and teaching strategies that can support their continuity of learning.

There is also a frequently asked questions document, something that we will be updating throughout the year, and it addresses common questions about the digital statement and a range of transition resources, including materials like the ACECQA article, which is Transitions, moving in, moving up and moving on. This offers ideas for strengthening your transition to school practices.

Now I'm going to hand back over to Michelle.

Speaker: Michelle Milnes

Thanks, John, and thanks everyone for your participation in today's session around the Transition to School Digital Statement. I think it was really useful and meaningful to hear from Ingrid's perspective how the statements are being used in a school setting.

I've worked both I think in the school setting and also in the early childhood setting, so I've been able to have the opportunity to see both sides of the completion of the Transition to School Digital Statement.

We've had a range of different questions being asked in the chat and also prior to registration, a few of those questions have asked about the onboarding of Family daycare to the digital platform.

We're currently working with Family daycare to onboard services.

We're in the back end at the moment ensuring that services can have the opportunity to participate in the completion of Transition to School Digital Statements for the 2026 kindergarten cohort. And we'll be working with peak bodies in the Family daycare space to work up our messaging and ensure that we have a really coordinated approach to ensuring Family daycare have access to the Transition to School Digital Statement for children they have transitioning to kindergarten in 2026 this year.

We've also had questions around the engagement of schools with the Transition to School Digital Statement.

It's a new platform for schools and we've heard really clearly from principal's that the integration of the Scout dashboard for school colleagues will really support them in being able to integrate the data that is captured in those Transition to School Digital Statements into their overall data collection system which resides in Scout.

So we've been engaging this year with public school principals, with kindergarten teachers, early Stage 1 coordinators, and more broadly with what we call our directors of educational leadership.

So they can look at an entire system wide approach to the use of the Transition to School Digital Statement for children who will be transitioning to kindergarten in 2026.

We've heard also really strongly around the kinds of information that schools are are looking for in the completion of the statements.

And we'll be creating resources to support educators to complete statements that really capture the strengths, interests, abilities and needs of children who'll be transitioning to kindergarten in 2026.

To ensure that we are really representing what's going to support both children to transition effectively into schools and to ensure schools are ready to receive children into their settings.

We've had questions also around engagements with schools and principals and some services experiencing some difficulty engaging with their local schools. And we've heard the same, I think from the school side.

So we've been working with directors educational leadership as part of our enrolment trends and transitions space at the Department of Education to develop a range of different resources and activities to support and facilitate shared communication and partnership between early childhood education and care settings and school settings to really support that meaningful partnership between early education and care and also school settings.

We have also heard questions about our Catholic schools and Independent schools and they interface with the digital platform. We're currently consulting with our back end functions with our IT department and also discussing with the Independent schools and Catholic schools around a way to integrate, I guess their technological back end functions with our digital statement platform. So while we cannot indicate when that will come online, we're certainly doing some of the work in the background with our colleagues, noting that they use a range of different ITD platforms outside of the Department of Education.

And we need to look at a really effective way to ensure that we can share that information between settings, meaningful, safely and also safely, noting our cybersecurity challenges that are out there at the moment.

We've also had a question around the best time to complete the Transition to School Digital Statement.

We saw in our Menti at the beginning of the session that services are completing Transition to School Digital Statements. It's really varying time frames throughout the year.

We heard from Ingrid how statements are being used by some public schools and in our consultation with public school principals, they've indicated that actually the sharing of statements as orientation commences is really, really impactful and helpful for them to be able to create meaningful orientation and transition activities for children. So this is looking around that Term 3 mark.

So when children are commencing their orientations and families are walking in the school gates, children are already seen, known and valued by our school colleagues and they are able to start to put things in place in terms of resourcing, particularly for children with complex or additional needs.

For children with high support learning needs. We would really be encouraging children and families and services to be engaging with the intended school from Term one or Term 2 the year prior to school to ensure that appropriate resourcing and funding is secured and children are able to transition effectively into their environments at the same time as their typically developing peers.

Just looking to see if there are any other questions, but we'll be continuing to engage with the ECEC sector and also with our school colleagues around the completion of the Transition to School Digital Statement to ensure our 2026 kindergarten cohort have a really effective transition from their early learning service into their future school setting.

Really value the time that you've taken this morning to engage with our Transition to School Digital Statement ECE Connect session. And we really value your feedback. So it'd be very helpful for us if you have the time to scan the QR code or click on the link to complete a short survey and provide us with some feedback on the session itself.

We will continue to be developing resources in the background and uploading these to our Transition to School Digital Statement website to support educators and teachers to familiarise themselves with the platform with the completion of statements and I guess resources to support in creating a really effective Transition to School Digital Statement.

Just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for joining us.

This webinar will be recorded and uploaded alongside the frequently asked questions that were captured today as part of the session.

And again, just want to thank you for taking some time out of your very busy morning to talk all things transitions with the team this morning.

Thank you.

[End of transcript]

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

Thanks everyone for joining us this afternoon for our ECE Connect session around health and development checks in ECEC program.

My name is Alicia and I am the manager of the Health and Development Check team at the Department of Education.

I'm also joined in this session by my colleagues, Kylie and Elise, who will also help me run through the information that we're providing you today.

I'd like to start by acknowledging the various lands that everyone is dialling in from today. I am on the land of the Dharug people and I'd like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land that I'm on. Pay my respects to Elders past, present and to those of the future.

I'd also like to acknowledge all of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that are on our call today and the colleagues that we work with every day from both education and health. And I would like to recognise their contributions to the program that we are building to support our Aboriginal children and their families throughout the early years of life.

Thank you. So my team and I today are going to give you an overview of the health and development check in ECEC program, so early childhood education and care, program.

And we're also going to give you an overview of the supports that we have developed to accompany the rollout of this program. Just before we get started, we have a little bit of housekeeping. So if you have any questions this afternoon, we have a Q&A function that is live. So please feel free to put your questions in there. The rest of our lovely team are here today to assist and they're going to answer the questions as they pop up. So pop your question in and they'll answer it for you.

If it's something that's a little bit more trickier or something that you think of later. No fear. Just email us. Our email address will pop up on the screen several times throughout the session this afternoon. Just note it down, send us an email, we're really responsive and we'll get back to you.

OK, so let's get into it. So we're going to start with a bit of an overview of the health and development check program. So health and development check program, in ECEC program, sorry, is a partnership that is between NSW Health and the Department of Education.

So I'm aware that some of you would have already heard about our program, probably already been involved in our program, but just wanted to give a bit of a run through in case there's any people that haven't been able to hear about our program before.

So what we know, is that many children in NSW are not getting their four year old health and development check.

And as per our recently released AEDC results, % for children are starting school developmentally off track.

We know that the regular health and development checks are important to give families crucial insights into how their children are tracking before they start school.

The Health and Development Check in Early Childhood Education and Care program builds on services that are already existing across NSW where families can access their child's health and development checks by their local doctor, their Child and Family Health clinic, or their local Aboriginal medical service.

But by increasing the number of children who complete their four year old health and development checks through our program, we can give families access to information that they need to support their child's health, growth, and development, and to seek help for their children where needed before they start school.

Let's move on to the next slide please.

Thank you so much.

So the Health and Development ECEC program started rolling out across the state in September and it is now available in all local health districts across NSW.

Since we commenced rollout, we've offered checks to over children.

We've also seen a strong uptake in both of our participation grants in and and these funds are being used to help services support their participation in the program, but also some capability uplift for teachers and educators.

We're going to give you more detailed information about the supports that we have developed that supports the program's roll out. But as you can see on the slide, there are a few things that we've done.

So the team at NSW Health and the Department of Education have been working hard in and we have developed easy to read information fact sheets for both for families and for services and we're hoping to get these translated soon.

We finalised our Culturally Safe Approach toolkit and you can all now access that online and we will provide you with the link to that as Kylie speaks about that support piece. And we are in the final stages of designing our Connect and Communicate toolkit. And we've started rolling out workshops around this toolkit and other things across the state.

Our other learning modules that we're developing are also going to be available soon. So watch this space. There's more coming.

OK, when we move to the next slide. Thank you so much.

So as I said earlier, the Department of Education have been supporting participation into the program by creating and providing health and development participation grants, and we've done that now in. This slide is a visual representation of successful recipients in the Health and Development Participation Grant across the state in we had successful applicants.

Services who were eligible to apply for the grant were: not for profit community preschools, not for profit long day care services, stand alone for profit long day care services, multifunctional Aboriginal children's services, Aboriginal Child and family Health centres and Aboriginal community controlled organisations.

To support the delivery of the program, we at education worked really closely with our local health districts just to ensure that anyone that received category one funding, were able to receive a check for the children at their service in and planning for the grant round has already commenced and we look forward to being able to share that information with the sector soon. OK, let's move to the next slide, please.

Just going to give you a bit of an overview of the grant that we had for in we had two categories.

Category one, which is equal to $ was for participation in the program. So category one funding could be used or can be used for relief time, overtime payments or travel costs for travel, for teachers and educators to undertake admin duties around the checks. So this can include things like assisting families to complete the forms, including the consent forms, meeting with the district staff to talk about your children, the cohort of children that you have at your service and distribution of reports once the checks are completed.

Category one funding can also be used for teachers to be able to support the children during the check when the local health district comes along. Category funding was $ and this was for capability uplift and educational resources. Category funding can be used to enable staff to participate in professional development around health and development, including things like travel, wages and overtime.

Services can also use this category of money to bring allied health workers or other health professionals into their service to support children's health and development by providing educators and teachers with professional development, specialised education programs or support to embed suitable cohort wide strategies.

So the really important thing to remember with Category is the funding is to support the whole cohort of your children and not to remove any children for specific therapy. Now, category can also be used to purchase resources again that support the development of the whole cohort of four-year-olds that you have at your service.

Services who received category one funding, as we said earlier, committed to the program and to participating in the program when the local health district are able to provide them with a service.

Services who received Category funding are welcome to participate in the program and are welcome to tell the local health districts that they are keen to opt in, but it's not a requirement.

OK, we've just moved to the next slide. Thank you so much.

OK, so we encourage all grant recipients to re-read the program guidelines that are on our website. OK, the web page and the QR code on the left will take you to this document. And I believe one of my team member are going to pop that into the chat for you as well right now. And if you have more questions, you can visit our FAQ page.

If you can't find the information that you need on our FAQ page, as I said earlier, please just feel free to send us an email and we will reply to you. And just check that those things have gone through to the QA function. Great, thanks everyone.

So I'm going to hand over to Kylie now and she is going to give you some information about our Culturally safe approach toolkit. Thanks Kylie.

Speaker: Kylie Spires

Thanks Alicia. Hi, my name's Kylie Spires.

I'm a senior Aboriginal policy officer with the Health and Development Checks team. The Culturally Safe Approach for HDC Toolkit was created to help ensure the HDC program is culturally safe and respectful.

It was designed based on feedback from stakeholders who raised three main needs Support for Aboriginal children and families. Ensuring their unique needs are met in an inclusive way. Respecting cultural identity. Making sure families, cultural practises and values are honoured. Adaptability, ensuring the approach works for different communities as each one is unique.

The toolkit offers early childhood services practical ideas to create culturally safe environments and meet the cultural needs of families. It aligns with the Early Years Learning Framework and the National Quality Standards, showing that cultural safety is an important part of quality education.

In short, the Toolkit helps services reflect on and improve their approach to be more inclusive, safe and respectful for Aboriginal children and their families before, during and after the health and development check process.

One of my team members is going to pop a link to the web page in the Q&A there. The toolkit is not just about one off training. The toolkit aims to support the ongoing development of cultural safety within ECEC services. The toolkit is a self paced guide for services and is based around key reflections.

How can we provide a culturally safe environment to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families taking part in the HDC program? How can our service build meaningful relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families before, during and after the check? How can our service authentically engage with families to assist with decision making following the check? How can your service embed a trauma inform lens and build on historical knowledge to address the specific needs of Aboriginal children, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families? Lastly, how can your service locate your nearest Aboriginal medical service to establish a support network for the family?

Next slide please, thank you.

The tool kit includes a web page with training and resources from more well known organisations like Emerging Minds, The Healing Foundation, Esequah and Queensland Department of Education.

These resources offer practical guidance for ECEC services. These resources can be accessed easily and at no cost and provide ongoing learning opportunities for educators to continue developing their cultural competence. The toolkit is designed to be used both individually and in groups, making it suitable for personal reflection or team based learning. It encourages continuous learning and reflection to ensure that ECEC professionals are always improving and adapting their cultural safety practices.

The toolkit is aligned with the EYLF, ensuring that the delivery of the HDC integrates cultural responsiveness while supporting the development needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families. A poster with key messages and a QR code linking directly to the toolkit are here. It provides easy access for helping them engage with the toolkit and its resources whenever needed. It's a great way to keep cultural safety at the forefront of the practise of your service.

The toolkit includes a reflective practise sheet for educators to access their current approaches and identify areas for improvement. By engaging in the reflective process, educators can set goals for improvement, helping them move forward. Sorry, helping them move towards a more culturally responsive practise. Thank you.

I'm now going to hand over to Elise.

Speaker: Elise Ly

Thanks, Kylie, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm here to talk to you today about a resource that's upcoming.

The Health and Development Check team will shortly be releasing an exciting new resource to provide early childhood education and care professionals with information and activities to support children's communication development.

We're excited to share about the Connect and Communicate Toolkit with you today and give you a little bit of information and talk about when it will be live and available.

Next slide, please. Thank you.

So the Health and Development check program, through the checks that we already have been completed, has found that speech and language development is one of the most common areas where children are requiring additional support following their check.

We know that children facing communication difficulties in early childhood are more likely to have ongoing challenges with tasks such as reading, writing and spelling, as well as challenges with behaviour and maintaining relationships.

Early detection and intervention are key to reducing the impact of these difficulties. However, we also know that wait lists can be lengthy and families often face barriers in accessing follow up care.

When we talk about communication, it includes the ways we communicate, what informational needs we communicate and the reasons that we communicate.

It's about how we share and make meaning with others using information, messages and what you can see and hear.

The Early Years Learning Framework tells us that children's attempts to communicate with others and the world around them begins from birth.

This includes many forms of communication such as sounds and speech, gestures and body language, and both expressive and receptive language to express thoughts and understand the thoughts of others.

The next slide, please.

So our Connect and Communicate toolkit has been designed to be used across the year with short bite sized pieces of information and strategies to engage with each week.

Each topic includes a theory section providing you with relevant information and evidence based strategies, followed by a practical section to put those strategies into practice.

These sections all include links to the Early Learning Early Years Learning Framework and relevant early childhood theorists to help guide your planning and documentation.

We've also developed video examples and supporting resources for each topic to show you how the communication strategies can be embedded within your service.

A summary of each topic is provided as a family fact sheet, which you may like to send out to families as part of your newsletter or regular updates.

The toolkit also includes a reflective workbook which can be completed by ECEC professionals and then submitted to the HDC team, but we'll talk more about that when we come to launching it.

So the toolkit has been developed by teachers, for teachers with the expertise of speech pathologists. We spent a long time choosing the topics that have ultimately been included. The toolkit is structured into chapters, each looking at a different element of communication. The toolkit, from start to finish, the way that we've designed it, goes for weeks. However, you can choose to do a little bit of it as you feel you need it or come back to it at different times.

So the six topics that we've included are: topic one is exploring what we mean by communication and what communication looks like for children at four years of age.

This topic is an introduction to the Connect and Communicate toolkit and talks about how we define communication.

In topic two, we explore responsive interactions. We look at what this means and what it looks like in practice and how we can make sure our interactions with children support them becoming effective communicators.

Responsive interactions then go on to underpin the entire toolkit as they are foundational to communication success and are an easily accessible tool to substantially build children's communication skills.

In topic three, we look at creating learning environments to support communication development. Children's communication skills thrive when we enrich naturally occurring activities.

We look at set ups and activities in the indoor and outdoor environment that can enable children to communicate with teachers and each other.

We also explore how we can target communication development during routine times like meals and transitions, and how visuals can further support communication.

Topic explores phonological awareness. So we're looking at letters and speech sounds and how words can be broken down into smaller parts. Phonological awareness is important for literacy development and is a strong indicator of reading and spelling success in later years.

Topic looks at concepts of print. This refers to initial understandings about written text, graphic and books and supports children to develop a basic understanding of text before learning to read.

Children with strong understandings of concepts of print start school with stronger foundations for reading, writing and visual language comprehension. And in topic we do an in depth exploration of shared book reading that makes use of all the strategies we cover in the previous topics.

Shared book reading is a wonderful way to support children to learn new concepts, vocabulary, and grammar, as well as to explore how text communicates ideas.

So next slide, please.

So to support the roll out of the Connect and Communicate toolkit and the culturally safe approach that Kylie was discussing before, we'll be delivering workshops across the state in partnership with our local health districts.

Some of you may even have attended our first workshop in Dubbo in November last year and our second workshop that we just ran yesterday in Port Macquarie. This year we'll be visiting local health districts between June and September. We're aiming to visit every local health district in the state by the end of June. Yesterday's workshop as I mentioned, we had just finished yesterday and it was a great success.

The all day workshops are designed for educational leaders and room leaders and will include an overview of how the Health and Development Check program operates in your local health district.

A session on typical communication development for four year olds, an introduction to the culturally safe approach and an opportunity for discussion and reflection on culturally safe practises within your service.

An introduction to the Connect and Communicate toolkit and an interactive Let's Play session where attendees can explore and practise some of the strategies and experiences in the toolkit with support from speech pathologists, and opportunities for discussion, reflection and networking with other services in your local health district.

Services who are in participating local health districts will receive invitations to register your interest for these workshops this year. So please keep an eye on your inbox.

We're aiming to launch the Connect and Communicate Toolkit in August, and we will notify all services of the release of the toolkit via email. So again, do keep your eyes open for that information as it comes out.

I will hand back over to Alicia. Thank you.

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

Thank you very much Elise. I am going to just provide you with a little bit more information before the end of the session. Thank you so much.

So as we mentioned earlier, on the screen we have our easy to read fact sheets. So we worked with DCS, Department of Customer Services, sorry, to design these fact sheets. They're designed for ECE services to engage in the HDC program and to answer key questions about the program.

The fact sheets include information on what the service should expect before, during and after the health and development check process. It also answers frequently asked questions about the program and its processes.

So we encourage all services to engage with this resource and to prepare for when the Health and Development Check program comes to your service.

Similar fact sheets have been designed for families, providing information on what families can expect from opting in to receive a health and development check at their child's service. This resource is useful for services to share with families, to ease any anxieties and to answer quick questions about the program. And as I said earlier, we're already started to work on what we can do to have these translated so we can provide additional support to families and carers from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. So watch this space.

Again, one of my team members is just going to put a link into the chat of where you can find both of these resources. OK, so what's next? This brings us to the last part of today's webinar.

If you would like more information about health and Development Check program, please feel free to visit our website. This website will also help services figure out which local health district they lie in, if they don't already know. It also has a list on there of contact details for each local health district, so you can contact them if you need any information.

But as we've said several times throughout this afternoon, we're always happy to answer your questions about our program or about our resources. So please feel free to reach out to us at our email address. It's on the screen and it's going to be popped into the chat again for you. So that brings us to the end of the session today.

I will just look and see from my team to see how we're going with the Q&A and whether we wanted to stay online for a little bit longer while we continue to answer questions. Yeah, so we might just stay online for a few minutes, continue to answer our questions. If you've got any more questions, please feel free to put them into the Q&A function. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon and please feel free to email us. We are happy to respond to your questions. Thank you.

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Speaker: Taryn Dilly

Good morning, everyone.

I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands that we gather on today and I pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I am joining you from the land of the Bidjigal people on the Eora Nation and I thank the Aboriginal people of this land for their ongoing care, particularly of the waterways. Near me is the Cooks River in Sydney. I want to extend my respects to Aboriginal people who are joining this webinar today and to the Elders of the land that you are all joining from.

Some housekeeping matters before we start. So the microphone, video and chat functions are going to be disabled during this webinar. The Q&A function is available and you can ask questions anonymously if you wish. And we're really going to do our best to answer those questions during the session. And to note, the session is also going to be recorded.

So hi everyone, I'm Taryn Dilly, Director Regulatory Policy and Practice at the Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority. I'm really pleased that we have Skye Taylor joining us from the OCG today to talk about child safe recruitment and induction.

It's such an important topic. It's the current focus of the Regulatory Authority at the moment through our Child Safety Regulatory Priority Program.

As part of this program, our authorised officers are going to be talking about child safety and child safe recruitment when they visit services. Many of the serious incidents that we investigate may have been prevented if child safe recruitment practices were followed.

Today you're going to hear about how you can provide a strong front door to the sector and to lay strong foundation for child safe practice. As we move through the webinar, I really want you to think about how you can apply these learnings not only to the permanent recruitment that you undertake, but also to how you engage casuals in your service and the induction that they receive.

It's my pleasure now to introduce Skye Taylor from the OCG.

With several years as an experience as a Child Safe Trainer and as a Child Safe Engagement Officer, Skye is passionate about helping services integrate the Child Safe standards into their policies and procedures.

Skye has a deep commitment to education, having previously worked as an English Second Language teacher for adults in multiple countries.

She particularly enjoys working with educators, supporting them in fostering child safe environments that empower and protect young people.

Over to you, Skye.

Speaker: Skye Taylor

Thanks so much Taryn. Thank you. Good morning everybody. And yes, we're here to talk about child safe recruitment and staffing this morning.

I also would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where I am, which are the Wangal people of the Eora Nation. And I'd like to pay my respects to Elders past and present and remember the amazing continuity of connection to country, including land, waterways and skies. I'd also like to pay my respects to survivors of child abuse.

We know that the ramifications of child abuse are long lasting and we know that the work that we're doing today and the work that we're always doing in implementing the Child safe standards is to try and prevent future harm or abuse of children.

Today we will be talking about things that may be triggering for you, so please do take care of yourself. And if you do require support, please go to a trusted colleague or friend to speak with them or you can contact one of these professional help lines that are on the screen now. And I do encourage you to do that if you are triggered by anything.

So our agenda today is child safe recruitment and screening of applicants, the working with children check and staff records and your responsibilities in maintaining those, child safe and effective staff inductions and then ongoing supervision of all staff.

So while we're concentrating on newly recruited staff and the recruitment process, we're also going to talk about that requirement that all staff at your organisations are supervised and effectively encouraged to improve their child safe practices.

So if we look at the importance of strong leadership and a commitment to continuous improvement, these are really essential in embedding child safety across all aspects of your service delivery, including recruitment and staffing.

So Quality Area of the National Quality Standards underscores the importance of that effective leadership in focusing on a continuous culture of improvement.

Child Safe Standard is specifically about people working with children being suitable and supported.

And so you as leaders play a crucial role in setting clear directions for your services growth and ensuring that all practices from governance to daily operations support a child safe environment.

What we're talking about mainly today is the things that are talked about in Module of the OCG professional Learning resource for you, the ECEC sector.

And that is about standard and people working with children being supported.

And the reason that we want people working with children being suitable, sorry and supported is that we want to make sure that we're screening out people who might not be suitable to work in child safe environments.

So when we're thinking about the steps for child safe recruitment, we're really putting the emphasis on that recruitment and screening to keep perpetrators of abuse out of your service and so away from children so that there is no chance for them to harm children.

So in those steps of recruitment, we're first thinking about the role description and making sure that when we're talking about the selection criteria and the role description that we're including that child safe perspective and thinking about what skills and attitudes and values we want our candidates to be putting forward when they are looking when they're considering applying for the role.

Secondly, you need to be thinking about the formalities the salary, the minimum training requirements and these also those minimum training requirements can be about child safe training minimum standards that you would like to see in your candidates.

Next you will be drafting your job ad.

So again we're suggesting child safe values need to be one of the things that you include in your advertisement and you may promote that you could you should.

We would recommend that you promote your organisation as a child safe organisation and this can help for self selection.

So I'm running through these eight steps and then I'll go into them in more detail soon.

So I must stop myself from speaking too much at the beginning.

So the next thing would be to review your applicant.

So you'll be looking at the written job applicants, applications and short listing for an interview.

Then when you're interviewing, you'll be making sure you have some questions on child safety and making sure that the qualifications are valid and we'll be looking at those kind of what questions to ask a bit later in this session.

The next one is to make sure you're doing your reference checks and that's asking the referees about the candidates attitudes to child safety and your background screening checks like the Working with Children Check, which we'll also look at.

Next you have the selection.

So the selection will take place after you've done your reference checks and that would be confirmation in writing about what you're offering and then your induction process would begin.

And so we want to ensure that that induction process emphasises child safety.

And all of this information, as I've said, it's coming from the Working with Children and Child Safe Recruitment Handbook.

That's one of the OCG resources that you can find on our website.

So let's drill down a little bit more into the child safe advertising.

So we want to advertise a really clear role description and with clear messaging about being a child safe organisation so people will self select.

An example could be that if I, as a determined perpetrator, wanted to apply for a job to have access to children to harm them, then if I'm looking at a number of job advertisements and some of them say they're child safe organisations and others don't, then it's much more likely that I would apply for those ones as I would feel more confident that I could get away with bad behaviour in those places.

So we want all, all organisations to be child safe organisations so that people are prevented and dissuaded from applying if they're applying for the wrong reason.

Child safe organisations should all have their statement of child safe commitment and that can be in your child safe advertising.

And those attitudes and values of what you're looking for in a person is really important to be describing in your role description and in your child safe advertising.

Showing that you put the children's safety first as a core value clearly shows that you're that you are also maintaining the conventions on the rights of the child and many early childhood organisations are familiar with these rights of the child.

So you really want at the outset to let your potential staff members know that you do uphold children's rights and that you take the child's safe standards very seriously.

Next, you're going to do a review of the applicants.

So one thing to keep in mind is to be sure to have sufficient time to review those written applications.

Look at those CV's in detail. Don't just skim read them.

Is the experience relevant?

Does the applicant maybe move jobs frequently?

That is it a bit alarming or not normal for the sector.

Is it presented professionally?

Don't be persuaded too much by the beauty of the CV, make sure you're looking past that.

It's you know, do you want the person to have Canva skills or do you want them to have child safe skills and child pedagogy skills?

We know that from a researcher Leclerc, that looking for knowledge of what child safety skills are really important.

Adopting a professional and safe approach with children, parents and other staff, as well as understanding the importance of keeping professional boundaries are really important skills to be looking at.

So when you're planning your interview, you should be including questions and discussions relevant to child safe skills.

And the people who are doing the interview process or reviewing the applications should be experienced staff.

And they should be aware of what sexual misconduct is or what the risk of it is in an organisation so that they can be aware of behaviours that they should be asking about that we don't want to be seeing.

So when we're interviewing and reviewing the skills, it's really important that the that situational and behavioural questions are asked about the candidates values.

So we're wanting to have child safe skills, experience and views as well that align with your child safe values and your services values such as putting children's safety first, valuing children's voices and opinions.

The recruitment process can help you find this out.

One of the example questions that's in our handbook is the example that's on the screen there. Have you ever had to respond to a worker whose behaviours around children concerned you and what did you do?

So by including questions like these in the interview process, we can really be diving down deeply into the attitudes and the values of the person that you're considering employing.

Making sure that we're asking questions about the awareness of professional boundaries with children, the appropriateness of a relationships with children, and asking them about their commitment to take action to protect children.

Next comes the reference and referee checks.

So we do have a list of questions that you can ask referees if you're thinking about wanting to include more child safe questions or if you're unsure what to ask.

So things like maybe asking if the candidate has been disciplined and asking the referee if they have any concerns about the candidate working with children.

These reference checks.

So the questions that you're calling the referee to ask should be conducted before select and induction.

So you want to make sure that they form part of your process of determining whether the person is suitable to work for you.

Reference checks should always be verbal, but you must document them as well and we would recommend speaking to at least referees.

And you can be asking them to describe the applicant's previous attitudes and behaviours.

You can be asking if they've overstepped professional boundaries at all and if they've ever been a subject of complaints.

It's also good to be thinking about the relevance and the recency of the referee.

So we're wanting to have someone who has first hand experience of with the applicant and ideally it should be the candidates current line manager or have directly managed them within the last six months.

No sorry for at least six months within the last two to three years.

So we don't want to be asking a colleague, we want to be asking someone that has managed them and it's good to be conducting multiple reference checks because we can gather a range of views. It's also OK to ask the candidate for another referee.

If you get and you get some conflicting views, it's OK to ask them for one more or two more so that you can then ask some further questions to referees to make sure you get a full picture of the person that you're considering employing.

Other things to keep in mind are your responsibility as a leader of the service to make sure you do some pre employment checks.

So you must as an employer verify your new worker in the Office of the Children's Guardian working with children check portal before they begin working with children.

A police check might be required for some child related roles, for example, for someone who spent more than six months abroad recently.

And then also employers are responsible for verifying that staff do not hold a prohibition notice issued within NSW or any other states or territories.

So providers must check the NQAIT system during the recruitment process for any of those prohibition notices.

And they can also request specified prohibited persons and suspended family daycare educators in that system by selecting the register search button in the portal and researching and then searching the individual's name.

Prospective staff should also complete their ACECQA declaration of prohibition.

So lots of checks and balances there that need to be done before someone is employed or before someone starts working at your service.

And we know that the Working With Children Check is only useful if it's verified for services to be informed of any changes to the status.

And it's important that you know how to do that verification and that you know the full extent of how the Working with Children Check works.

So now I'm going to rest my voice for a moment and let you listen to a video that will explain that for you.

Voiceover [video plays]

The Working with Children Check reviews an applicant's national criminal history and workplace records.

It focuses on behaviours that indicate they may not be suitable to work with children.

There are some things that will bar a person from child related work automatically.

Most applications are cleared within hours.

However, some records may need an in depth review or possibly a risk assessment.

Specialists look at what the offence or offences were and when they occurred during the assessment process.

They might ask the applicant for more information.

They use this information to decide whether a person is fit to work with children.

Applicants who are cleared to work with children receive a Working with Children number.

They are continuously monitored for five years.

This includes any police or relevant workplace reports.

When a person obtains a working with children number, anyone who employs them is required to verify it.

To do this, they need to go online and register as an employer with the Office of the Children's Guardian.

They can then enter the employee or volunteer's surname, the date of birth and WWC number.

This act of verification links the employer with the check holder.

If the employees or volunteers check status changes due to new records, the OCG can immediately contact the employer to let them know.

Sometimes this requires the employer to remove them from child related work.

Since over people in New South Wales who held a check were barred from working with children because of new offences.

For this reason, the check should not be the only thing you do to keep children in your organisation safe from harm and abuse.

Embedding the Child Safe Standards will help you create, maintain and improve a child safe environment.

To learn more about the Working With Children Check, contact the Office of the Children's Guardian.

Speaker: Skye Taylor

So one of the really important things that we can see from the Working With Children Check video that we just watched was that verification process and also the need that the Working with Children checks work when the verification process is complete and in order to keep track of when you verified and when you need to verify.

These documents are available on our website as well. So we have the Working with Children checklist and we have the Working with Children record keeping template and these can be used to meet your responsibilities, your legal responsibilities of having up to date records.

Remember a Working with Children Check clearance will only tell you if someone has been caught doing something or doing the wrong thing. So it is only one part of keeping children safe and only one part of the child safe standards. And ... sorry I have lost my train of thought.

Yes, you can download these from our website if you don't have a system already for keeping track of when you have verified your working with your staff's working with children checks. So you verify it when you first employ them. And then because of the continuous nature of the check, you will be informed if anything changes to their status and if they renew or when they renew their working with children.

Check after they have had a check for five years, you're also required to verify again.

So child safe staff inductions, really important part of the child safe recruitment process.

And it's very important that staff are given explicit instructions in this first part in their inductions and then instructions about how to be aware of mandatory reporting, aware of any signs of harm and abuse, and to understand their mandatory reporting obligations, which includes who they're required to report to in the service and external services or agencies.

So child safe documents should be provided and discussed and time should be spent to make sure that people understand them.

For example, your child safe code of conduct and you're providing a child safe environment policy, your mandatory reporter training and your child protection training should all be part of your staff induction as well. Also, the child safe training that you can access on the OCG website.

You can see the first one at the top of the images on this slide. There are now modules and I'll talk you through those at the end today. Making sure that there is adequate monitoring and supervision.

So new recruits need to be supported with appropriate instruction and feedback provided when needed, including that regular oversight as they become familiar with their new role.

And there should also be a probationary period that allows the employer and the employee to see whether they're a good fit and for you as a leader to be able to check that everything that you have discovered through your recruitment process is actually true and that you have a person working at your service who is child safe.

So with a child safe lens, we can look at staff inductions and we can see that staff need to know how the organisation prioritises child safety.

And they will be able to say that because leaders will demonstrate that they prioritise keeping children safe. They'll demonstrate the importance of reporting and how to do it.

So we know that the importance of reporting even small breaches in the code of conduct or the child safe code of conduct is important because we can sometimes then recognise patterns of behaviour that might be quite small, low level breaches.

But if they're happening on a regular basis, then it's something that we need to address.

Leaders also need will also understand the importance of keeping professional boundaries when working with children and they will be able to demonstrate that to new staff members.

And leaders will understand the importance of a continuous child safety, child safe training as well as a child safe induction.

So making sure that child safe training is regularly discussed or child safety in the organisation and the child safe standards are regularly discussed.

For example, you could demonstrate that by having the child safe standards or child safe practices as an agenda item for every meeting.

For all your team meetings you might have working with the work health and safety as a standing agenda item and then also child safe standards as a standing agenda item.

You could also consider having an annual or a biennial twice a year reinduction session so that all employees are reinforced and reminded about the importance of demonstrating child safe values and also having less formal training opportunities where things can be discussed where child safety is front of mind.

So when we're supporting new employees, we need to pay particular attention to what do new staff need to know about child safe values and policies at your service?

So they may have worked really well in another service, they may come with great references and they may come with great attitudes and values, but how are they going to work in your service and uphold the values of child safety that you have at your service.

So making sure that staff know about their role and the child safe practices of their role.

So describing the support to your new staff on how they will on how to perform their role and in making sure that they're aware of the probationary periods, the induction and the training that they will receive.

Making sure they know how to get help and that they are getting feedback when needed. Acknowledging positive behaviour.

Making sure we're coaching new staff on how to improve and if our systems are easy and the processes are well documented and clear, then new staff members will feel that it will make them it easier for them to ask questions if they have questions about practices.

New staff also must understand all their reporting obligations, and so that should be a very important part of your training and induction process as well.

And one of the really important things to make sure that everyone's on the same page when we're starting with new staff is the importance of your child safe code of conduct.

So your child safe policies, including your child safe code of conduct must be thoroughly reviewed and discussed in induction.

And this is having clear rules and expectations of how adults interact with children and having those clear expectations does work to prevent child abuse and it does encourage reporting.

It creates positive expectations for the behaviour of all adults in your organisation and it can help manage risks to child safety.

So the purpose of a child safe code of conduct is to establish those rules and expectations and making sure that everyone's aware of them so they can hold each other accountable.

So, for example, you would have some extra information which would include the consequences for breaching a child safe code of conduct.

The child safe code of conduct is really a set of rules, behaviours that are acceptable and that are unacceptable.

And if we break some of those rules, then there needs to be a consequence for those breaches, even small ones. Something else that might be discussed in an induction would be babysitting. We know in some organisations there's a flat ban on babysitting. The OCG doesn't have rules and regulations about that.

And it really is up to each organisation, each service, to have their rules about babysitting. In some services, babysitting is something that is allowed but requires managers and families and educators to all be open about what is happening, that they are babysitting and that the families are aware that those people are babysitting as private people. Professional boundaries are something that can be covered in detail in an induction.

And then what those actual acceptable and unacceptable behaviours are. And they will be different for whether you're working in the preschool room, whether you're working in after school care or whether you're working in a baby's or toddler's room.

So those things need to be clear for your service and for the role of your new employee.

So ongoing effective supervision looks like this, that the legislated child safe responsibilities of leaders are front of mind.

That you're thinking about what your responsibilities are, that you're mentoring and that you have child safe professional development opportunities for all of your staff and that you support your staff to continue to improve their child safe practices.

So we know in some instances when I have been visiting services there can be some staff that have worked in the industry for a long time for example, that might have different ideas from newer staff.

It's very important that everyone works together on the same pathway to try and be as child safe as possible and to make sure that we are upholding those child safe values and practices that are part of our services.

So a leader also needs to be able to support staff if they, if there are any child safe allegations or concerns.

And that's a very important part of your role as a leader, being able to support staff in that circumstance.

Ongoing effective supervision looks like this looks like leaders creating, maintaining and continuously improving child safe policies and practices.

And this is part of standard nine of the child safe standards.

They should be championing the importance of reporting, building a a culture of reporting so that if there is someone who manages to get through the child safe recruitment process, that as soon as they're working on the floor and something is noticed that is not acceptable, that the reporting happens quickly so that they can be addressed.

Leaders should also be creating a bully free and trusting work environment where people can speak up about concerns so that culture where people feel safe to report on child safe concerns and speak up about those.

Leaders also should appropriately respond to any aggressive or abusive behaviour and they should identify and appropriately respond to any misconduct towards children as well.

So again, I'm going to play a video. This is about grooming.

Some of you may have seen it before. It's a very important topic for us to be aware of.

Grooming is recognised as a complex and commonly incremental process that can involve main stages and they are gaining access to a victim, initiating and maintaining abuse and then concealing that abuse.

Potential victims of child sexual abuse are not only the are not the only targets for grooming.

Grooming can target everyone in that child's life because the groomer, the perpetrator wants to gain access to the child.

So it can be parents, caregivers, colleagues and staff in an institutional setting. Grooming doesn't always lead to sexual abuse and child sexual abuse can happen without grooming.

So we know that grooming can be a quick or a slow process.

There are, it's very variable, but often this is why we have a code of conduct which restricts behaviours like gift giving or babysitting or transporting children, because these behaviours can be used as grooming.

So now I'm going to play the grooming video.

Voiceover [video plays]

Grooming is the manipulation of children in physical spaces like a sports ground, religious setting, classroom or performance space, and in online environments such as social media, email, and text.

Grooming is a process of manipulation that prepares a child to be abused and tests their likely response.

Perpetrators work to convince the child not to say anything, while children are most likely to be groomed.

Abusers will also target protective adults, families and even entire organisations in order to get unsupervised access to a child or young person.

When grooming a child, abusers seek to build a sense of trust, despite intending to later betray this trust.

They will test the child's ability to keep secrets and may use threats of violence against them or people they love.

They may contact the child on their personal device where their conversations are less likely to be monitored.

Engaging the child in private messaging can lead to the adults sharing inappropriate conversations, photos or videos.

They may give the child gifts or preferential treatment to establish what appears to the child to be a special relationship.

They may encourage the child to meet with them outside the organisation or in areas where they can't be seen.

Grooming can also include testing the child's tolerance for inappropriate touching, with the intention of normalising this kind of contact.

They may try to isolate the child from their peers or the caring adults in the child's life so they feel dependent on the abuser.

They may encourage breaking rules or blame the child for their inappropriate actions so the child becomes reluctant to tell anyone what they have been doing.

This can include supplying cigarettes, alcohol or pornographic material in an attempt to reduce the child's inhibitions to the abuse.

The intention is always the same, to remove the child from the supervision of caring or protective adults and make them less likely to report abuse.

This testing and manipulating can extend to their adult colleagues.

Perpetrators want to know how much they can get away with.

They may appear to be a nice or caring person who goes that extra mile.

Often this is so there's less chance their illegal activities will be uncovered.

They may try and convince a parent or carer that they are vital to the child's success.

They may use this as motivation to encourage the parent to provide unsupervised access or to interact with the child in ways that would not normally be considered appropriate.

They may encourage the parent to allow the child to stay overnight with them or receive extra training, rehearsals, or remedial treatment without adult supervision.

Perpetrators may work to build the trust of other adults so that they can convince the child that even if they're told, no one would believe them.

Reducing opportunities for grooming starts with your organisation's culture.

How do you ensure that everyone, including employees, volunteers, parents, children and young people, know what appropriate behaviour looks like?

What rules are in place?

Does everyone in your organisation know who to report it to if they witness inappropriate behaviour?

Having a clear code of conduct, a child safe policy and trained people who know how to respond to and report incidents, even if they appear insignificant, will help you create a culture where abuse is minimised and children are valued.

Speaker: Skye Taylor

So we know, so this obviously was in many cases talking about older children. But if we're thinking about children in a long daycare environment or family daycare, for example, we can think about other ways that a child might be groomed.

So not with alcohol and cigarettes, but maybe someone who was looking to perpetrate might give them lollies when they know they're not allowed to have lollies.

And so that puts an extra layer of concern for the child to speak up because they would also talk about how they were eating lollies and they weren't allowed to be eating lollies.

So this could be a very useful video to show in your team meeting, for example, and then to think about different ways that grooming could take place in your service that might be different from the examples given here.

So now I'd like to look at a case study and this case study comes from the Royal Commission.

It's case study two. You can find it online if you're interested to read more about it.

The summary here that I've made is that Scott, a -year-old boy, was at after school care and Scott came home from after school care and said to his mum, We went on the bus to the playground.

I sat on the casual helpers lap and we played tickling.

The casual helper was a man in his s and Scott's mum reported her concern to an after school educator the next morning at the after school care or before school care.

So two years later, after an extensive police investigation, the worker, the man was convicted of offences involving involving children.

Horrendous offences that I won't dwell on.

What I want to do is for you to think about this case and how better recruitment practices could have prevented this educator from harming children.

So we have here some suggestions and I'll just would like you to read through what measures could have prevented this educator from harming as many children as he did.

So these five things may or may not have been done and could they have prevented the harm.

So we're thinking about asking referees about child safety concerns, We're thinking about induction training that explains the child safe code of conduct expectations, the verification of the working with children check training of all staff to identify and report any misconduct, and then also age appropriate ways for children to raise safety concerns.

So of these measures, these five different measures, which ones do you think could have prevented this educator from harming as many children as he did?

So we're a large group and I'm just going to go through to the answers.

But think about your answer and and think about whether you have thought through all the five different ways.

So what we found was that four out of five of these could have prevented the educator from harming as many children as he did.

And so in this case study that we can read about, the referees weren't contacted.

This young man came and applied for the job. He was well known in the community. He was the son of a well-known person in the community.

He was very friendly and appeared very kind and his referees that he gave were in America because he had recently returned from working in America.

The organisation, although they had rules that they should ask for referees, they didn't check them, they didn't call America, they didn't find out that he'd actually been dismissed due to child safety concerns.

So if that measure had been done, if they had called America, they may not have employed him and they could have prevented the harm.

The next one, induction training and explaining that the child safe code of conduct and the expectations of it.

So they did have a child safe code of conduct this organisation, but the training was very minimal.

The child safe code of conduct actually said that staff couldn't babysit in this organisation, but nobody paid attention to the child safe code of conduct.

Everyone broke the rule.

Even this man's manager was babysitting for families and all the harm and abuse that this man perpetrated was done in the families homes when he was babysitting the children.

So had the code of conduct actually being explained fully and that there were expectations that people should follow the code of conduct, then maybe there wouldn't have been any babysitting and then there may have been no harm. Verifying the working with children check.

So his working with children check was verified. This did not prevent the harm. He had not been caught doing anything wrong in Australia. Training of all staff to identify and report misconduct. This was also done very poorly.

After he was arrested, many staff members did speak up and did recognise that there had been misconduct that they had seen but they had not reported.

And then finally having an age appropriate way for children to raise safety concerns wasn't something that this after school care had implemented at all.

And in fact, even Scott wasn't complaining about the behaviour, he was just talking about it and his mother recognised that there were safety concerns.

So this is a good example to show you how important the child safe recruitment practices are and how much they can prevent educators from harming children.

So my call to action at the end is what can you do and what can you keep doing?

So while some of your processes may be in place, it's your responsibility to ensure that all staff know and understand them.

Take some time to consider and review your recruitment processes.

Take some time to inform all staff of the importance of refreshing that child safe knowledge and making sure that you keep in mind child safe practices not just during recruitment, but in your ongoing training and professional development of your staff.

And ask staff to help you and work together to review and improve.

For example, your child safe code of conduct or your reporting procedures. And you can use the OCG resources to help you with that.

The eLearning, which I'll go to the next slide and show you, the eLearning has been developed specifically for the ECEC sector and we collaborated, the OCG collaborated with the ECEC RA to design this.

Module is all about hiring and managing child safe staff and it's in three different pathways.

So we have it for centre based, for family day care and for after school care or outside school hours care.

There are actually modules in total, but module is all about these child safe recruitment practices.

We also then have the handbook, the Child safe recruitment and Working with Children check handbook.

You can also find child safe sample templates online and the Working with Children check record keeping templates if you would like to use those.

And finally, our child safe self-assessment tool is something that can be very useful to use to identify where any gaps might be in your child safe implementation of child safe standards.

And this is something that maybe you've done before the child safe self-assessment, but we welcome you to do it again after a year or months so that you can measure how you're going against those markers for your implementation.

So thank you for the time that you've given me. Please reach out if you have any questions.

The email there childsafe@ocg.nsw.gov.au or if you have any particular questions about resources, you can send them to resources@ocg.nsw.gov.au. I will now welcome Taryn back to speak to you.

Speaker: Taryn Dilly

Thanks so much Skye for joining us today and thank you to everyone as well for attending.

We invite you to scan the QR code that's now on the screen and that will allow you to provide some feedback on today's session.

So the regulatory authority provides quite a lot of resources around child safety and you can visit our website to access those.

So look for the child safety web page to explore the full range of resources available.

And if you have any questions, the contact details are down there for both us as the regulatory authority and the Office of the Children's Guardian.

Thanks very much.

[End of transcript]

Speaker: Vanessa Beck

Good morning everyone. I can see people coming in. Thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to this ECE Connect session. It's a real pleasure to be speaking with you today.

My name is Vanessa Beck and I'm a hub Coordinator of our Continuous Improvement team.

The session today is going to address how the law and regulations underpin quality practice and this will help you gain a deeper understanding of what quality looks like by providing an overview of how the law and regulations, service practice and compliance work together to ensure quality education and care.

You will hear from us today how compliance forms the foundation of quality practice and how practices such as active supervision, for example, will help ensure quality and safety in your service.

And before we get started, I would like to acknowledge that we are all meeting from a range of lands today and I'm hosting this webinar this morning from the lands of the Dharug people.

I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you're working, living and joining from today, and any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who may be joining this webinar. I pay my respects to Elders past and present and emerging, and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of New South Wales.

So as we commence today, just going through a few of those basic housekeeping things that we know when navigating the session. Just letting you know that the microphone video and chat functions have been disabled during the session, but the Q&A function will be available if you have any questions. So you'll see that on the top left hand side of your screen.

We will respond to these questions as we can and thank you to the members of the continuous improvement team who are in there today to provide that support and answer any questions that you might have. So we are hoping to have a little bit of time at the end for some of the key questions from the session to respond if we can. But please make use of that Q&A. If you've got any questions as we go along, pop them in and the people in there will be able to answer those for you.

So automatic closed captions have been enabled for accessibility and we're also recording today's session and this will be made available on our website.

We're aware at the moment that there are some conversations happening in the media around us and we just want you to know that this session we're addressing the topic at hand and won't be making any comments on other topics as we go.

So what are we going to talk about today? Let's have a little bit of a look at our overview.

We're going to start by looking at where do the law and regulations sit within the National Quality Framework?

What does quality practice look like and how does it impact outcomes for children, engaging in continuous improvement,

And we'll end with some supports that are available for you.

So I'm really happy to be able to introduce you to Linda Ball, who is a hub coordinator as well, of our continuous improvement team.

And she's going to talk to you a little more regarding the national law and regulations and where they sit within the national quality framework.

Thank you, Linda.

Speaker: Linda Ball

Thanks, Vanessa.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today.

I'm coming to you from the beautiful lands of the Gumbaynggirr Nation.

Today we'll explore our vital role that the national law and regulations play in ensuring quality practices in early childhood education and care services.

And we'll look at the role the national law and regulations play in the National Quality Framework and how they support our efforts to provide best practice and the best possible education and care for children.

The National Quality Framework (NQF) was introduced in to support national consistency in the provision of quality education and care services in Australia.

It is important to note that while the NSW Regulatory Authority administers the legislative functions of the NQF and has responsibilities as a regulator, the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), are the national authority that sets the standards for what constitutes quality, oversees the implementation of the NQF and supports regulatory authorities in their duties.

The objectives of the National Quality Framework are to ensure the health, safety and well being of children attending education and care services. To improve the educational and developmental outcomes for children attending education and care services. Propose continuous improvement in the provision of quality education and care, to establish a system of national integration and shared responsibility between participating jurisdictions and the Commonwealth in administration of the National Quality Framework (NQF).

To improve public knowledge and access to information about the quality of education and care services, and to reduce the regulatory and administrative burden for education and care services by enabling information to be shared between participating jurisdictions and the Commonwealth.

The NQF comprises of legislative requirements set out in the Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations, the National Quality Standard, an assessment and rating process to drive quality which as you know has quality areas, standards and elements and the Approved Learning Frameworks which are the guiding curriculum documents that support educators and services in delivering child centred and play based educational program through contemporary pedagogies and approaches.

Since the NQF's implementation, we've observed national improvements to the delivery of education and care in Australia and improved professional recognition, increased community visibility and enhanced family engagement in understanding the quality of their chosen service.

The National Quality Framework operates under an applied law system comprising of the Education and Care Services National Law and the Education and Care Services National Regulation.

These documents outline the legal obligations of approved providers, nominated supervisors and educators and explain the powers and functions of the regulatory authorities and ACECQA.

The national law sets the minimum requirements of the children's education and care across Australia, while the national regulations provide detailed descriptions of how those provisions of the law are applied.

Together, the legislative frameworks forms the foundation of the NQF and provides the structure that helps to ensure that services provide safe, nurturing and educational environments for children.

The NQF's emphasis on quality ensures that children have access to early childhood experiences that foster their development, preparing them for future education and social interactions.

It also instils confidence in families regarding the safety and quality of the care provided.

To ensure quality practices in early childhood education, it is crucial to firstly comply with the national law and regulations and this means that when assessing your service's practices, the first step is to check how they align with the minimum requirements.

There are various free resources and tools available on the ACECQA website and the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authorities website.

These resources and tools are designed to support services in assessing their practices against legislative requirements and to provide information and guidance on how services can meet the requirements of the law and regulations.

They include the Guide to the National Quality Framework, which serves as a resource for guidance on implementing and understanding the national law, regulations and the National Quality Standard.

There's also regulatory guidance notes, which are designed to support services understand their obligations under the national law and regulations.

Some key guidance notes to highlight include those related to the safe transportation of children and asset management.

ACECQA also has some information sheets that are a great resource to connect with.

In recent years the NSW Department of Education, in consultation with the sector, developed the Self Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal and the Self Assessment Working Document.

Both of these formats include checklists for each quality area designed to help services to self assess their practice against the legislative requirements.

As you go through the prompts, it's a really good idea to check back to the relevant law or regulation, just to make sure that you've covered all the necessary components.

You can also access a range of other resources on the ACECQA website, including the ACECQA Self Assessment tool and other publications.

The team are going to add a few links to these resources in the chat for you to refer to.

Section of the Guide to the National Quality Framework.

The Operational Requirements outlines the requirements for operating an education and care service, including responsibilities of the approved provider, nominated supervisors and family day care educators.

This user friendly guide provides guidance on how services can meet the requirements of the law and regulations which are presented separately under each quality area.

It's also important to note that ACECQA regularly update the Guide to the National Quality Framework on their website, so if you've got a printed copy or have saved a PDF version for your team to refer to, it is important to check to see that you're referring to the most current information.

So let's take a closer look at how you can assess your practices to ensure that the service is meeting legislative requirements and prioritises Children's Health, safety and well being, particularly concerning adequate supervision.

So how do we do this? Let's take a look at an example.

Section of the National Law outlines the requirements in relation to the provision of adequate supervision.

We know that supervision is critical to the safety of children and helps to protect children from harm and hazards that may arise during play and daily routines. It is recognised that educated to child ratios alone do not ensure adequate supervision. ACECQA defines adequate supervision as meaning 'an educator can respond immediately, particularly when a child is distressed or in a hazardous situation and knowing where children are at all times and monitoring their activities actively and carefully'.

When reviewing the adequacy of supervision, there are many factors which need to be considered, some of which include the age number and individual needs of children, the number and positioning of educators, if a service operates on a single educator model, each child's current activity and the associated risk level, areas where children are engaging in activities, particularly the visibility of these areas, the positioning of furniture and equipment in the environment to ensure it doesn't create hidden spots or tight areas that restrict supervision or movement,

Risks in the environment and experiences provided to children, including during sleep and rest. Educators knowledge of each child and group of children, including those identified as high risk absconders. The experience, knowledge and skill of each educator, educator movements between areas without effectively communicating their movements to other educators.

Specific high risk situations such as during sleep or rest, transportation and excursions, special events such as Grandparents Day or occasions where there are a high number of visitors to the service and educators who are preoccupied with other tasks such as cleaning, writing, observations or perhaps using an iPad.

There's some examples of how adequate supervision can be achieved include careful planning of rosters to ensure that educators are always available to respond to children while also scheduling time for them to complete tasks without impacting on supervision or ratios.

Good policies and procedures that address supervision. This may include staffing policy to support multiple educated presence where possible, as well as flexible supervision arrangements that allow for monitoring of individual children in small groups, such as sleeping children or simultaneous indoor and outdoor experiences.

Regular headcounts to ensure each child is present and accounted for. Close observation of children to provide support and enhance children's play experiences. Educators who closely observe children and attend to their needs and interests can recognise when children wish to play independently.

Active engagement with children to support their learning, including effective supervision, requires a combination of observation and engagement.

Educators really need to assess and respond to children's supervision needs while also engaging with them to promote quality learning opportunities.

Scanning the environment regularly to observe all children ensures that they are all actively supervised. Educators should identify appropriate positions and maximum visibility of children and avoid standing with their backs to them or engaging in tasks that distract from supervision, such as administrative work, cleaning, or using an iPad.

Other strategies might include listening carefully to children and noting any changes of tone or volume in their voices,

Recognising these changes can assist in supervising children who may not be in direct view. Evaluating situations to determine the potential risks and benefits for Children's Health, safety and well being.

By observing children's play and anticipating what they might do next, educators can assist when difficulties arise and intervene when there's potential danger. And finally, implementing management strategies from risk assessments that reduce any risks or hazards impacting on supervision.

It is important to note that reviewing practice really isn't a tick and flip process. You should be really confident that all components of the legislation are in place before determining that your service is compliant.

If you discover any area where you're not compliant with the law or regulations, it is really important to act quickly to address those gaps in practice.

I'd now like to hand over to Jackie, our pedagogy and practice manager, who will discuss what quality looks like in an early childhood and education and care service.

Thanks, Jackie.

Speaker: Jackie Bradshaw

Thanks, Linda.

Good morning everyone. I'm joining from the gorgeous Darkinjung country. So as Linda mentioned, we're now going to jump in and take a look at what quality looks like in everyday practice.

So on the slide here you can see the quality puzzle. And as we know, and we've just heard from Linda, the National Quality Framework is Australia's system for regulating and supporting the provision of quality education and care services.

We're now going to take a closer look at how the NQF is underpinned by system, structural and process quality and what this looks like in practice in your service. So to achieve quality uplift, it's really imperative that we explore the structural system and processes that enable the delivery of quality early childhood education and care.

And you might like to think of this as a puzzle as it's shown here on the screen.

So system quality, which you can see in the light blue on the right hand corner, is the regulatory standards and the governance of the sector. It encompasses the regulatory settings, policy environment and governance structures that guide and support services. It's about how well the system sets expectations, enables consistency and supports continuous improvement.

Structural quality, which you can see on the bottom in the red, is how early learning services are organised, the child to educator ratios, the size of groups, staffing qualifications and the physical environment is just some of them. These are the foundational conditions that shape children's experiences and we've heard Linda talk a little bit about some of these just now as well.

Process quality, which you can see up in the left hand corner, includes effective teaching, pedagogy and practice, the relationships and interactions between staff, children and families, and our pedagogical practices. This is children's actual experience everyday in your education and care service. It cannot always easily be measured, but it is one of the most critical aspects of quality. It's where the real impact happens for children.

It depends heavily on the other two pieces of the puzzle being in place. And as we know, forming those relationships and experiencing quality interactions between educators, children and families is essential for effective teaching and learning.

So when all three of these puzzle pieces work together, we create the conditions for every child to thrive in their learning.

On the next few slides, we're going to see images of different services and we'll unpack what this actually means for you in your everyday practice. What we'll cover next is going to apply to every service.

So long day care, family day care, preschool, out of hours care. And it also applies for every child of varying ages.

So you'll be able to see what this means for you in your context. So on the next slide, effective teaching and pedagogy, you'll remember that that is one of the process quality pieces that we saw up in the left hand corner.

So when we're thinking about the quality puzzle that we've just unpacked, we can see that that's sits up in that process quality. The learning framework defines pedagogy as the art, craft and science of educating.

Pedagogy is the foundation for educators professional practice, especially those aspects that involve building and nurturing relationships, our curriculum, decision making and teaching and learning.

What you can see in these images are some examples of that process quality. So effective teaching and pedagogy.

You can see on the left hand side, the educator is sitting at the children's level and she's engaging in conversations and the experience.

On the right hand side, if we're looking at the area with the books, we can see how the educators have been really intentional in their decision making,

So that's the process quality, in their setup of the physical environment, which is the structural quality.

But I can also imagine that we could see here in this image here on the right, that this would allow for those relationships between children to be fostered. And again, that's the process quality.

Play based learning - So again, that was another piece of the process quality area in the puzzle. Play is fundamental to healthy development and well being of all individuals and communities. It's often defined by a range of characteristics including freely chosen, self directed, pleasurable, meaningful, symbolic and intrinsically motivating.

The learning frameworks tell us that play based learning approaches allow for different types of play and that it recognises the intentional roles that both children and educators may take.

Play provides a context, so a place or a space where children play, and a process, so a way of learning and teaching where children can ask questions, solve problems and engage in critical thinking. Play based learning allows opportunities for children to learn, discover, create, improvise and imagine.

Educators who are intentional in all aspects of their curriculum act deliberately, thoughtfully and purposefully to support children's learning through play.

They recognise that learning occurs in social contexts and that joint attention, interactions, conversations and shared thinking are vitally important for children's learning.

So as I mentioned, if we think about that puzzle piece again, we can see that the that play based learning sits up in the process quality space.

And we can again see this in the images that are on the screen, which I'm sure look like many of your services.

We can see in the image, that the experiences that the children and the educators are involved in are underpinned by play based pedagogy.

As we look to the left where we can see the children tending to the garden, we can again see that the educators have been intentional in their setup of the physical environment, which is the structural quality. The physical environment that children engage in through their play and how teachers are intentional in their setup of this would allow relationships between children and educators to be fostered.

So again, that's the process quality.

So we can now look at relationships and interactions between staff and children.

The relationships and interactions between staff and families and staff and children underpin quality and are two of the process quality sections of the puzzle.

Educator's practices and relationships that they form with children and their families have a significant effect on children's participation in education and care, their engagement in learning and also their success as learners.

Relational pedagogy is defined within the approved learning frameworks as underpinning the ways that educators build those trusting, respectful relationships between children, families, educators, other professionals and the wider community.

The frameworks also encourage educators to embed relational pedagogy in curriculum decision making with children and families.

The current research highlights the importance of interpersonal relationships and connections and that it should be the practice, policy and theory cornerstone of early childhood education and care.

When children feel secure and attached to their educators, they're empowered to explore their environment, follow their curiosity and take that active role in their learning.

We can again see this in the images on the screen.

On the left, we can see the educator reading with very young children, building the connection and fostering those relationships.

The educator on the right is engaging in the learning and building her connections with the child using the equipment and the resources available in the physical environment that will foster children's imagination and learning.

Relationships and interactions between staff and families - Again, the learning frameworks tell us that partnerships are based on the foundations of respecting each other's perspectives, expectations and values and building on the strengths of each other's knowledge and skills, and that the learning outcomes are most likely to be achieved when educators work in partnership with children and their families.

We know educators recognise that families are children's first and most influential teachers.

Educators create welcoming and culturally safe environments where all children and families are respected and their diverse backgrounds, culture, language, religion, family structures and identities are valued.

On the screen you can see some of the examples of educator interactions with families.

On the left, I imagine that this would be one of those routine times of arrival or departure, and on the right we can see an educator engaging in a story with a child and their family member.

You can see from these images that these are the interactions that you would have on a daily basis in your service.

But creating meaningful opportunities to build trusting relationships, respectful relationships with families, may require thinking more intentionally about your environment and routine.

For example, we're needing to think about our staffing arrangements at arrival and departure times, our positioning of equipment and resources to allow families to engage with their child and educators.

But doing this all while ensuring adequate supervision. So we can see this is how structural quality supports and underpins the process quality and process quality are those everyday experiences of children and families in your service. So relationships between children.

We know educators create those opportunities for children to build relationships with each other through play, while providing a variety of provocations to foster their imagination and learning.

Thinking about that puzzle again, we could consider the structural quality components of group sizes, equipment and resources and the physical environment and how all of these underpin the process quality of relationships between children.

So how the design and structure of the physical environment, the resources available, the placement of these can either support or hinder children to foster their relationships with peers.

In the images, we can see that the intentional decisions of educators to have the Lego available in the four tubs on the left allow for multiple children to engage with the blocks and Lego together.

You can see in the background there's a red mat and that also invites groups of children to come together to play and connect with their peers. So quality in the early childhood education and care sector or settings in your services.

Hopefully from these images that we've just looked at and unpacked, hopefully from these you can see how the system structural and process quality are the foundations of the National Quality Framework and that all types of quality and those pieces working together create quality experiences for children and families in your service.

While each piece of this puzzle plays a vital role, the process quality, which we know is the lived experiences of children and families in your service, is at the heart of children's learning and their journey.

Relationships and interactions aren't just a part of quality, they really are the cornerstone that empowers children to learn, thrive and succeed. So it's really about building those genuine connections.

The impact of relational pedagogy means children feel secure and safe in their environment.

And when children feel secure and connected to their educators, they're empowered to dive into their learning, explore their surroundings, spark their curiosity and become active participants in their own learning journey.

We encourage you to consider how structural, system and process quality can support continuous improvement in your practice.

Focusing on these interconnected elements, you can consistently enhance the experiences and outcomes for children in your service.

We know that high quality education and care is strongly linked to improved cognitive, social, emotional and language development.

Consistent access to quality programs supports transition to school, long term academic achievement and better life outcomes.

And now I'm going to hand to Vanessa to talk a little bit more about this.

Speaker: Vanessa Beck

Thank you so much Jackie. That was really great and I really enjoyed seeing such beautiful illustrations of quality practice happening with those children. So we have established that the law and regulations are the minimum required standard.

They are the very minimum requirement of your practice and the illustration that we often hear around the law and regulations being the foundation is a good one.

We do hear it a lot, but when you think about a house, just as you need that strong foundation in place for your house to stay safe and stand sturdy, without strong compliance in place as your foundation, it is really difficult to build and have sturdy quality practices in place. You literally cannot have one without the other.

We know the life changing impact that participation in early childhood education and care can have on our children and their families.

Research tells us high quality early childhood education and care experiences support children's education, well being and development, providing them with the best start in life and improved outcomes beyond the early years.

We, as the NSW Regulatory Authority for early childhood education and care, are committed to supporting services to maintain compliance and uplift the quality to provide safe, enriching environments and improve those outcomes for children.

So as Linda clearly outlined, the National Quality Standard sits within the National Quality Framework and sets a high national benchmark for early childhood education and care, including our outside school hours and vacation care services in New South Wales.

The National Quality Standard is used to assess and rate services against, and the graphic on your screen will be familiar to all of you, I'm sure.

So one of the things that we'll just draw your attention to is you'll notice looking at that graphic on your screen, that under each quality area, the relevant standards are listed with their related elements underneath.

But what is helpful when looking at the quality area in the National Quality Standards, like the one on your screen, is to consider the concept and descriptor columns.

Firstly, the concept column on the left very clearly summarises the topic that you're looking at. In this example of Quality Area you will notice that the Quality area is arranged under concept banners for the standards being Program, Practice and Assessment and Rating.

And next to this, on the right hand side, the descriptor column gives you a statement expanding the concept to explain the standard or the element that you're considering, which is a really great place to start when you're looking at talking about quality and that regulatory basis with your stakeholders and staff. It's not prescriptive deliberately, not prescriptive.

Intentionally, this allows for flexibility for each of your services and to reflect what's unique about you and your service and community.

We know that element .of the National Quality Standard refers to self assessment and continuous improvement. Through self assessment, services can gain valuable insights into your current practices and the quality of the education and care that is being provided to children and families who are attending the service.

This process involves evaluating service practices against the National Quality Standards, acknowledging those strengths and things that you're proud of and pinpointing areas that require improvement.

Adopting a coordinated approach to self assessment allows your team to view the service from a fresh perspective, can lead to a deeper understanding of service programs and practices and this in turn will boost the confidence of your staff in articulating and implementing quality practices within their service.

We know that continuing improvement is an ongoing process and it builds over time. It is not a stand alone event that a service can put in place, for example to prepare for assessment and rating.

It's so often the smallest changes along the way that accumulate and build on top of each other to build that improvement in everyday practice. And it is everyday.

This process also needs to be collaborative to allow for all of your stakeholders to have a voice and impact the nature of the practices and the quality that's happening in your service.

And to allow them to authentically reflect on not just what is being done, but how and why it's happening within your service.

Engaging in the process of continuous improvement involves an understanding both of compliance and then how to build quality practices on top of that compliance in order for it to come together. And we can see the links here from the practices that Jackie has just shared with us.

She's showcasing that quality practices, building on that regulatory compliance, and then you're using those as a continuum for improvement, a continuous journey of growth and progress.

Now this is likely to be again, a familiar graphic for most of you, and I'm not going to spend too long on this today, but it's an important place to pause for a moment and have a look at how this ongoing cycle of continuous improvement is driving your practices.

Many of you all have seen this slide. The cycle that it depicts here is very similar in nature in fact, to a learning or programming journey that you would have within your own services for children. It involves closely examining practice, recognising strengths and identifying opportunities for improvement.

But let's just take a moment, we'll have a look and see where the compliance aspect of your practice sits within this cycle. So we always start by considering your service philosophy.

Does it reflect what's happening in your service? Does it reflect your staff, your educators, your families, the children and obviously your wider community? Are people familiar with it? Are your practices consistent with what sits in your service philosophy? And when you're pulling out an aspect of practice to consider through your continuous ongoing cycle, how does that reflect? How is your philosophy reflected through the practices that are related to that?

You can see the very next part of the cycle is thinking about how the law and regulations underpin your practice.

It's so important it happens right away, analysing what the service does against law and regulations right at the very beginning to come back to the common thought across this training, compliance with the law and regulations must be in place first to be able to build those quality practices on top.

When you're thinking about a particular aspect of practice, some good questions to start with might be what are the parts of the law and regulations that belong here and are we consistently meeting those regulatory obligations?

Don't forget as you have your discussions, if you're finding that the regulatory requirements potentially are non compliant, maybe they're not consistent or focus has been somewhere else and practise has shifted somewhat immediate steps must be taken to rectify that.

Make sure that your service practices are in compliance and make sure there's a process in place to support this in an ongoing way.

Because from here you will start to identify your key practices and strengths, analysing what you do against the standards and elements of the National Quality Standard that builds those quality practices on the compliance that you already have in place.

Now on from those discussions, inevitably you will come around a response of other practices that potentially you'd like to work on or improve, or noting strategies and progress that you have had in place against goals that you may have already identified in this area.

An ongoing self assessment cycle underpins that quality improvement process and the way that you document this needs to work for your service and support your cycle to keep going, but the process itself remains the same.

You do though, need somewhere to store all of the outcomes of this cycle and the steps that we've talked about today because this document becomes your service story, one for your future team and families and children to reflect on and visually see how you've grown in that journey that you've been on.

The Department has developed the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal as a tool, a way to help you with this process and I will talk a little bit about that a little bit later in our session.

Self assessment quality improvement are most productive when those involved are open, honest and feel comfortable to be reflective and critical about practice in your service to support those improved outcomes for children.

Effective communication and a positive workplace culture will allow everyone the opportunity to participate and have a voice.

And having open and honest approach will ensure that when you do undergo assessment and rating that your service and staff are in the best position to demonstrate and talk about your service practice.

Self assessment and quality improvement planning has so many benefits to service quality. When a shared and collaborative process involving all the members of your team and community occur, and there's a list of some of those on the screen, I'm not going to go into all of them.

But certainly engaging stakeholders allows for the inclusion of such a variety of perspectives, and that diversity of those viewpoints can really provide valuable insights and ideas for improving quality.

Involving your stakeholders in that planning process also fosters that collaboration and ownership. And when stakeholders have a voice in decision making, they're more likely to be invested in the outcomes and actively contribute to those efforts that you're all making to improve your practice.

Engaging the stakeholders helps in gaining a deeper understanding of the needs and expectations of all of the different parties involved. This understanding can inform the development of targeted improvement strategies that address specific concerns and priorities.

Stakeholder engagement also promotes accountability by creating transparency and shared responsibility.

When stakeholders are involved in the planning process, they can hold each other accountable for implementing and monitoring those improvement initiatives.

And obviously continuous learning is encouraged and professional development, and by involving your educators, for example, in in your planning process, they can gain new knowledge and skills and confidence that contributes to their own professional growth and enhances the quality of education and practices that are being provided within your service.

So what are some of the ways that we can involve our stakeholders?

It is a very common question and I know it can be a challenging one for your services.

People are time poor and there is so much going on.

There are many ways and this list that's on your screen at the moment is just where we've started to capture some ideas for you to consider depending on your service and your community.

So we're not saying these are things you must do, they're just some ideas of things that you can think about and measure to see whether they're suited to your service and your key stakeholders.

Within your team, staff meetings are the common way that we initially can approach these things. Certainly having an agenda item, potentially standing agenda item, and using these meetings as an opportunity to potentially pull out a quality area or a standard and reflect on how your practices are aligning with that.

Some people create mind maps where you write a concept in the middle and educators can write practices around. There are a range of ways that you can do that.

You can set up working groups, potentially small groups around a particular standard that where brainstorming can happen and they can bring it back to a staff meeting.

There's also digital platforms as ways that everyone's using to involve your educators, posing questions, getting them to connect with each other and have those sharing of ideas and resources. Potentially leadership opportunities for your staff, allocating particular things to particular people, which may be based on skill or interest.

Focus areas where you can set during your team meetings and to capture thoughts and ideas and bring back. And displays obviously designating. Maybe a space in your staff room to display quality area for reflection and thoughts to be added.

You might share articles and new research and ideas on a notice board or just information around for your staff.

With your families, again, I won't, I said that before, but I won't go through all of the points because a lot of these are very self explanatory and I'm sure that you're doing a lot of these already, but just some ideas.

You know - For example, I know surveys and questionnaires are a common way to try and ask families for information. You might hold some information sessions on a targeted area of quality that you would like to talk about with your families.

Again, you can your visual displays and suggestion boxes or digital platforms where you may post some targeted questions as a way for people to very easily and quickly,

It's not time invasive for them, to add their thoughts and comments.

How are you engaging with your children? How are they having a voice?

And there are some things that are more difficult for children to have a voice in, but there are lots of ways that we can draw that out.

So obviously, actively listening, creating a safe and supportive environment where children can tell you what they think.

You could plan regular moments, reflection activities or group discussions or individual chats to gather children's perspectives on their learning environment and experiences.

There are lots of ways you can document children's ideas and suggestions.

I've seen photographs and videos or written notes. This helps also to validate the contribution from a child's point of view and provides that reference to go back to for improvement.

Regarding your community. There are a range of ways. Obviously networking with other services is a fantastic way. Regularly meeting with people in the wider community to offer perspectives on how the service is viewed by others, or even sharing thoughts and ideas and strategies and ways that people are doing things differently in their own services, can really give you a fresh perspective on ways that you can bring that to your service as well.

It also creates opportunities to explore ways that you can better cater to the interests and needs of families and children in your local community. Gathering feedback from community members and services.

You've likely established connections with different members of your community and services that families regularly visit or that might engage with your service for a variety of means.

This could include allied health professionals or local businesses, providers potentially of extracurricular services.

Explore ways to collect and utilise their feedback and ideas for self assessment and improvement initiatives and bring these back to your service and have a chat about them with your team and different peoples.

Share those thoughts and ideas.

Linda talked a little about assessing compliance and so here we're going to focus on building on that basis of compliance by articulating your key practices when it comes to your self-assessment.

So key practices are your current everyday consistent practices.

They are not one offs or things that you think you need to do for the purpose of your assessment and rating visit.

Rather, they're things that are typical and consistent for your service that you want to come back and evaluate and build on top of.

Key practices are statements about your practice that should align with the National Quality Standard.

And when we align our key practices to the National Quality Standard, we're supporting all of our stakeholders in their own understanding of the standards and elements within the National Quality Standard. Also giving them confidence to contribute to your quality improvement conversations and documentation.

And when it does come to the time for your assessment and rating visit, your stakeholders will be confident in how to make your practices clear

Rather than the need for the authorised officer to come in to search and look for evidence to support an outcome.

It will make your team confident to be able to state this is where we are, this is what we're doing consistently,

Let's start our conversation here.

Key practices demonstrate your services quality against the National Quality Standard.

They can be aspects of your practice that you're proud of and that make you smile.

Those things that when you take someone through your service you like to point out.

They can be specific statements that are not general and overarching.
Instead they describe what you do and how you do it.
They are your current practices.

Practices you're planning to introduce should be documented in a goal in your improvement plan. Key practices are statements of what you do and they use clear and simple language.

This will help communicate and demonstrate the what and why and how you do what you do and make it easier to review when you then circle back around to consider this area and how you may have had practice growth.

When you identify your key practices, you're making the invisible visible. And when it comes to review parts of your self-assessment goals and quality practices, this is where it becomes useful to use the lists in the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal to help monitor your compliance.

These lists were created to support the process of reviewing your compliance, using the checklist developed to reflect the law and regulations relevant to the area that you're working in.

So let's have a quick think about the self-assessment portal where you can use those lists to review your compliance first and then build quality through your key practices on top of that.

So the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal provides a one stop shop for you to enter yourself assessment information, make changes to key practices, monitor your processes against the national law and regulations, and create and update quality improvement planning.

So you'll see a QR code on your screen that you can pull out your phone or your device and scan that now and it will take you to the website for the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal.

If you haven't had the opportunity to have a look at this before, I would really encourage you to do that and I'm going to share some details in a moment for support in relation to that if that's needed.

Some of the features that services have communicated, they are appreciating within that portal include the ability to have all of your information in one place and it's accessible by you at any time.

It's clear and simple and easy to use processes and was designed that way so that when you're updating your information it's very simple to go in and do that.

The ability to create information summary documents and export that information to share with your stakeholders, particularly staff and families, is very easy and handy.

It's easy to create direct access for different stakeholders and people in your organisation if that's relevant, and you can have access to previous assessment and rating documents and service certificates in the documents section.

One of the key benefits of the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning portal is that at the time of assessment and rating, you're able to transfer the information that's already in there.

It's directly transferred into a form that you just need to check, make any updates and changes, and at the click of a button, an email is created and those documents are loaded onto that email and sent directly to us and to you.

You'd literally just have to hit submit. There's no copying and pasting. There is no extra tasks around that.

It is so simple and clear and it takes definitely the stress out of sending in that document, particularly with reduced notice periods. Now where you have a few days to do that.

There are a range of resources that may be helpful for you to access and we're going to pop these into the Q&A for you now.

Firstly, our ECEC resource library features a range of resources for services, providers and educators and have some very very helpful documents and support articles in here. And they can really easily be filtered by topic or quality area or resource type.

Hopefully you have connected with someone in the continuous improvement team before now, but if not, can we encourage you?

We welcome the opportunity to connect you with an officer in our team who'd be really keen to provide you with support.

And just quickly we can provide you with support around self-assessment processes and also about how to use the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal.

And we'd love to talk to you. Please reach out. I'll share those details in a moment.

The guide to the NQF has been mentioned a few times today and ACECQA have updated their online guide with a new look web page which is super easy to navigate and really great to use. But I do just want to say that many people spend time in the Guide to the NQS, which is a wonderful support for quality practice against the standards.

But make sure you don't miss the remaining sections in the guide to the NQF, the National Quality Framework. There's some really fantastic information in there to guide your regulatory practice and operational requirements. And the NQS sits within the National Quality Framework as you know, and using it all together is a really fantastic resource.

So thank you to my wonderful team who've added some of those links to the chat. And I'd really encourage you to access these in here.

In particular, I'd love to share with you a newly published resource that we've developed in response to your feedback, and that's called Guide to Articulating Key Practice.

This has some great examples and practical strategies for building a culture of continuous improvement. So please access that. And for those of you who may not have been able to access the QR code on the previous slide, there's also a link to our Self-Assessment Portal. So please let me share with you some contact details.

As I've said, the Continuous Improvement team was created to support our services to develop meaningful and ongoing continuous improvement systems as part of everyday practice.

So here are the contact details for our Continuous Improvement team. Please reach out at any time, it's great to start this early or check back in with the team if you already have and you need that ongoing support.

Needless to say this is a free resource for you and we are designed to help you with self assessment.

So please be comfortable in reaching out to us at the email address ECE Quality support that you can see on your screen. You can call through the number. This is obviously our Information and Enquiries number.

Make it very clear to whoever you speak to that you'd like to speak with someone in the continuous improvement team and they will pop you straight through.

Now, if you are needing Technical Support, if you're experiencing any technical issues with our Self-Assessment portal or maybe you found that you have some additional questions regarding the portal itself, you can contact us at the ECE quality support email or you can contact Information and Enquiries via those details underneath Technical Support on your screen. Just if you outline your challenges, they will, if they can't answer your questions, they will connect you directly through to us and we'll pop the right person on to answer any questions that you might have. And please don't sit and wonder. Call us.

We're really keen for those calls and we love to speak with people and iron out any challenges that you might have. Thank you for joining us. It is the end and we've been able to share a lot of information today. We do have a couple of minutes and I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm seeing that our team have done a great job supporting your questions today. Thank you very much to my team. You really are wonderful. I'll just go and have a look.

I can see a question in there. Do you provide support for submitting feedback about assessment and rating? This is a slightly different question to the support we provide around self-assessment. You can reach out and if you have questions an officer will be able to help you with those. To outline the feedback process.

Just call the Information and Enquiries number and somebody will be able to help you with that. I can see someone else has asked for a link to the Guide to Articulate Key Practices.

I believe that's been popped in to the chat and if it hasn't been, it will be now and we'll put that in there for you. So I might move on then and bring up a little QR code for you. Before we wrap up. We'd really love to hear from you. Your ongoing feedback is really valued and in fact is what we use to shape these sessions.

So to make sure that we're providing valuable content for you according to what you need right now. So please take a moment, pull out your phone or device and scan the QR code on your screen and just leave us a little bit of feedback on this session moving forward. We'd really love to hear from you.

So we'll leave that on your screen for a little longer, but I just want to take a moment to thank you for the time that you have taken to be part of the session today.

And I hope the information shared is helpful for you in understanding what quality looks like and how the law and regulations, service practice and compliance work together to ensure service quality and improve outcomes for children.

We know your time is precious, so we know it's difficult taking an hour out to come to these sessions. So thank you so much for joining us today.

We don't take that for granted and we hope that you have a lovely day and enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you so much.

[End of transcript]

Speaker: Peter Harvey

Welcome to our information session on the ECEC Digital Hub.

For those I haven't had the opportunity to meet, I am Peter Harvey. I am the Director of Funding, Compliance and Projects and one of those really exciting projects that I get to lead is the Digital Hub transformation.

We'll also be hearing today from Liam Crook, who manages our community and mobile preschool funding team and the Start Strong program.

And we'll also hear from Ying Tam, one of our change analysts on the Digital Hub program, who's going to do a bit of a live demo, which I'm particularly looking forward to.

As we step in I would just like to begin by recognising that I'm joining you today from Gadigal land in Sydney. And I pay respects to Traditional Owners on the land on which I meet today. And I extend that respect to Traditional Owners of the lands from which you join wherever you are today.

So I've got the first kind of portion of the agenda today and then we'll get into the more interesting stuff with the rest of the team.

But just really upfront, I think a good reminder of the Digital Hub vision.

So unsurprisingly, everything we do in early childhood outcomes is about supporting our youngest learners through universal access to high quality early childhood education and care to build a better future for all children in New South Wales.

So to outline how the Digital Hub has come about.

Digital Hub is a technology enabler for NSW Early Childhood Education initiatives which we are committed to delivering, including the National Preschool Enrolment and Attendance measure that's happening across Australia, but also aims to provide improved data and digital capabilities and support program delivery.

Ensuring that we've got the best experience for end users like yourself.

But I think most importantly, making it easy for you to access funding and giving you more time back in your days to support children in your ECEC services by streamlining some of those kind of requirements and program pieces.

The digital hub will initially underpin outcomes for around about 48,000 children enrolled in community and mobile preschools day in day out, who are funded by Start Strong program and delivered by passionate services like yourselves.

We'll then expand out across the sector from there, branching into other funding programs and into long day care as well, recognising that's a really big part of the big part of the market and the ECEC landscape in NSW.

Look, we recognise that the existing funds management system, the early childhood contract management system, more affectionately known I think inside and outside the building as ECCMS, is not an expandable technology that can kind of support growth into the future.

And so that's why we're developing our new Digital Hub system with more flexibility, modern security, access controls and just a better user experience to go and get that streamlining and give you more time back out in the day.

So what is the Digital Hub system?

So the Digital Hub is delivering a comprehensive set of digital tools in the form of a new system for data collection and for the funding process, including for Start Strong.

As I mentioned upfront, our immediate focus and our first program that we're focused on is Start Strong for Community Preschools, which I know many of you here today are involved in.

The Digital Hub aims to improve data and digital capability and support program change and delivery.

It's also intended to provide accompanying supports for the sector and for services like you as we progressively roll it out and we scale up its use.

Before I jump into some of the detail of how it works, it is important I think just to highlight upfront that the National Quality Agenda IT system, so NQAITS that some of you may refer to it as data collection remains the same and the requirements that you have under law to submit notifications to NQAITS are unchanged.

We're not changing anything in that space.

So maybe if we think through three kind of key pieces here, I think just one on the data side.

So the data being collected will inform outcomes, reporting to help policy, program and other decision-making for the benefit of children through the programs that we deliver and the services that you provide.

It's also to fulfil the state's government's requirements to the Australian Government, particularly those that sit under the preschool reform agreement.

And so this is a kind of a national, national context for us. Because the data will be collected centrally it's going to reduce administrative load and requirements for services to enter data manually into multiple systems.

And I know that's something that services talk to me about a lot, particularly in the Start Strong program.

And we start to think about how can we improve our data capture for things like fee relief and some of those processes that have been a bit more manual in recent years.

The second kind of piece is the funding side. So once fully implemented, Digital Hub will be used to calculate the funding position for early childhood education and care services.

And this information, along with the steps involved in the funding process, will be managed by the department and by providers in the new funding management system that will replace ECCMS effectively.

This is going to give us greater efficiencies and hopefully give you greater efficiencies as well. So to reduce the amount of time that you're spending on program administration to give you more time back so that you can spend that working with children and delivering early childhood education and care in your service.

In terms of benefits, if we think about benefits for ECEC services for community preschools that are using a childcare management software system or a CCMS for kind of short, where your system is then integrated with the Digital Hub, it means that the data you capture in your CCMS is automatically transferred into the Digital Hub each week.

So you don't have that double handling and you don't have those data quality issues that come with manual processing.

This means that when these services complete the annual preschool census in the Digital Hub next year, in 2026, they will only need to review and verify the information rather than having to kind of manually import it.

So this is one of the examples of how we expect to reduce that admin burden on ECEC services over time and give you more time back to spend educating and caring for children.

We'll now have a bit of a look at how the data is collected and I'll invite Liam, the manager of our Start Strong for Community Preschool team to talk a little bit about the steps involved there. Liam.

Speaker: Liam Crook

Thanks, Peter, and good afternoon everyone.

My name is Liam and as Peter mentioned, I'm currently the relieving manager of the Community and Mobile Preschool funding team.

I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking to you today from the lands of the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal Nation, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present and extend that to all of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the webinar with us today.

Now, we know that data quality is important and that it is integral to determining funding and reporting outcomes.

And we also know that keying in the data multiple times in different places introduces additional errors, which I can certainly vouch for. And it increases administrative burden as well. And that is what makes the journey of the data that's being shown on this slide so exciting.

The slide shows how data and information will flow from your childcare management software system, or CCMS into the Digital Hub system.

Now, in order for the Digital Hub system to reflect accurate and up-to-date data, it is essential to ensure that your service enters the correct data your CCMS system and that it is kept up-to-date. Once your CCMS has integrated with the Digital Hub, the data that you capture from enrolment forms and tracking attendance in your CCMS will automatically flow through to the Digital Hub every Friday evening via a secure data transfer mechanism.

You will then be able to view the latest data that's been captured in the Digital Hub every Monday and have an opportunity to verify it.

The data that's collected will be used for program funding, policy making and reporting, which will all contribute to improving outcomes for children's early learning journeys. Our key ask here is around consent.

Please ensure family's consent has been provided to your service for each child at your service and that this has been marked in your CCMS.

Data for a child can only flow into the Digital Hub if consent has been captured in your CCMS for said child.

We'll go into more detail on this shortly, but for now a reminder that signed consent forms and consent marked in your CCMS system is a pivotal part of the data journey that you're seeing on the screen.

The next slide speaks to where the data is coming from and as you can see, the data shown in the Digital Hub is ingested from various systems.

Some of these systems are integrated into the Digital Hub, with data being dropped into the Digital Hub system on regular intervals and some are manually pulled by the department staff and will be added to the Digital Hub that way.

The aim is that the data displayed in the Digital Hub will provide ECEC services with a single holistic view.

There are three main systems that data will be sourced from.

The first is the NQAIT system or NQAITs, which while not yet integrated into the Digital Hub right now, it will provide provider and service details such as the relevant PR and SE identification numbers and relevant addresses.

As Peter mentioned earlier, the Digital Hub does not replace the NQAIT system and you are required by law to continue to submit notifications to NQAITS and to that end, the department encourages services to review and update data within NQAITS regularly as this will then be updated periodically and reflected in the Digital Hub as well.

Next comes data from CCMS vendors that have integrated with the Digital Hub.

CCMS systems will provide service operating hours, children's personal details, their disability details and their enrolment and attendance details.

Finally, the department will pull data from the Early Childhood Contract Management System or ECCMS or ECCMS, whichever you know it as.

This will provide the primary contact details of the relevant service provider and services, and it will also provide staff details.

This will occur from later in June this year for our first batch. By making sure your information is accurate across these systems, you can ensure that the data displayed in the Digital Hub is full and complete.

Moving on to our next slide. This next slide speaks to the timeline for the Digital Hub.

Due to the large volume of community preschools, mobile preschools and long daycare services across NSW, we are unable to shift every single service into the Digital Hub at the same time.

As such, we have prioritised community and mobile preschools as the first service types to start. There are two key milestones for the Digital Hub program this year.

The first is to progressively roll out the Digital Hub to CCMS vendors who have agreed to integrate with the department.

And the second is to enable community and mobile preschools to use the Digital Hub for viewing and signing the 2026 funding agreement, which you might know is the terms and conditions for the Start Strong for community preschools program for 2026 in the Digital Hub. Exciting times ahead.

As you can see from this timeline, we are under way in rolling out the Digital Hub to our first cohort of community preschool services.

The CCMS systems used by the first cohort are working with the department in the background to ensure everything works as it should.

The timeline also indicates our second cohort go live will be later this year.

As we move into 2026 and beyond, a progressive roll out for the remaining funding programs managed by the department is set to occur.

To focus in a bit more on what can be expected this year.

Community preschools that are part of the first cohort were onboarded onto the Digital Hub on the 19th of June. Prior to that onboarding date, we ran 2 webinars with services to give them an overview of the system, how to get ready for it and how to use it.

While some services have now been onboarded, the 2025 Annual Preschool Census for services that are funded under the Start Strong for Community Preschools program and the Mobile Preschool Funding Program will be completed in ECCMS this year.

Moving forward to the later part of this year, in the October to November section that you can see on the screen there, we expect that community preschools who are part of the second cohort will have been onboarded to the Digital Hub around October.

We will send communications closer to time and we will run webinars with those services as well. And then all community preschools eligible for Start Strong funding will view and sign the 2026 funding agreement for the Start Strong for Community Preschools program in the Digital Hub system.

Instructions on how to perform this will be shared closer to the date.

As we then move into 2026, we will continue to enhance the Digital Hub system so that other funding programs can be on boarded, including Start Strong for Long Day Care and the Mobile Preschool funding program.

We will let you know the timelines for this closer to the date and we will give you plenty of notice to get ready.

The final bit for me is on getting your data ready. Particularly relevant right now for our community preschools, but it's something to keep in mind for everyone.

To ensure the smooth transfer of data from your CCMS to the Digital Hub, it's important to check the following data is captured in your CCMS system.

This includes preschool operating hours. This is the time periods during which you operate a preschool service.

Total fee charged, the total fee charged is the fee charged per child with any discretionary discounts applied but before you have applied fee relief from Start Strong to the fees.

The enrolment start and end date, check-in and check-out times for each attendance, child disability information and child addresses.

There are two mandatory data points that must be entered into your CCMS to enable successful data transfer. These must be captured.

The first is your service approval number. This can be found in NQAITS and begins with SE followed by 8 numbers. Without this captured correctly in your CCMS the data transfer will not be successful and you will not be able to see your data in the Digital Hub. Please check it is available and is correct in your CCMS.

It means your data will appear and it will help us when we need to do our bit to pull your services data from our systems into the Digital Hub.

The second mandatory data point is consent. That is consent to collect and share information with the department. This refers to the consent that families already provide. It is not an additional consent.

Without this detail completed for each child record in your CCMS, the data for that child will not be able to transfer into the Digital Hub.

You may wish to tell parents and families that while the Digital Hub is a new system, the data being collected remains the same. This data will be in both ECCMS and the Digital Hub as we transition away from ECCMS over time.

You've heard now what the Digital Hub is about, so it's time to see it in action. And for that I will hand over to Ying who will run you through a demonstration.

Speaker: Ying Tam

Thanks Liam and good afternoon everyone. Thank you for your time today.

I'm just going to give you a brief run through of the Digital Hub system and what it looks like. So just bear with me for a moment while I bring my test environment up.

So when you do have access and you can log into the Digital Hub, you'll come to this dashboard page and from here you've got a range of options on the left hand menu. Depending on the user role that you've been allocated, your access level will vary.

So more on those details when it is time to on board. As Liam mentioned, there are training webinars available which will guide you through on how to log in and how to use and navigate the digital hub.

So from here with the digital hub, as we're building it in the background, we have certain menus available for services.

So those who are on boarded, they can come in here and select programs for when they want to have a look at the Start Strong Funding program.

Now I'm currently in a test environment, so you can see a whole range of programs listed here.

But when the time comes for completing your Start Strong Funding Agreement, for those who are eligible, the community preschools for this year, they'll be able to see the funding program listed here and then click on the button to see the the amount that's allocated for this service as well as the funding agreement that they can read through & digitally on in the Digital Hub.

The Digital Hub also, as Liam mentioned that we grab data from certain services.

So NQAITS, we will be able to grab the details of your provider organisation, the provider ID, the service name and ABN as well as the provider contact details will also be drawn from the NQAIT system.

So here you can see these details presented and also banking details.

I'm in the test environment so I don't have any details here, but your banking details will be displayed here as well. We also have the services details. So if your provider organisation has multiple services reporting under your umbrella, you would be able to see the number of services listed here.

In my test environment, I've only got 1 service. So I can click on the ABC Childcare, I can see already the childcare service approval number and how many active enrolments there are. So if I click into this service, I'll then be able to see further details regarding this service.

So the service details SE number, the name, the contact details as well as the operating hours. You can see here 8:30 to 4:00 PM Monday to Friday. And I can see all the children's details for this service as well.

So clicking onto the Children's tab, I can see the 70 children that was mentioned in the front page. So you can see here 70. And to filter through, I can actually click on the little arrow and bring it into alphabetical order as well.

So let's just say that I want to see a particular child. I think it's Anthony Miller that I have in mind. I can just type in a few characters and you'll narrow down my search. Anthony Miller's the child that I want to have a look at. Clicking into Anthony, I can see this child's personal details, so the unique child identifier number. The detail, the first and last name of the child, date of birth, gender and I can move along to the next tab, the address and background, where I can see the address and background details if they are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background. Any language spoken other than English and also if there are triplet or quadruplet is also shown here.

If the child did have any disability details, it will be displayed under the disability tab.

In my test environment I don't have any details displayed here but this will clearly be gathered from the CCMS and also taken from the CCMS would be the child's enrolment details.

So clicking on here, we can see the enrolment start date. Has the parents signed the consent form and the date that it was signed? So as mentioned by Liam, this is very important.

If the child does not have a consent form, if we have not received it or if that has not been indicated as received in your CCMS, their data will not come through to the Digital Hub.

So let's say if you know that you've got 80 children at your service but only 70 are appearing in the Digital Hub, make sure you go back into your CCMS and check whether the consent part has been ticked and whether a date has been entered.

So we can see here the enrolment for this child. If I go back a little, I can see that Anthony is enrolled for full days for every Tuesday and Wednesday. And looking at the attendance, whatever you fill in in your CCMS, when they are logged in and logged out, that data will be able to come through.

So I can see here Tuesday and Wednesday Anthony logged in at 8:30, left at 2:46 and on Wednesday 8:46 and left at 2:09. So these details will automatically flow in from your CCMS.

And lastly, fee details for this child will also be displayed. So for between the 1st of March to the 29th of June, we can see the details here.

Obviously I'm in a test environment, so the details might be might look a little bit off. So that's the child's details displayed here.

The other thing I'll just go back out. The other thing I want to show you is the staff tab. So at the moment we will be dragging the staff details from the census.

So as Liam mentioned in the timeline that after the 2025 census, the staff details will be pulled from the census and updated to the Digital Hub. This just allows you to see all the staff details for your service and you can actually add any staff records if you want to. So the Digital Hub gives you that flexibility to manage that.

It also gives you the management authority for the users of the digital hub. So I think in ECCMS it was quite restricted on who can manage users. Whereas the Digital Hub we've built it to allow you to manage the number of users.

If you want more users of the highest level of access, you can also do so. And that just allows for staff planning. So if any of the staff does go on leave, you're not stranded and you can still manage your admin.

And we also have a contacts tab where I think in my example here there's nothing showing, but you can list down who your primary contact person would be for your provider service as well as who your primary contact person would be for the service itself.

They will be pulled from ECCMS in due time and that just allows the Digital Hub and the funding team to contact the relevant person for those funding agreements. It is built as an interactive and self-serving platform. So there is a help function in the digital hub which you can also go to.

We have built in guides to walk you through how you would sign in, how you would navigate, how you would view or sign a funding agreement.

So in this example here, signing in for the first time, we have a PDF guide which you can open up and it'll walk you through step-by-step with screenshots on how to sign in into the Digital Hub and what we would require.

The other thing that we've built in are videos. So if it suits you better to watch a video, you can click on the video which will guide you through in a motion form on how to log in. So those are available for you as well.

So as we move towards that timeline that Liam mentioned, it will be great if you could start looking at your data, making sure that the consent, for one, is available for all your children.

And that the data that you are just starting to use in your CCMS that you can start entering and making sure the attendance and enrolment details are up to date.

So I think that's all from a demonstration point of view, which I'll just go back here.

And in addition to the help function which I just showed you, if you are stuck with anything relating to the Digital Hub, we do have a technology helpline which is listed here, the 1300 number that you can dial. Our team member will be able to help you through any technical difficulties there.

If you do have any funding or policy inquiries, the 1800 number, which I'm sure you're quite familiar with is displayed on the screen as well as the ECEC dot funding email address

And on that note, I will hand back to Peter. Thanks, Peter.

Speaker: Peter Harvey

Fantastic Ying always love to see Digital Hub in action.

I think it it's one of those things that when you start to see it and you start to get a bit of a feel with it, you really get a sense of what it can do and the benefits that it can bring.

We are two minutes from the close of the curtain, so I think we've got time for a couple of questions briefly. I'm going to bring Liam back. I think he's probably best placed to answer some of these.

Liam, a couple of questions around where do we mark the department consent has been obtained or assigned date.

Speaker: Liam Crook

Yeah, great question. So I imagine that the consent and the date of consent fields may differ slightly in each CCMS system. These should be available to you as it's part of the digit… You'll see it in the digital guide that's available on the Digital Hub website that these are, sorry, data guide. These are some of the things that need to be inputted into the system.

For support with how to capture this in your specific CCMS system, we would encourage you to contact your CCMS provider to get specific guidance on where you can find those fields in your system.

Speaker: Peter Harvey

Fantastic. Thanks, Liam. And just on the kind of the data that comes in and we talked about that weekly integration and that automatic transfer between the CCMS and Digital Hub.

Are you saying that we need to go in every Monday and verify enrolment and attendance info?

Speaker: Liam Crook

So it certainly won't be a mandatory requirement from us that you have to go and verify it each week.

However, you will be able to see in the Digital Hub what's coming across that'll be updated every Monday and you'll see the new information coming through.

If you do then see any issues with what's in the system, you can go back into your CCMS system.

You can make any changes as needed and then once the following data refresh happens the next Friday, you'll then see that the data should have been changed after that in the system the following Monday.

If you did have any issues arise from that, you would also be able to reach out to our Digital Hub technology line as well for some dedicated support too.

Speaker: Peter Harvey

Fantastic. So data's there if you want to have a look at it, but certainly not a mandatory requirement, I think is a really kind of clear and good answer to finish on. So thanks, Liam. Thanks, Ying for the demonstration. It's been great to showcase that live.

I know there's loads of other questions that have come in that the team have been responding to directly in the background there.

So hopefully you've got the information that you need. If you need further info, there's loads of information on our website.

We will get these slides and the recording circulated and of course, we've got our dedicated help numbers as well for the Digital Hub questions.

So thank you very much for joining us today.

If you do have kind of 60 seconds spare or maybe a little bit later, would love for you to complete the survey.

Just really helps us know what's helpful in these sessions, what you like hearing about, what drives you nuts and you don't want to hear about again. Really valuable for us in terms of how we plan our future ones. So I really appreciate it if you can make the time for that.

And thank you for making the time today to learn about all things Digital Hub. We'll see you again next time.

[End of transcript]

Digital Hub features

Will the Digital Hub be available for Long Day Care and Out of School Hours care as well?

In 2025, we are focusing on the Start Strong for Community Preschools funding program. Further ECO Grants and Funded Programs, including Start Strong for Long Day Care will be added in future years. Out of School Hours care is not currently intended to be in scope for the Digital Hub. We will advise relevant ECEC providers if this changes in the future.

Funding

Will enrolment and attendance data in the Digital Hub be used to calculate funding for services?

Funding under the 2025 Start Strong for Community Preschools program is based on enrolment data as captured during the Annual Preschool Census. Attendance data does not impact funding. In future, data available in the Digital Hub may also simplify the process of funding adjustments.

Onboarding to the Digital Hub

How do we know if our CCMS is compatible with the Digital Hub?

We have developed material on the Digital Hub webpage How to get ready for the Digital Hub. This includes a software selection guide (PDF 213KB) and a data guide (PDF 159KB), which we encourage you to use in conversations with your CCMS provider.

When will Community and Mobile Preschools be notified of when they will be onboarded?

We are onboarding Community and Mobile Preschools in stages through 2025. We will be communicating with the next stage of Community and Mobile Preschools over the next few months, ahead of their onboarding later in 2025.

Consent to share information with the department

Are families allowed to opt out of consenting, and how does that effect the funding/ Digital Hub?

Provision of a child's information is voluntary. Where families do not consent, data will not be shared with the department. Funding cannot be provided for eligible children where consent has not been obtained through completed consent forms. For more information, please refer to the Child Consent Form (PDF 140KB).

Where do we mark that family consent has been obtained and the date it was provided?

For support with how to capture family consent and the date consent was provided in your CCMS, please contact your CCMS provider.

Will we need to upload staff consent given that there is data about them in the Digital Hub?

Uploading staff consent is not required. Later in the year we will add the staff details from your 2025 Annual Preschool Census submission in ECCMS to the Digital Hub. After this, ECEC services will be responsible for keeping this information up to date in the Digital Hub.

Will we need to have both the consent for Start Strong consent form and the fee relief declaration loading into our CCMS, or are you just referring to the consent Start Strong form?

This refers to the consent form only. The consent and date the consent was provided need to be captured in your CCMS. If this detail is not complete for each child record, the data for that child will not transfer to the Digital Hub. For support with how to capture this in your CCMS, please contact your CCMS provider.

Can our platform also have the consent form added so when families enrol, this is added to their documents and be part of the online enrolment hub?

Services are permitted to distribute the consent and declaration forms to families digitally including in enrolment packs and childcare management systems provided the content and structure of the forms are not altered. Services choosing to use digital forms must ensure all record keeping, identity verification, and electronic signature requirements are met. The department is not responsible for any issues arising from the use of altered or non-standard forms. You must have also digitally recorded the consent in your CCMS.

Data transfer

With data being transferred to Digital Hub every Friday, does that mean there are agreements in place between the department and each CCMS to enable that data transfer?

Yes, all CCMS software providers must have a formal agreement in place with the department before data can be transferred. This enforces the safe and secure transfer of data to the Digital Hub and adheres to the department’s privacy and cyber security requirements. The software selection guide (PDF 213KB) has been developed to assist services in conversations with CCMS software providers.

Speaker: Laura Dawson, Director of the Statewide Operations Network within the Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority

I'm really pleased to have you joining us here today for our webinar on practical steps to manage allergy, anaphylaxis and medication.

I would like to begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands on which we all join from today. I'm really fortunate to be joining you from the lands of the Awabakal people in Newcastle and I'd like to pay my respects to Elders past and present of this land, but also the lands that each of you join from right across NSW.

I'd like to pay my respects to the Elders of the lands and also acknowledge any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people here with us today.

We know that NSW has been a place of learning for many thousands of years and that knowledge has been passed through generations.

We honour the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first educators and acknowledge, of course the importance of continuing this legacy by supporting safe, respectful and inclusive education for all children, where culture, identity and connection to country are both celebrated and valued.

And we see such fantastic work right across the sector every day in paying that respect to our history and those traditional custodians.

My name is Laura Dawson and I am the Director of the Statewide Operations Network within the Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority.

We're really, really pleased to bring you this session today. And it's something that we receive lots of questions about.

And of course, when our authorised officers are out visiting you in service, it's something that we do discuss regularly and we'll be sharing some really practical steps to managing allergy, anaphylaxis and medication for children in your services. This is really crucial part of keeping children safe and expectation that we have of all services.

We have some of our most vulnerable people in our care and they're very eager to explore, adventure and learn in your services. And you know that as well as I do. We're all involved in understanding and supporting children's individual needs and it's critical that we respond to those children who may have allergies or anaphylaxis.

In your wonderful services. You will know that allergies present a really serious risk to the health and safety of children and anaphylaxis being the most severe form of reaction that can be life threatening.

It is crucial that anyone caring for children understands and recognises the symptoms and necessary medical response for an allergic and anaphylactic reaction and that we as educators and service providers can identify and manage risk to eliminate potentially life threatening situations while supporting children to participate in the full range of educational experiences at your early childhood education and care service.

Firstly, we'll talk briefly about the regulatory requirements that underpin managing medical conditions.

We'll share spend some time thinking about risk management strategies and share one of our really practical resources that you can adapt to meet your services need and to support your daily practice.

We're also really lucky to be joined today by Kathryn Mulligan from NSW Anaphylaxis Education Program at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, who will share some essential information for everyone, including practical steps and promoting best practice.

We'll finish with a short Q&A session if time permits. So please post your questions throughout the presentation and we'll hopefully get to as many of those as possible. We will provide written answers as much as we can.

Some will might leave for the Q&A at the end. So I've got some questions to ask and if we'll see those coming through from you in the Q&A function that I mentioned earlier.

Like I said, this information that you share with us today, the questions you asked and the engagement through this session does really help us to structure our advice and to think about the resources that are important to you so that we can support your practice and support the information that we share with you when we're visiting those services.

And so we hope that we'll get through and we'll answer as many questions as we can for you today. Now we're going to jump to the next slide and we're going to look at an overview of the law and regulations and the quality standard that have the greatest impact on supporting children's individual medical needs in your service.

So I'm going to call out a few sections and hopefully these are really familiar to you and a key part of your practice in keeping children safe every day.

So Section of the law is the overarching component that relates to protection of children from harm and hazard.

And this this particular element of the law states that the approved provider of an education and care service must ensure that every reasonable protection is taken to protect children being educated and cared for by the service from harm and any hazard that is likely to cause injury. And that includes, we take that to mean it includes any health hazard as well. Approved providers hold the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that they take steps such as developing policies, inducting nominated supervisors and educators into their roles, and providing training so that everyone understands their responsibilities.

In addition to this section of the national law, there are also multiple regulations to help you implement effective processes to support management of allergies and anaphylaxis in early childhood education and care. These regulations require the effective use of risk minimisation strategies to protect children from harm and hazard by collectively aiming to ensure that everything is in place to effectively support each child who has a medical condition every time they attend the service.

Some of the specific requirements include Regulation which outlines that every education and care service must have policies and procedures in place and a specific policy about medical conditions in children, including the matters set out in Regulation. Regulation explains what is required in your services medical conditions policy and your service procedure will explain how to implement your policy and best practice. And this is certainly something that we expect authorised officers to discuss with you when we come out on visits to really think about and support your practice as to how you're supporting children and families who may present with allergies or anaphylaxis.

Your policy must outline requirements to ensure families provide a medical management plan and then we want to see you taking active steps to ensure the medical management plan is followed so everyone in the service is aware and really confident that they understand what each child needs and that they're able to respond effectively if there are any concerns arising.

Your policy must also outline the development of a risk minimisation plan and your communication plan for all children with a specific healthcare need, which includes an allergy or medical condition.

The medical management plan should detail all the required information about a child's condition, including triggers or specific information relevant to that child, as well as detailing the necessary medical response, including any medication needs.

Fortunately, there's a nationally recognised medical management plan for asthma, anaphylaxis and allergy that can be used. This is known as the ASCIA plan.

A risk minimisation plan identifies all relevant and potential risks and outlines clear strategies to eliminate or reduce that risk. It is really essential that these risk minimisation plans are specific to the child and comprehensive considering your services, environment and context that is unique to you. And we see services doing a fantastic job of thinking about how they minimise that risk in the practice within their service. It's not a one fits A-size fits all strategy and the strategies for different children should reflect this. And it's really important that you have those conversations with families as you develop those plans.

A communication plan will identify how everyone is kept informed of each child's changing needs over time.

And I think that really it's important for you to think about how do you ensure every educator is informed and a special call out that when you have casuals in your service that you're considering that in your communication plan as well.

It also needs to support families to update your service on any changes in the child's medical condition.

For example, if a child has a mild reaction to a previously unidentified allergen when they're at home over the weekend, this is something that's really essential for you and your staff to know so that you can respond.

Families should understand and be readily able to clearly communicate and for your service to document any and all changes. And these may be situations that prompt a review of the child's medical management and risk minimisation plan.

And I'm hopeful that following today's session, you'll feel really confident in having those conversations if you aren't already.

Your policy should also clearly outline practices and procedures ensuring that a child does not attend your service without medication prescribed by the child's medical practitioner in relation to the child's specific medical condition. For children with allergies and anaphylaxis this usually means some kind of antihistamine and there are wide varieties of these and or an EpiPen.

Your service must have effective processes for monitoring the expiry dates of children's individual medications and any service medications, and I know when I've been out on service visits without authorised offices that those expiry dates are something that we are always checking when we're visiting the rooms.

Provide families with plenty of notice to replace these when required so that you're not caught short and these procedures will hopefully help you to prevent holding a challenging conversation with families that the child cannot attend without medication in line with your service policies and procedures.

Moving along, Regulation mandates that reasonable steps are taken to ensure all staff follow the policies and procedures which are required under Regulation

So you can see how they're all joining together here. If you think back to the induction at your service, think about the steps that the service takes to make sure that every educator, including casuals, are able to respond appropriately to children's medical needs.

I wonder in that induction if you left feeling that you're confident and able to identify and meet the needs of every child and effectively implement your service policies.

Did you know the locations in the medications or what to do if a family member advises you of a change to this child's medical condition?

If perhaps that's a gap for you or perhaps a gap for your staff, then following this session might be a good time to have another conversation to reflect on your induction processes and to support comprehensive child safe practice which includes the management of these conditions.

We know from experience in inductions training and reflection a really vital tool to ensure that your policies and procedures are supporting you to do the things you need to everyday and know who to talk to when you need support and a specific call out. I know from experience the early childhood sector is really robust in reflecting on practise and so this might be a critical time following our session today to do some of that thinking.

We have mentioned medication briefly, but Division relates to administration and medication and also includes Regulation to and each of these regulations outlines a specific requirement in relation to how, when and why medication can be administered, how this should be recorded, as well as notification requirements to parents or guardians.

Regulation highlights the requirement for educators first aid training, including management of anaphylaxis, ensuring that all services always have at least one trained staff member present and immediately available to respond as a minimum requirement. Again, this is something that we'll look closely at as we're looking at staffing records on our visits.

The best practice. The more educators that you have that are confident, trained and available to support children's medical needs can enable your service to respond more effectively in the event of an emergency.

Consider factors such as your services size, layout, the number of children enrolled at your service with medical conditions and importantly the educators well being should a first aid response be needed.

Regulation describes situations that must be notified to the regulatory authority, such as any circumstance arising at the service that poses a risk to the health, safety or well being of a child or children attending.

Ensuring you have these processes in place to make these notifications within the required time frames is really essential. Also wanted to briefly talk about the quality area that relates, which is quality area to Children's Health and safety and specifically reflecting on element .which is health practices and procedures. It's the national quality element requiring effective illness and injury management and hygiene practices to be promoted and implemented.

In addition, I draw your attention to element related to supervision, requiring that at all times, reasonable precautions and adequate supervision ensure children are protected from harm and hazard, including having everything in place to ensure children's medical needs are met and supervision practices during mealtime are effective.

The NSW Department of Education, as the regulatory authority for early childhood education and care, requires approved providers to meet all of their legal obligations.

Not meeting your obligations to increase health and safety risks for children at services, particularly in relation to managing allergies and anaphylaxis.

Where these obligations are not met, the regulatory authority may take a range of actions against a service and approved provider, a nominated supervisor or educator, in line with our approach to compliance policy and the national law and regulations.

So it is really, really critical that you take on board the elements within the law and regs and your role within those.

We are now going to take a short moment to reflect on service practice and we have a mentee on screen.

So I'm going to ask you to scan the QR code if you're able to. If perhaps it's not working for you today, a hot tip is you can go to mentee.com and you can enter the code which you can see on screen. And the number I'll read it out for you is

I'll just read it one more time.

It's and the question today is what things do you need to know or know about to actively support children with medical conditions?

I'm saying lots of blows and something about a dog as well.

So but health plans are probably from a medical professional, the first aid knowledge, more information about risk minimisation plans are coming up.

Services action plan is important to many people and that's come up a few times.

More information about training, medical management, Fantastic.

Good to see the regulations coming up there.

It's always nice to hear people's focus on regulations as well. OK.

Feel free to keep those coming through and we're going to move forward as well, but it's great to see that such a great understanding of what's required of services is absolutely shared by the group today.

I'm going to jump to this screen to talk about the risk minimisation strategy and specifically four key areas of knowledge that you must have in order to manage and minimise risks relating to children's medical conditions. First, we need you to to know the health needs of all enrolled children. For example, who has a medical conditions like allergy or anaphylaxis and when our authorised officers are visiting will often have that conversation with educators in the room.

It's very important to know who might be starting the process and communicate this clearly to everyone involved. Have regular discussions with families to check in on any changes that may occur.

Second, you need to know your service policy and procedures on management of medical conditions and be able to quickly locate and understand all documentation relating to the child's health needs.

When you commence at an early childhood service, your induction should include information and training about children's medical needs and perhaps if you're a service leader, it's something to recheck about your services induction.

It should include their medical management plan, risk minimisation plan, the location of those medications, and how to complete records relating to administration.

Thirdly, you need to know about ingredients and be able to identify the products that contain allergens.

Crucially, it's really important to know how your services manage mealtimes, serving and supervision, and that these procedures are in place that your service to support children to participate in mealtimes safely.

This enables you to ensure supervision practices are consistent at mealtimes and have conversations with children about why being allergy aware and not showing food is so important.

We encourage you to develop a menu with knowledge of known allergens within your service and consult with recognised authorities when you need support.

For those of you who use the food service. Having those discussions with your food providers and establishing what cheques are in place on their end are really important as well. You may need to actively check foods that come in from families in lunch boxes and be aware of what might come to the table in those instances.

Services should also consider foodbased play activities where the risk of exposure to known and unknown allergens is also greatly increased.

Conducting risk assessments for programed experiences such as sensory play, play dough, arts and crafts also helps eliminate these risks.

Finally, you should know how to respond if a child is exposed to an allergen and how to follow the child's medical management plan.

Medical management plans outline the steps you need to take to manage your reaction. Never underestimate the seriousness of this situation.

To prepare, you and your team should engage in regular training and practice allergy or anaphylaxis emergency scenarios to support everyone to know their roles and responsibilities.

However, prevention is the most effective risk management tool and by having clear processes in place to make sure every child gets the right meal is key to the this. So how can we make meal time safer for children with allergies or anaphylaxis?

Whether a service provides their own food or uses a food delivery service or requires children to bring in their own food from home, the risk of exposure is to known and unknown allergies is greatly increased during meal times. Obviously we can't eliminate set food from services, so we have to manage the risk.

The way in which services minimise the risk significantly impacts on the health, safety and well being of children and to support support services and educators in this area.

The Meal Time checkpoint resource was developed to help minimise allergy and anaphylaxis risk in early childhood education and care settings where meals are prepared and served. To access this resource, the QR code is on the slide

I can't quite see it on the slide, but we'll make it available to you and also we're going to place a link in the chat so that you might be able to copy paste it and access it following our session today.

This resource aims to assist children in creating safer meal time environments for children who have diagnosed allergies or at risk of anaphylaxis.

It also outlines practical steps to reduce the risk of exposure to allergens during food preparation and serving. Hopefully that's a great resource for you to use in your service. If you haven't seen it already.

I'm now really pleased to introduce you to Kathryn Mulligan from the Anaphylaxis Education Program, who will be talking to you today about some practical steps to manage allergy and anaphylaxis and medication, including some further information about the Meal Checkpoint resource. Thanks for joining us today, Kathryn. We really appreciate your time and sharing your expertise with us.

Speaker: Kathryn Mulligan, NSW Anaphylaxis Education Program

Hi, I'm Kath Mulligan from the NSW Anaphylaxis Education Program based at the Children's Hospital at Westmead and I'll be talking about allergy management in the early childhood education and care sector.

So this is what we're covering today.

We're going to do some allergy basics, talk about the allergy supplies for the ECEC sector, principles of risk management and what constitutes good anaphylaxis training. So allergy resources. So the best allergy resource I can point you to is the National Allergy Council best practice guidelines.

So that's allergyaware.org.au It's a hub of allergy information. So it is something that I'd recommend you bookmark. It is constantly growing and being updated and it is full of useful information and links for you. So it has a policy document.

If you're looking for a policy document or an exemplar policy document for your service, it's ahead there. It has templates for letters that you might want to send home to families. It's got links to other important websites like the Food Services Authority, like the ASCIA E Training, Ask Your website, Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia.

There's all sorts of links on that site. It is a really important site that you can go and explore. There's All About Allergens website, so that is online training and it's food allergy training.org.au. Now, this may seem on the surface like it's just for people who work in a kitchen, but in fact, it's not. It really should be done by anybody who is handling food in a in a ECEC service. It covers food prep, it covers meal planning, food labelling, food storage, but it also covers food serving.

So if anybody hands food out to a child, they really should be doing this training.

It's free, it's online, it takes just over an hour and you get a certificate.

Then that there's the ASCIA E training, which is also online. It is there is a specific ECEC sector module. It is ACECQA accredited, and it's really should be part of induction for new staff because then you know your new staff have some level of allergy training before they start on the floor. There is a minute refresher available as well. It's really good evidence based information and there's also the NSW Anaphylaxis Education program.

So it's us. We provide information about risk management. So we can help you with risk management. We can help you debrief after an incident. We can provide individualised risk management assistance. So if you've got a child who's got multiple food allergies or they've got other complicating health issues like developmental issues, behavioural issues that you need help with that complicate the issues around the allergy management, please do get in touch with us.

We can help with general allergy information, things like action plan questions, EpiPen questions, anything like that.

We also provide ACECQA accredited staff training and it's not just to people who are in the vicinity of the Children's Hospital at Westmead. We can also do rural and remote training. If we can't actually get to your service. We do provide face to face training. If we can't actually get to your service, we would do it online, so our contact details are on the page there.

So let's do some allergy basics. So what are allergies?

An allergy is basically when something in the environment, which is usually protein, that is harmless to most people, is deemed to be a problem by someone's immune system.

So it's an immune system response. So there's different kinds of allergies, but the kind of allergies that that we are worried about that can lead to anaphylaxis is called an immediate type reaction.

So it's an IGE mediated allergy or immediate type allergy. And by immediate we mean two hours. So when somebody's been exposed to that allergen, it can actually take up to two hours to develop. Most people think it's to minutes and in most cases it that's when allergic reactions do actually develop, but they can actually take up to two hours. So that's important to know.

An allergic reaction is when someone actually develops symptoms after being exposed to their allergen.

And allergic reactions can be mild, they can be moderate, or they can be severe.

And a severe allergic reaction is called anaphylaxis. Usually symptoms do start with the minutes of exposure.

Like I said, statistically speaking, most allergic reactions do start with the minutes of exposure, but they can take up to that two hours to develop. Once symptoms do start, progress can be quite rapid. So you can have a child that's, well, one minute they eat something they're allergic to and then symptoms start and they get quite sick quite fast.

It's really important that you know that you can have anaphylaxis with absolutely no mild to moderate symptoms before the symptoms of anaphylaxis develop. And that's really important when you're looking after children to know because you need to be able to respond appropriately. And that's where really good training comes in.

Anaphylaxis is potentially life threatening and people do die from anaphylaxis.

So this is not just when you're not asked to have really good training and regular training for no reason. It's so that people are kept safe. And that's why risk management is really, really important to try and prevent these life threatening, potential life threatening episodes from occurring.

Anaphylaxis must always be treated as a medical emergency.

So what are the common causes of anaphylaxis?

They're up here on the screen.

So food is by far the most common cause of anaphylaxis in children.

Then there's things like insect stings, stinging insects, so bees, wasps, stinging ants and ticks. There's latex that's actually not as common as it used to be after they took the powder out of latex gloves, which is good for us health workers and also childcare workers. You use rubber gloves commonly. Medications, so things like antibiotics, painkillers and anaesthetics, those kind of things.

Exercise.
You can have exercise induced anaphylaxis, although that tends to be more in the in the teenage population and you can have idiopathic anaphylaxis, which is when there's no identifiable trigger. And that's quite a stressful kind of anaphylaxis to have because if you don't know what you're allergic to and what you're what you're having anaphylaxis to, you can't avoid it. So that's, that's an unusual and fairly uncommon one to be honest.

So these are the common food triggers, peanut, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, wheat, egg, milk or dairy. And milk and dairy are used interchangeably those terms.

And it's important to know that if you are cow's milk allergic, you're allergic generally allergic to any mammal milk. So that includes things like goat's milk, soy, and sesame.

None of these will be a surprise to you because you're probably dealing with these every day in your service, but it's important to know you can be allergic to pretty much anything. Kiwi is the most common fruit allergy, for instance. Lentils are becoming quite a common allergen. So just because it's not up here on the screen doesn't mean it's not a potentially dangerous allergen. When we're talking about risk management, it's really important to know that to have anaphylaxis.

So notice I'm saying anaphylaxis. You need to have, you need to ingest the allergen. So this little boy here who's got yoghurt all over his hands, if he was allergic to cow's milk or dairy, he may get what we call a contact reaction from the yoghurt on his hands. So he may get red hands, he may get itchy hands, but that yoghurt on his hands on his skin is not going to cause anaphylaxis.

It may con only cause a contact reaction. The problem with yoghurt on his hands though, is that as you'd be well aware, hands can go in the mouth and that's where the problem is. So that can lead to ingestion. So ingestion is when the allergen touches the mucous membrane. So that is lips and inside the mouth. So while skin contact is not going to cause anaphylaxis, we still don't want skin contact because skin contact can easily lead to ingestion when things go in the mouth. So ingestion can happen in a few ways. So it can happen directly.

So through eating and drinking the direct route, and it can also happen in the indirect route. And this is where that myth that some people believe that you can inhale an allergen. So a breath anaphylactic person or a touch anaphylactic person, where that myth kind of gets perpetuated.

It's through this indirect exposure that that that happens.

So this is through cross contamination and people aren't always aware that this happens. So it's things like contaminated tongs that are used to serve food.

If you serve someone who has a Kiwi allergy, if you serve some a child some Kiwi and then you serve some banana to the Kiwi allergic child using the same tongs, that's cross contamination. If you use the same knife to spread butter on a sandwich and then use the same knife to spread something else on and and milk allergic child's bread, that's cross contamination and that could potentially be enough to cause a reaction in some people.

Then you've got things like cutlery and straw sharing.

So anything that goes in the mouth is a potential portal for cross contamination.

So if for instance, children are sitting really close together, and a child with an allergy picks up another child's fork and that's got allergen on it because it's been in their mouth or it's been dipped in their cheese, then that's a potential border for cross contamination. Drink bottle sharing.

So if if children share drink bottles, the mouthpiece can be contaminated with allergen and so can the backwash.

So the floaty bits that you see floating around in water, that's food, protein, it's pieces of food. So that's contamination as well.

And then there's mouthing of toys. So when little dirty hands that have things like yoghurt and wheat or anything, any food proteins on it get spread around. And a child picks up a toy and then another child comes along, picks up the same toy and puts that toy in their mouth, that's cross contamination as well.

So you can see how ingestion can happen and you don't always see it and you don't always understand where the allergic reaction can come from if you're not aware of the, of the, the portal, I guess of, of ingestion.

So let's talk about the difference between allergy and intolerance because it's really important that you understand the difference.

And this is to stop children who have things like milk allergy or wheat allergy getting fed the wrong food.

So an allergy is an immune system response, whereas intolerance is not. An intolerance is basically a digestive system issue. Allergy is potentially life threatening, whereas intolerance can be very uncomfortable, but it's not life threatening. Allergen intolerance. There's a lot of grey area here, but often children with intolerances can have small amounts of what they're intolerant to.

So they might, if they're lactose intolerant, they might be have be able to have a small amount of dairy and they're fine.

But if they have say a bowl of ice cream or a milkshake, they will get symptoms. Generally, children with allergies, even small amounts of their allergen will cause an allergic reaction. There are some children with milk or egg allergy who may be allowed to have baked goods.

But in both cases, whether they have an allergy or intolerance, it is really important that in both groups, they have no amount of their allergen or the food they're intolerant to in an ECEC setting.

And that's because there's lots of room for error and there's a lot of grey area.

And it's really up to the parents to feed them that food. And we don't want ECEC services or staff being caught up in that grey area where they when, when accidents can happen or reactions can happen. An allergy requires an ASCIA action plan, whereas intolerance does not. And it's really important that when children are being enrolled and parents are saying my child has an allergy or they have an intolerance, that you are making sure that they are using the right terminology.

And if they say my child has an allergy, you get an ASCIA action plan, either a red or a green one. So in in terms of symptoms and an intolerance is mainly digestive system symptoms. So it's things like tummy pain, diarrhoea, bloating, things like that, very gut based symptoms. Whereas an allergy is a multi system reaction.

So you can have skin symptoms, you can have gut symptoms, you can have respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms. So it's very multi system reactions.

Let's talk about allergy supplies. So, children themselves, they have ASCIA action plans. So you can have a child who has an ASCIA action plan for anaphylaxis, a red colour, red and blue action plan. And that's for children with a prescribed adrenaline injector. You can also have an ASCIA action plan for allergic reactions, which is green. And that's for a child with a known allergy but no adrenaline device.

There's also ASCIA action plans for FPIES, so food protein induced enterocolitis syndrome and for EoE, which is eosinophilic esophagitis. So if they're all allergic conditions and there are ASCIA action plans available for them, and that's important that you do get action plans if any of those conditions are identified.

And we do want versions or versions. Anything earlier than wouldn't be considered to be a valid action plan.

In terms of medications, obviously adrenaline devices, if prescribed, need to be provided to the service along with the action plan, the red action plan, if they have an an EpiPen.

So there's the EpiPen Junior, which is for to K children, and then there's the EpiPen for any children over kilos, kilos to any weight, including an adult. Then there's antihistamines. So antihistamines may not be prescribed on every child's action plan. If you get handed an action plan with no antihistamines written on it, that is absolutely fine. You do not need to send the family back to the doctor to get antihistamines written on them on the action plan. And that is because antihistamines don't change the outcome of the allergic reaction.

If the child is going to have anaphylaxis, they're going to have anaphylaxis regardless of whether they have antihistamines or not. Antihistamines don't stop anaphylaxis. They don't slow the progress to anaphylaxis. They have absolutely no role in the management of anaphylaxis. The only reason we ask children to have antihistamines is purely to make them a little bit more comfortable, because the mild to moderate symptoms of allergic reaction can be quite uncomfortable.

The itch, the nausea and things like that can be eased somewhat by antihistamines, but if they don't have antihistamines, it's a little bit more uncomfortable and that's OK.

In terms of service medications, it is highly, highly recommended that every first aid service, every service, sorry, has a first aid EpiPen. There is no regulation around this, but they are pretty, pretty important. And that's because they can be used for a child having their first anaphylaxis in care. And we know this happens.

Children do have their first anaphylaxis while they're being looked after in childcare, so they can definitely be used for that.

The first aid EpiPen can also be used as a second dose if the child's own prescribed device has been used or if they're prescribed EpiPen is faulty, misfired, expired, anything like that and no one's picked it up. It's also helpful for things to make your lockdown or evacuation procedures a little bit easier. The other thing that you need for the service is a first aid.

Ask your action plan and this is the orange and blue action plan. You can use this as a poster in your rooms. It's got no personal details on it. It's a great poster and it's a reference for people to look to if they think could this child be having allergic reaction. There is no need for any first aid antihistamines in a service because it's not prescribed. OK, so let's talk about some risk management principles.

So the principles of risk management, collaborate, communicate, consistency, colour coding, cross checking and containment of allergens.

Let's go through these.

So when you have a child that enrols in your service with allergies, you need to obviously collect their health information.

You need to obtain the latest copy of the ASCIA action plan and ensure that it's a valid action plan, which means or action plan. Collaborate with the parents and the or the carers to develop an individual healthcare plan or a risk management plan.

You're the expert in that you're setting and they're the expert in their child and you need to collaborate and discuss the best ways to keep the child safe.

If you need to, you can seek further information about allergy management or risk management from the Best Practice Guidelines website that I showed you at the beginning.

From us, the NSW Anaphylaxis Education Program We're always happy to help. From the directorate itself, you can contact the hotline and ask for help there. You can also ask the child's treating doctor.

What we don't want you to do, though, is to ask the treating doctor to sign a risk management document or to fill in the risk management document, because doctors generally don't know about risk management in the ECEC setting and they don't want to sign those documents because they feel like they're going to be liable if something happens to the child in the setting. It's really not their place.

They should only really be filling in the ASCIA Action plan and providing health information about the child's condition, nothing else.

Communication is really, really important, so all staff need to be aware of the children and their allergies, the risk management strategies and the plans in place to manage the child's allergies, the location of the medications and the ASCIA action plans and the policies regarding food service and documentation.

All staff should be responsible to communicate any concerns to their manager and staff should be asked regularly and perhaps at staff meetings about any concerns and they should be encouraged to voice their concerns at any time,

if they have concerns about the management of the children. You need to communicate concerns or questions to the family and make sure you put those concerns and questions in the communication plan, in the child's plan.

You can communicate the presence of a child with allergies to the families or the service community and what you expect from the community.

So you can communicate to the families of the children in the service. We expect that you don't bring food into the service. We ask that you don't bring children walking in the front door eating peanut butter toast, things like that. You need to put a notice in the entryway to the service that you have a child at risk of anaphylaxis. You don't need to name them and you don't need to put specific allergens, but it's part of the regulations and you can, you can put allergy appropriate, sorry, age appropriate allergy information into the curricular and on the best practice guidelines there are links to some of those resources that are available to you. And parents also have a responsibility to communicate changes of to the child's condition into to you.

So make sure that they're aware of that, that if the child's allergies change, they need to let you know. I know that's not as easy as it seems.

Consistency is really important in the procedures around food services.

So every room in the service should have the same procedures regardless if they have a child with allergies in that service every day of the week, regardless if the child is there on site every day or not. And every meal and drink.

And that includes late afternoon snacks so that you know the snacks that may be given out half an hour before close to keep children from being really, really restless before they their parents arrive. Every food and drink provided by the service.

Colour coding is really, really important and I'm a big fan of it. Anyone that's had anything to do with me will know this. So do consider it.

It's a visual reminder of allergies and of risk and of intolerances for that matter.

It enables a systematic approach to food delivery. I encourage a traffic light system, but you can use any colour coding that works for your service.

So I have a red for high risk, orange for moderate risk and green for low risk.

But you could have red, orange, white, you could have whatever colour used system you want. In the high risk category or in my colour coding system, the red category, you'd put the children with a red ASCIA action plan.

So children with an EpiPen green ASCIA action plan, say children with an allergy but no prescribed device, FPIES ASCIA action plan, EOE ASCIA action plan, anybody with celiac disease. So proper diagnosed celiac disease, not gluten intolerance and GPD deficiency or any other medical conditions where they may end up in hospital if they get fed the wrong food.

In the moderate risk condition in my colour coding system, the orange condition colour code, you put people with intolerances. So lactose or gluten intolerance, parental preferences, preferences or religious preferences.

And then in the third colour, so it might be green or it might be white, whatever you put in everybody else with no dietary requirements. So you've got these three tier system of colour coding. So keep the colour codes consistent through plates, cups, cutlery, bibs, placemats if you use them, and all through your documentation. And what you do is you serve food in coloured bowls with a label, even if the food is this same as everybody else's eating. So even if the food has no allergens in it, please still put them in a in the colour coded bowls. If you don't like colour coded bowls because they're different to everybody else, then just make sure your labelling is coloured.

So you might put the red laminated label on top of a white bowl, but make sure there is something that makes that bowl different. So the labelling should be laminated name tags with the child's name, photo, which is really important and what they're allergic to or what food, what they're allergic to or what food they need to avoid.

Cross checking is absolutely imperative and it's the same principle as if you're giving out medication. You need to make sure that the right food goes to the right child. So the cross checking points needs to happen at meal prep, in meal service.

And you serve children highest risk first, then moderate risk, and then low risk.

So you go through the kind of high, moderate, low, serve them first according to risk and most importantly, a two person check of the food at the child's side and make sure that the label matches the label on the food matches the child that the food is being given to, not matches the place mat, but matches the actual child.

So, and that's where that photo on that label becomes really, really important, right food, right child, The meal checkpoint that you would have received from the directorate is a really good resource to use here and there's instructions for use on how to use it on the website. So I'd encourage you to access that.

Containment of allergens is really important and this is to avoid the spread of allergens. So you can prepare the food for children with allergies.

First, in the kitchen, you need to cover and contain the food when you're preparing food. So cover it in the oven, in the sandwich press, in the microwaves. When you're storing food, make sure that the foods, the container's closed with the lids with a lid and that there is access to ingredients list when it's being transported from the kitchen to the rooms. Make sure that meals are covered.

The special meals are covered and labelled. When you're serving food make sure that there's no crossing of and sharing of utensils when foods being served. Seek your children at least in arms length away from each other. We don't want children isolated from their peers. Allergy tables don't work. It's not a good risk management strategy.

But keep them in arm's length distance away so they can't snatch food from each other or that spills don't create a problem. And consider having a clean up kit like a dustpan and broom, some gloves, things like that so you can clean up mess as it happens.

My #tip though is hand washing after eating. If you can do this, that is a really, really powerful risk management strategy. So once the children finish eating, get them to wash their hands with soap and water, not hand sanitizer after they eat.

And then they can go off to play. But that stops food protein being spread around the service. So in terms of allergic reactions, it's really important you know how to use the tools that are at your disposable.

And the ASCIA action plan is not just a pretty piece of paper that goes on the wall.

It's actually a tool that you use during allergic reaction along with your EpiPen and if prescribed the antihistamine. Just quickly, mild to moderate symptoms for food allergy basically involve the skin or digestive system.

But signs of anaphylaxis, the symptoms we're concerned about involve airway breathing or circulation or consciousness. So the AB's or C's, if you think about your first aid training, AB's or C's are affected during anaphylaxis.

When it comes to anaphylaxis training, it's really, really important that you get good quality anaphylaxis training and it needs to include how to use the ASCIA action plan, not just the EpiPen.

And on the Best Practice Guidelines website, there is a document that covers the minimum content required for anaphylaxis training. And I'd encourage you to read it and to hold your anaphylaxis training organisation to this document and make sure you're getting good quality training.

So in summary, the principles of risk management, keeping these kids safe, collaborate, communicate, consistency, colour coding, make sure you're cross checking your, the food that's been given to them, contain your allergens, use the resources available, seek high quality anaphylaxis training and everybody is responsible.

Thank you for your time.

Speaker: Laura Dawson

Thank you so much Kathryn, really appreciate your time today.

We do have minutes and I know there have been a few questions in the chat that our team have tried to answer, but Kathryn, I wonder if you have any suggestions.

John and Park Preschool mentioned about a colour coding system that could be an option if children supply their own lunches in a preschool. Do you have any ideas or practice for that?

Speaker: Kathryn Mullian

So the when services are a lunch box service, the colour coding is not as important as the two person checks. So making sure that the right child is getting the right lunch box and it that's where having a system where if the child goes and get their own, there has to be a system where there is a, there is educators going. Yes, that is the right. The child has actually got the right lunch box and they're eating from the right lunch box. The colour coding is more for services that actually have provide food. Even if there are services that have caterers that provide the food, the colour coding can also help because when you decant the food into it, I would be decanting the food into a colour cated bowl that is labelled. But double checking right food, right child. That's the biggest principle, right food, right child.

Speaker: Laura Dawson

And in terms of the allergens training, Jessica mentioned in the chats that it still has as the course. Do you know by chance if this be updated in 2025? Is there any new training coming up this year?

Speaker: Kathryn Mulligan

It is being the All About Allergen is being updated. I think it was there was some filming done at the beginning of this. So I think they're in the last stages of updating the latest training.

Speaker: Laura Dawson

Excellent. So there might be some new stuff coming soon. You've heard it here first.

Jan asked a question in the chat in relation to a child who has an anaphylactic reaction and that is if a child needs a second dose, can they use an adult EpiPen?

Speaker: Kathryn Mulligan

It depends on the size of the child. My advice would be to be talking to the paramedics on the phone about what to use as a second base. And this is where having a first aid device comes into its own. If you've got a first aid device, it should be an EpiPen junior, and then you've got a second device that is an appropriate dose for the children in your care. If you don't have a first aid device and you're thinking, Oh my goodness, we only have an EpiPen, I would be taking the advice of the paramedics on the phone.

Speaker: Laura Dawson

Yeah, thank you Kath.

Mayfield Early Learning said that doctors are now not putting expired plans on action plans. Do these action plans need to be updated annually?

Speaker: Kathryn Mulligan

As long as the action plan is valid and valid action plan is 2023-2024 or 2025, the date on the action plan that doctors write is not an expiry date to review date. And the action plan don't need to be updated every year unless your policy says so. And we would encourage you not to have a policy that says that the action plan has to be updated every year or a new action plan has to begin every year.

What you do need to do is check that the action plan is current in terms of the information on it every year. So you do need to check that nothing's changed on it. No allergies have been outgrown, there's no new allergens that aren't written on there, the phone numbers, etc etc. It's a real contentious point.

But in a nutshell, that review date that the doctor writes is not an expiry date and we don't want it treated as that and we don't want our precious doctor's appointments being taken up with writing a new action plan that doesn't need rewriting. So that's basically it's a bit of a tough one because there's regulations that you have to work around which might be a little bit different to what we would say.

Speaker: Laura Dawson

I am going to squeeze in one more question, Kath, if that's OK, which is just in relation to the, and I don't know if you say ASCIA, but ASCIA action plans, should these be the forms that medical practitioners use? We've got a few services in the chat that are suggesting that they get lots of different versions. So how would you suggest navigating that?

Speaker: Kathryn Mulligan

For an allergy, it should be the only plan that you should be following for an allergic reaction. It's the only medical management plan because it's the only one that Australia, New Zealand have for allergies and it's best practice.

Speaker: Laura Dawson

Excellent. All right. Well, our team, we've tried to answer as many questions as they can. And as I mentioned at the beginning, we'll have a look through all of those to look at whether we need to provide further guidance to the sector as well.

On screen right now, you can see some really helpful resources that you may be able to use in your service.

We really appreciate your attendance today and thanks so much, Kath, for coming along and presenting to the early childhood sector. If you need any more information, you can see our contact details on screen. There's also a QR code where you can provide us with some feedback. We'd really appreciate that to help us inform our future events. And thank you so much for being with us and for giving us your time today. I know it's challenging to, to be off the floor, but I'm, but hopefully you are able to learn something new and to take that back to improve, improve child safe practice in your service. Thank you again, everyone for joining us this morning.

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