Child Safe Recruitment - Policy and Practice

Transcript

Speaker: Taryn Dilly

Good morning everyone.

Firstly, I'd like to welcome you and thank you for joining us today.

My name is Taryn Dilly and I'm Director of Regulatory Policy and Practice within the NSW Early Learning

Commission and I'll be guiding you through this session today.

So let's get started.

Before we dive in today's content, I'd like to again begin by acknowledging the traditional lands on which we are meeting.

Wherever we gather today, we are on the ancestral lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Today, I'm joining you from the lands of the Bidjigal people of the Darug Nation.

I wish to pay my respects to their Elders, both past and present, and express my gratitude for their ongoing custodianship of the land and waterways where I live and work.

As we come together, I also want to acknowledge the Elders of the lands from which you are each joining us from and recognise them as the keepers of knowledge, song lines and stories.

I also want to recognise you and the vital efforts you are making to create early childhood environments that are culturally safe and welcoming spaces for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.

If you wish, please let us know which lands you are joining from today in the Q&A box.

And if you'd like to, also let us know where the rain flows where you live and work.

The rain that falls where I live flows to the Cooks River on the border of Southwest Sydney and Inner west Sydney.

So just some housekeeping matters before we proceed.

Firstly, this session will be recorded and it will be uploaded to the department's website, so you'll be able to refer back to it after today.

The link to this page, along with some other useful resources is going to be included and pinned to the Q&A in this chat.

If you have any questions during this webinar, please add them to the Q&A box.

We'll attempt to answer as many as possible during the session.

The session today will go for around 30 minutes and as we start I also want to provide a bit of a content warning.

We will be touching on some discussions of child abuse which may be distressing, so please do look after yourself and step away if you need to.

For other questions please contact the NSW Early Learning Commission's Information and enquiries line and the details will also be posted in the chat.

So the focus of today's session will be providing practical guidance for approved providers and service leaders on how to meet upcoming regulatory changes under Regulation 168 in New South Wales.

So this is a critical change that we've made.

It's going to make it mandatory for services to outline clear child safe recruitment and employment practices within your staffing policy and procedure.

It is a NSW specific reform and it's something that we feel really strongly about.

And that's because child safe recruitment is one of the most effective preventative measures and controls in early childhood education and care.

Like put simply, it really is that first line of defence, ensuring only people with strong values and who uphold child safety will enter your service and this can stop harm before it occurs.

And while the vast majority of people that you will meet through the recruitment that you will do will be well intentioned, dedicated and committed to child safety, we all know the stories where it has gone wrong.

This includes the case of Ashley Griffith.

If child safe recruitment was followed, his offending may have been stopped sooner.

So to help guide you to do child safe recruitment, well we've broken it down into 8 steps.

And these steps are designed to help you weed out and identify those people who are not suitable to work with children.

So by the end of this session, we hope you'll have a clear understanding of these recruitment steps and that you'll feel confident applying them in your own services staffing policy.

So on to the eight steps.

As I mentioned, the requirements we're discussing relate to upcoming changes to Regulation 168 in New South Wales, specifically clauses 168 (2ia and ib).

This will require services to outline child safe recruitment and ongoing child safe employment practices in the staffing policy.

These aren't requirements yet, but they are coming and we're asking you to start preparing now.

The changes also make it a requirement on approved providers to make reasonable inquiries to check if a prospective staff member is suitable to work with children.

So just to recap, what is mandatory is that you update your staffing policy to include your policy on child safe recruitment and child safe ongoing employment practices.

So as we move into the eight steps in child safe recruitment, through this webinar, I'll be sharing the Commission's guidance about what should be in your staffing policy and what it means to comply with child safe recruitment and ongoing employment practices.

So these are the steps that we want to see every time you undertake recruitment.

I'll also be outlining what steps are required when you engage agency staff.

And towards the end I'll introduce some new resources that the Commission has developed.

These have been adapted from OCG resources to support you meet these new requirements.

So let's begin with the first step.

So child safe recruitment starts before recruitment even begins.

It starts when considering what sort of person you are seeking to employ and what skills and attributes you need them to bring.

And this is where the role description and advertising come in.

So step one is the role description.

The role description sets the tone for your recruitment activity.

It's an opportunity for commitment to child safety to be listed as a key requirement.

It's your opportunity to detail the expected behaviours and practices that promote child safety.

And by setting these clear expectations from the outset about your organisation commitment to child safety, it will help deter applicants who don't share these values.

It also establishes that culture where safeguarding children is the core responsibility of all staff.

So moving on to Step 2, which is advertising, it is essential to always include your organisation's commitment to child safety in your job ads.

When child safety responsibilities are clearly stated, such as a commitment to protecting and promoting child well being, it encourages applicants who are well aligned with child safe principles.

Further, strongly signalling your organisation's commitment to child safety again may deter people with ill intent from the start.

Those individuals are likely to seek out organisations where child safe practices are weaker and not stated.

So let's look at 2 examples of text you might see in a job ad and the first one we've actually taken from an actual job ad which is - 'We are looking for a fun and energetic educator to join our team immediately.'

You must be eligible to work in Australia.

Or option B is 'Our service is committed to upholding child safety and the well being of children.'

Employment is subject to a valid NSW Working with Children Check, reference checks and adherence to the NSW Child Safe Standards.

So what are your thoughts on these sentences?

If you saw them listed in a job ad, which is the one that sets the tone for child safety.

So on to the next slide.

Reflecting on this first example, we are looking for a fun and energetic educator.

To join our team immediately, you must be eligible to work in Australia.

To us, it doesn't send those right messages.

Although fun and energetic are positive personality traits, those are not the primary characteristics you should be looking for.

You want individuals who are truly upholding child safety and understand it as the foundation of your services ethos.

So in the first example, there is no commitment to being a child safe organisation and there's no mention of the specific requirements needed for the employee other than their eligibility to work in Australia.

So this example misses that key opportunity to let prospective candidates know that they're going to be vetted appropriately.

And again, not highlighting this can encourage unwanted applicants.

By contrast, the second example, which has that child safety statement and what checks will be conducted, sets that transparent expectation from the outset.

And it reinforces that child safety really is a non negotiable condition of employment.

So your ads should really invite applicants to demonstrate how they're going to meet child safety requirements for the role.

You can do this by using screening questions or asking them to showcase this in their resume.

So moving on to the next step, which is shortlisting.

When shortlisting applicants, obviously the first thing to do is assess their qualifications, experience and suitability for the role and look for that evidence in their application that demonstrates they have that strong understanding and commitment to child safety.

What we really want to highlight today though is the importance of looking for the red flags within the resume.

So unfortunately, we have seen cases where problematic ECE staff where there were red flags in that resume, such as multiple short term roles have gone on to being employed and they weren't explored further.

And unfortunately it's gone on to cause harm to children.

So we want you to be exploring where there are multiple frequent roles.

And the other one to probe is gaps in employment history.

So gaps in employment history might be legitimate, but they also might indicate. Oh, sorry, I've just had a pop up to say that my computer is about to restart in 29 minutes and won't let me undo that.

So let's see how we go.

They might leave be legitimate, or it might indicate that the applicant has chosen to leave out a problematic part of their career and this this has happened.

So please do carefully assess resumes for such indicators and probe them before interview.

So you could do this by calling the candidate and seeking an explanation to frequent movements or gaps if by all other measures they seem suitable, and if the concerns cannot be satisfactorily addressed, the applicant shouldn't progress further in the recruitment process.

So once you've completed these steps, the next step is to interview suitable candidates.

So your policy should clearly outline that you're going to be asking child safe, value based specific questions which capture the candidates attitudes and understanding of child safety.

So when interviewing it's advisable to include a child safety representative on your panel where that's feasible to ensure a comprehensive assessment is undertaken.

So a few example questions you might use include, can you describe a time when you have worked well with children and what happened and what was the outcome?

Another question could be a colleague who is great with children has told you they take pictures of them while at the centre and send them to their parents.

How would you respond?

So these questions explore both situational and behavioural attitudes and will help you assess the candidates values and how they would respond to scenarios involving child safety concerns.

So more question examples can be found in the Child Safe Recruitment and Working with Children Check handbook, which is created by the Office of Children's Guardian, and we'll include a link to that in the Q&A box.

I'd also like to pause for a moment and mention AI.

So some candidates may use AI generated responses on materials, including resources from the Internet or even Cheat Sheets we know are circulating on the dark web.

So it's important that you also ask probing and follow up questions as this helps determine whether the individual has a deep, genuine understanding of child safety or if they've simply memorised an answer.

So now let's walk through a scenario.

So as you can see on screen we have 4 applicants being interviewed.

Applicant A started apprehensively indicated during shortlisting by the amber colour because there were gaps in their employment history.

During a pre screening phone call they explained these gaps were due to caring responsibilities for older parents.

That didn't fully resolve the concerns, but the applicant progressed to the interview due to the strength of their application.

During the interview, the applicant gave permission to contact workplaces prior to the gaps in employment history to confirm the reasons for leaving.

However, the responses from previous employers didn't fully align with the candidate's explanation and they therefore did not progress in the process.

Applicant B initially appeared strong but during the interview their behaviour seemed a little off.

When asked to role play a child safety scenario they were unable to clearly demonstrate an understanding of child safety practices so this candidate did not progress.

Applicant C was placed in the Maybe category.

They had some experience and can demonstrate an understanding of child safety at interview.

And finally Applicant D was a strong candidate.

They performed well, gave strong child safe responses during probing questions and could role play child safe scenarios so they were the preferred candidate and progressed to the referee check stage.

So on to the next step, referee checks

This is such a crucial step.

It's important that you conduct at least two referee checks more if you can, including the applicant's current manager and their most recent former manager, to identify and validate their previous employment and suitability for working with children.

Referee checks should be conducted verbally unless this is really not possible.

That's because verbal checks are the most effective way to get authentic information about a person's suitability to work with children.

So when you're doing those referee checks include behaviour based questions such as what was your experience of working with this individual and have there been any complaints or concerns raised against this individual and were there any concerns with interactions or behaviour when the applicant was with children?

So we have developed a referee check template with example questions also to help you do these verbal checks and they'll be posted at the end of the session.

So it's also important that you securely retain the documentation of all your referee checks as part of your recruitment record keeping.

And the other point I really want to stress, it is critical to follow up with referees who do not respond.

So not following up means an opportunity to gain valuable insight into a person's suitability.

And avoidance may indicate this person holds concerns and doesn't feel comfortable talking about them.

So again, this is real life examples where failure to follow up has led to information about a candidate's suitability being lost, which ultimately impacted the safety of children at the service.

So please do make sure you are following up with all referees.

So coming on to the next step on the next slide, which is background checks.

So your policy should clearly state that certain checks are going to be mandatory prior to employment commencing.

And we've listed those steps on the screen here.

The first step is identity verification, so confirming the applicant's identity with official documentation such as driver's licence and passports.

You also need to validate the qualifications the person is bringing through reliable sources and systems, such as confirming training via the USI portal and checking the National Training Register to make sure the RTO was operating and not subject to actions by ACECQA who regulates the delivery of qualifications.

Where relevant, you also need to confirm the teacher accreditation status.

Obviously working with children checks are an important one, so all staff permanent casual and agency educators must have Working with Children Check and you must verify this with the Officer Children's Guardian so you receive notice of any status changes.

You also need to check the NQAITS Prohibited Persons list to ensure the individual is not barred from working in early childhood education.

Also request that the applicant supplies a recent National Criminal History Check certificate.

This check is broader than working with children checks and it may provide insights into the person's suitability.

Also ask applicants to complete a declaration about their suitability and any current restrictions that may have been imposed by regulatory authorities.

So the restrictions that we impose can be an enforceable undertaking, a suspension order, a supervision order or a training order.

So please ask applicants to declare that they are not subject to any of these and you can use ACECQA's Prohibition notice declaration form and compliance history form, which is available on a ACECQA's sample forms and templates web page to do this.

So again, make sure you're documenting all of these checks as part of your record keeping.

So these checks are part of child safe recruitment and should be your standard practice.

And again, touching on agency staff, before an agency staff member can commence working with children, you must verify they're working with children check clearance and also check NQAITS to make sure they're not prohibited.

A recruitment agency cannot check the prohibited persons list, so the approved provider must do that for agency staff.

And also don't forget we now have the National Early Childhood Worker Register and you have 14 days from commencement to enter employee details, including agency staff into the register.

So hopefully now you have a successful candidate.

So step 7 is onboarding, an induction to make sure your new employee understands their responsibilities under national law and your services, policies and procedures.

So as part of onboarding, provide that child safety induction, including all relevant child safe policies.

Make sure you outline the employees legislative obligations and really promote your reporting culture.

Employees need to know how to report child safety concerns both internally and to authorities where they need to do that.

Obviously explain your Child Safe Risk Management plan too and the onboarding includes the mandatory Child safe training and where relevant, the Child protection training in New South Wales.

It's also a good idea to allocate a mentor to new employees to help strengthen their child safety capability and professional practice.

So in practical terms, the things we want to be seeing are new staff reviewing and signing and acknowledgement of Child Safe policies and the Code of Conduct, demonstrating their understanding of mandatory reporting responsibilities and pathways, and applying the Child Safe Risk Management Plan into their daily practice.

Ideally, they'd also be meeting regularly with their assigned mentor.

And when engaging a recruitment agency, it's important to do strong checks on the agency before you start using their workers.

So ask them what sort of checks do they do about the people that they bring on as agency educators?

And critically, if you have a concern about an agency staff member, how do you report that?

And also how do they monitor concerns about their agency staff members that are raised over time by multiple different services?

Unless they have a good answer to that, If you're not satisfied, don't engage them and seek a different recruitment agency.

Agency educators must also receive an induction to understand your services, expectations, your policies and reporting procedures before they start work.

So moving on to the 8th and final step which is ongoing child safe employment processes and record keeping.

So child safe recruitment doesn't end once staff are on boarded.

There are ongoing measures to ensure all employees continue to be child safe.

That's includes making sure all staff complete the required training and relevant training that you think is important for them in their roles.

Having robust processes to ensure that all staff have valid working with children checks so know when those checks are due to expire.

Regularly review staff compliance with child safety expectations, including discussions with staff and observations.

Communicate those legislative changes and the best practice guidance and importantly, do regular reviews of your services.

Child Safe risk management plan.

We'd like to see you embed child safety in your performance management process, ensuring it's discussed regularly.

And with that, we've now covered the 8 essential steps in child safe recruitment.

There's one additional point I'd like to touch on, which is reforms relating to working with children checks.

So the law in New South Wales has been amended to make it clear that all staff and volunteers who are aged 18 years or over must have a current working with Children check clearance before they engage in child related work.

It's not enough to simply have applied for a working with check clearance.

You need to verify those Working with Children checks with the Office of Children's Guardian through the online portal that includes students, volunteers and agency staff over the age of 18.

So what that does is links the person, the approved provider and the OCG system and it allows for that crucial notification where the Office of the Children's Guardian may change the status of someone's Working with Children Check.

So under section 174 AA of the national law in New South Wales, educators and staff must notify their approved provider in writing within 72 hours if they receive a negative notice from the Office of Children's Guardian or any other equivalent Office of Children's Guardian authority in another jurisdiction or any change to their teacher accreditation or registration.

They need to do this within 24 hours of becoming aware of the change and under section 174 AB approved providers must notify the NSW Early Learning Commission in writing within 24 hours once they become aware that an educator or staff member has received a negative Working with Children Check notice or there is a change to their teacher accreditation or registration.

The point of these requirements is to make sure there's a system we're closing any potential gaps in notification.

So to support you, the Commission has developed a Child Safe recruitment toolkit, which has been adapted from Office of Children's Guardian resources.

So it consists of a model child safe recruitment policy, which you can insert into your staffing policy, a recruitment checklist to make sure that you're doing all the things that I have covered today and interview and referee templates.

So we hope these resources will help you meet your legislative requirements now under 168(2) and child safety through the recruitment and ongoing employment practices.

So when using the toolkit, please do make sure that you're tailoring it to your services unique context, reflecting on your own values, environment and staffing needs.

It's important to treat the toolkit not as a one time resource, but as part of that ongoing process requiring regular review.

This will ensure your recruitment practices remain relevant, effective and aligned with emerging risk and best practice.

And that you're also doing that important critical reflection and learning from the recruitments that you have done to continually assess and improve your child safe recruitment practice.

And importantly, these policies must, must not only exist on paper, but they need to be clearly understood and consistently implemented across your service.

So links to this toolkit will be pinned in the Q&A box.

So that brings us to the end of this presentation today.

Approved providers, you do have that responsibility to ensure your staffing policy and procedure includes child safe recruitment and ongoing employment practices.

As I mentioned at the start, it's not a requirement yet, but it is coming.

So please do start preparing by updating your policies and procedures now and incorporate these eight steps to child safe recruitment that we've covered today.

So if you could, please scan the QR code on your screen and share some feedback.

Your input will help us shape future webinars and presentations to better meet your needs and address your questions.

Thank you everyone for joining us today.

Please keep an eye out for our upcoming sessions and thank you again for your time.

Have a great day.

End of Transcript

Business Capability Development Program (BCDP) Round 2 Information webinar

Speaker: Emma Lindsay

Hello, everyone and thank you for attending the information session today.

We're delighted to present a second round of the Business Capability Development Program or BCDP, which launched a couple of weeks ago on the 16th of Feb or a month ago, sorry, on the 16th of Feb.

In this session today, we're going to be sharing information about the program and its structure, eligibility for ECC services and an overall timeline.

We'll also provide some case study examples from the previous round to help you visualise what participation in the program may look like for your service.

We'll be using the Q&A function today for you to share any questions you have throughout the session.

Please submit your questions using the Q&A function at any time and we will work through as many as we can during this time together.

If your question relates to your individual service, you're welcome to ask it here or you may prefer to follow up with the department.

If we don't get to your question today though, we will follow up with you directly after this session.

But firstly, I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands on which we're all meeting today and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

I also extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander colleagues and community members here with us today online.

My name is Emma Lindsay, I manage the Innovation and Capability Programs team and I'm joined by Irene Vella, one of our senior program officers leading BCDP.

She is also one of our friendly team members who supports your enquiries about the program.

Let's move on.

We're also joined by Anthony Semann from Semann Slattery and Associates who are partnering with the NSW Department of Education as both program partner and one of our training providers delivering the Business Capability Development Program.

Shortly, Anthony will be providing more information about the program, it's two stages, the capability areas as well as some case studies.

But first, let's revisit the Business Capability Development Program, or BCDP Round two.

If you're not familiar already, BCDP Round One was a pilot grants program funded through the NSW Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund, a test and trial program that ran over the course of 2024 and 2025.

We're pleased to be able to offer a fresh iteration of the program running in 2026 and 2027.

BCDP is designed to support small or stand alone early childhood education and care providers of up to six services in specific NSW regions.

The program is designed to strengthen services, business viability and sustainability as a service provider through self reflection and in partnership with your allocated consultant.

The program considers your current capability levels across a range of non pedagogical areas and helps to build the skills and tools needed to excel in business.

The BCDP is free and tailored to the business needs of your individual services.

As I mentioned, the program is delivered in partnership with Semann & Slattery as our program partner.

So let's have a look at the map.

This round we've expanded.

BCDP is targeted to stand alone or small providers, meaning approved providers who have between 1 to 6 ECE services and which are operating in any of the following eight areas in New South Wales, Griffith - Murrumbidgee (West), Queanbeyan, Penrith, St Mary's, Mount Druitt, Camden, Blacktown and new services in Campbelltown.

To be clear, providers may operate outside of these areas, but the services themselves must be located within these eight areas to be eligible for BCDP support.

Services in the Campbelltown area were also eligible to apply for round one of the program in 2024, so those who took part in both stage 1 and stage 2 of round one unfortunately won't be eligible to reapply.

But if you're in the Campbelltown area and only completed Stage 1 or are newly eligible, we would love to hear from you.

Remote rural and regional services are strongly encouraged to apply.

I'll now bring on Anthony and hand over to him to tell us more about what's involved in BCDP.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

Thanks, Emma.

And hi everybody.

It's wonderful to join you here today.

At Semann and Slattery, we specialise in building their capability, the leadership and the business resilience of the early childhood sector.

So in partnership with the Department of Education, our role in this program is to work with you to be really successful and to deliver the learning experience, the coaching and the practical tools that will help your service strengthen their operations and to plan confidently for the important thing for services.

So what does support through the BCDP look like?

It focuses on non pedagogical leadership, helping your service improve their business side of their operations.

In stage one, what we do is you'll get up to 12 hours with an early years business capability consultant who will work with you to review your current operations.

We'll set goals with you and we will Co-design.

Oh, am I just checking?

I'm still online.

Can you still hear me, Irene?

Yep, great.

And we'll work with you to review your operations, to set goals with you and Co-design a really tailored and individualised action plan.

Now we call this first stage the design and plan stage.

And this is where your journey, this really exciting journey starts with you as a program partner.

We'll work closely with your service to actually understand your current business leadership and service management practices.

And we'll identify, in partnership with you, opportunities for growth.

So at this stage, it begins with a phone call to introduce your program partner and we confirm your next steps.

Then we'll do an onsite visit and we'll spend time with you and your team to gain a better understanding of where your service is and the context in which you operate.

And for the service where travel, our scheduling is a challenge.

We do have a hybrid consultation model combining both online and in person sessions because we know that flexibility is really key.

Now after stage one across, Sorry Across stage 1, participating services will save up to 12 hours of engagement with your program partner.

So we'll undertake a collaborative business review supportive process, which is there to really know what you do well because we like to work with your friends.

We'll identify with you any challenges that you might be encountering, but also opportunities for growth in things like governance and compliance, community, family and importantly, staff engagement, challenge, change and service management, administration and operations and your risks, work, health and safety assessment, finance and IT, but also strategy and business planning.

Now, we'll explore these capability areas in more detail a bit later on in this presentation with you and my colleagues from the department.

So in this stage, we'll ask for you to share any relevant information that helps us get a really clear picture about the environment you work in and your needs.

Because again, context matters in this situation and sharing any personal information will follow appropriate consent but also confidentiality processes as well.

So be reassured of that.

Now following this business review, we'll work together to Co-design A tailored action plan and this is one of the real strengths of this program.

This will identify any priority goals you have, any strategies, perhaps tools or support that you require.

Now we'll nominate stage 2 learning and support activities and we'll provide a clear road map for ongoing program participation.

Now this is practical and we know practicality really does matter.

It's achievable and it's directly aligned with your day to day realities.

It also give you and guide you with the support activities in Stage 2 and opportunities to regularly reflect and we'll adjust with you as we go along.

See by the end of Stage 1, every service will have a clear understanding of where they are now, a shared plan of where you want to get during and following the program.

And now we'll move into Stage 2 where your action plan.

This is brought to life and it's brought to life with a range of activities like professional development and training, coaching, but also practical application within your service.

So in Stage 2, you get up to 158 hours of targeted support based on your action plan.

Now this can include, as we said, workshops, it can include coaching, even team sessions, guidance on digital tools.

It's flexible and your mentor is there to meet your needs and the context in which you work in.

The other great piece of news is you're eligible up to $13,650 in access payments now.

That's there to support your participation in the program, especially to help with backfill of staff or the meeting costs of any activities completed after hours.

And that's a real bonus of being part of this program and increases accessibility.

See Stage 2.

In the implementation stage is where services take the plan developed in Stage 1 and we help you put it into action.

This is where you'll meet your training provider.

You work in consultation with someone from either Community Early Learning Australia, also known as CELA or someone from Semann Slattery and our team.

Now based on your context, your resources and intended needs, your service support in the program will build capability but also help you embed your improvements.

Now this support can be achieved through a combination of things, as we stated, face to face sessions, online webinars, one on one mentoring but also some virtual learning.

Now we know that this flexibility ensures that it fits within your team and your services needs.

It's not a one size fits all approach and this is about where turning your tailored action plan into real and lasting change.

So by the end of stage 2 services will have stronger business capability, which really is one of the goals of this program.

You'll have more confidence in your leadership and embedded processes to support long term sustainability now.

The support provided by the program focuses on real business challenges that your services are facing.

Where challenges or perhaps shortcomings or areas for growth currently exist for your service, we've identified a range of capability areas that we can focus on to support you throughout the program.

Now these capability areas, well they're grouped by business categories and they can be targeted to help and strengthen your services, business viability, but also your sustainability.

Now these include the following governance processes and oversight.

Think things like meeting structures, policy reviews, complaints and grievance processes.

The other thing is community, family and staff engagement, which we know are critical to quality.

This can include transition planning, policy and procedure development, and processes for embedding change within a service.

Also think about staff management, succession planning, development of accountability measures, effective team communication strategies.

We can also focus on administrative processes like wait list processes with you, business continuity protocols, standardisation of admin systems or even workflows within your program.

We can focus on operational risks and management like internal audit calendars, quality improvement plans and role expectations.

Think work health and safety like inductions or refresh processes, infection prevention procedures, duty of care, expectations, safe sleep, compliance and monitoring practices, but also the management of high risk behaviours.

Another area can actually be property and asset management, which is often a challenge for services.

Things including an asset register, cleaning service, contract oversight, planned upgrade lists for capital work.

We can also focus on financial management like budget setting and review cycles, procurement and purchasing systems, Also financial delegation and reporting.

Also information technology services like data security and privacy, induction and embedding new IT system processes and also team training around these processes.

And the other area is strategic and business planning, short and long term planning, strategic workforce planning for an application we can support you with.

But annual reviews and cycles see you can choose to seek help to excel in one for as many of these areas.

Essentially, in your application, you're gonna tell us where your biggest areas of needs are and we're going to work with you in Stage 1 to help you build from there.

Now, Semann & Slattery and community early learning, we deliver supports informed by our extensive experience within the early years sector and our sector experiences.

This BCDP program, what it does, it delivers capability uplift to participating services.

Now specifically it's a free program to support business leadership and management capability.

It focuses on non pedagogical leadership, so helping services to improve their business side of their operations.

Secondly, what it does, it provides tailored and individual support.

Each service undergoes a stage one business review.

Remember this is up to 12 hours to assess any gaps, any needs, analysis your capability, your needs and your goals, but also a tailored stage 2 capability uplift.

Now this training.

This can include training, professional development, coaching and mentoring.

The package is then delivered varying from light touch, which is 20 to 40 hours to intensive support and this is up to 158 hours.

So as we've previously described, delivery includes pre recorded webinars, coaching, site visits, self paced learning and reflective practice sessions which have proven to be really successful in our round one support.

Its service specific.

It's not one size fits all because we know that doesn't work and our aim is really to address what we've collaboratively identified in Stage 1.

#3 The program provides financial support so you can receive an access payment up to $1650 across 2 stages.

Now.

This is to access backfill for your staff so they can attend the training or to pay overtime for out of hours learning.

And #4 The overall program runs from February 2026 to June 2027.

And that might sound like a long time at first, but we've designed it in this way to ensure that you're well supported at every step.

See from February to May 2026.

The focus here is on applications, on the assessment of those and notifying services of their outcomes.

Now this is the preparation phase, so no program activities are actually required during that period of time.

Actual program participation though, runs from June 2026 to June 2027.

And this is where the services engage in two structured support,

and pay stages.

Stage one, sorry, is the discover and plan.

And Stage 2, as we identified before, is the implementation.

This extended timeline simply ensures that there's enough time for meaningful support, practical implementation, sustainable change, because we don't want to put pressure on you and your service now.

While the BDCDP offers targeted business support, it also has clearly boundaries, which is really critical to make sure the program is successful.

So it doesn't provide pedagogical or educational program support.

It's not focused on curriculum or educational leadership or teaching quality or compliance with the NQS.

It does not replace your quality improvement plans for educational frameworks.

It's actually not for large providers.

This program is only open to support providers who operate a maximum of 6 services.

It's actually not regulatory compliance or an audit program.

It's a support program.

It's not a compliance check and it doesn't provide funding for infrastructure or capital works.

Access payments are for training related costs, for example, staff coverage.

It does not provide funds for any renovations, for building upgrades or large scale text purchases.

It doesn't solve all business challenges and we're realistic about that.

The BCDP.

Supports capability uplift but services still manage their own operations, your own decision making and your own implementation.

It's short term program which has time limited capability building support.

It's not a long term consultancy and importantly it's not mandatory and may not suit all services.

Your participation.

It's actually voluntary services must be willing and able to commit time but also to commit your staff.

So what does the participation in the Business Capability Development Program look like in practice?

So in the first round of BCDP we worked with over 40 small services across Campbelltown, in Dubbo, in Coffs Harbour and each service received tailored support that aimed to strengthen their business operations, their leadership capability and long term sustainability.

So what kind of challenges did the services bring to the program in that stage?

Well, some services wanted support to strengthen their long term strategic thinking and actually put more robust systems into place to guide their operations.

Others were looking to improve admin processes, to digitise their system or to strengthen their board or governance relationships.

Now many services what they really wanted was to build greater confidence in business decision making rather than relying on ad hoc approaches.

So what changed as a result of this program?

Well, in one example, a consultant worked with a service leader to Co-design long term strategies and associated systems that new guide that would guide operations and decision making.

Now this service leader highlighted clear future focused strategies and improved systems as one of their key outcomes that they hoped to achieve through participation.

Now noting significant improvements in how the service operates.

This was also a noticeable lift in staff confidence using digital tools, which was great, which is now also embedded in everyday admin and communication.

Now, what are about another service?

Well, they reported transformational improvement in governance practices, in their decision making, in their administration, efficiency, in staff engagement, but also staff morale and how their service builds and actually maintains connection with families and communities.

They also noted significant improvement in strategic and business planning capability, in adaptability to operational needs, but also overall sustainability in long term viability.

So across services, participants told us that the program helped them get on top of their admin, on top of improved governance and board relationships in embedded systems and to feel more confident as leaders.

Now, how did they describe their participation in the program?

Well, one director said to us, it met us where we were and it moved us with confidence.

Now these are just some of the outcomes of round one.

And we're excited to work with more services as we move into Round 2.

Now, I'm going to hand back to the department here, the team to share how you can participate in the upcoming round.

So over to you, Irene.

Speaker: Irene Vella

Thanks, Anthony.

Before we continue, I might just pause here for a second and see if we have any questions and then we will continue on.

I might kick off.

So applications for round two close 30 March 2026.

As you can see, this timeline outlines what your journey through the Business Capability program will look like.

The timeline shows up from February to May 2026.

The focus is on your interactions with the Department of Education, specifically our program team, to manage the applications and assessment process and notify services of outcomes.

Applications are first reviewed by the Department's Progress Program team to confirm eligibility.

If the number of eligible applications exceed available places, an independent assessment panel applies weighted criteria to prioritise services based on demonstrated need and following this stage.

Stage One runs from June to September 2026.

At this time, Semann & Slattery will be your program partner, guiding and supporting services to develop the unique action plans during Stage 1.

Then Stage 2 continues from October 26th to June 2027.

In Stage 2, participating services will be supported by consultants from either Semann & Slattery or Community Early Learning Australia with training with Training and Learning.

Although the program spans for 18 months, it's not intensive.

It has been designed to be structured yet flexible, so services can engage in a way that fits with their operational realities and busy daily schedules at a pace and method that suits them.

By following this journey, services will build stronger business capability, leadership, confidence and long term sustainability.

To apply for the program you will need to complete a short application form and self assessment via Smarty Grants before 30 March 2026.

If you have not used SmartyGrants before, you will need to register.

Registration is a free and straightforward process.

You can save the application as you go and return when ready and continue making changes until you're ready to submit.

Note that once you have submitted, you will be unable to make any changes to your application.

We also provide you with an optional readiness checklist to help you determine whether your service is ready to participate in the program.

This checklist is available through the Business Capability Development Program web page on the Department of Education's website, so you can access it at any time.

We would also like to take this opportunity to promote the upcoming online Application Support webinar, which will be running on the 23rd of March.

The Application Support webinar will include information on the application process, explain eligibility and assessment requirements, and provide general information on how to prepare your application.

The details for these sessions are available up on our website, where you'll have the opportunity to register your attendance.

We would love to see you there.

If you have any questions after today regarding BCDP, please reach out to our team through email ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au or over the phone on 1800 619 113 and I believe these details will also be popped in the Q&A for you.

Alternatively, if you've got a question about the online application system SmartyGrants, you can contact the support desk directly via via the phone or via email.

OK, so before we finish today's session, we'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to scan the QR code on the screen.

It will take you to a very short survey where you can provide feedback on today's session.

We have also shared the link in the chat in case you can't access the QR code via your phone.

And while you're doing that, again, we might pause, see if anyone's got any questions, we're here.

We'll wait a couple of seconds just to see.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

There surely must be some questions out there in early childhood land.

We love your questions.

Even even if it's something that we've mentioned before that you'd like us to go back and repeat, we're really happy to answer those questions for you.

Speaker: Irene Vella

Absolutely.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

We can hear you all typing out there.

There's a question.

Stacey has asked a question there, Irene, I believe.

Speaker: Irene Vella

I believe I let me have a look.

I think I responded to Stacey and we've got another question as well in regards to your area location.

So if you have a look at the guidelines, there are maps on the guideline that show the SA-3 regions and what what areas fall within those SA threes.

So you can have a look.

It'll show you with the if you fall within that border.

If your service falls within that border, then you will be eligible to apply for the program.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

We must have done a really great job at presenting if we've answered all the questions.

Speaker: Irene Vella

We've got another question that's popped through.

Will the program support any employee, not just management or leadership roles?

Yes, your staff can participate in the program as well.

Absolutely.

It's not just for management or leadership roles.

Yeah.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

And this is an important part when we're in stage one with you and you're working to develop your one of your application, but also when you're working to map out your goals and what you hope to achieve.

Your mentor is there to do some heavy lifting it and guide you through that process around who would be, you know, ideal to participate in what aspects of the program and how we can support their engagement as well.

Speaker: Irene Vella

Are we getting lots of questions there?

This session is actually already been recorded and is up on the website, so there's a pre recording of this session as well.

So you're more than welcome to visit it at any time.

It is up on the DoE website.

How can we follow up with the support?

Is it face to face or online and who can be involved?

Is it only for management?

So again, it is a hybrid model.

So Semann & Slattery will come out to your service in stage one of the program, but it is delivered as a hybrid model as well.

So you have the opportunity to be able to do it online.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

Yeah, that's why the bespoke approach that's really tailored takes into consideration the context in which you work in.

So having that dialogue with the team from Semann & Slattery ensures that it's very realistic that you succeed through that process.

Yeah.

And we can give advice around what might work and what might not work and how we can support you throughout the program.

You might, for example, want it staged in a way that there's work just with the leadership team to start with and then to engage your team as we go along as well.

Speaker: Irene Vella

Another question, are there any limits placed on services that are rated working towards the applicate?

The guidelines say that your service needs to be at least meeting with with exception to working towards services.

The application form does give you an opportunity to explain the working towards rating and it will be assessed by the panel.

So there's no limit on how many services that are rated working towards that will be accepted in the program, but it is something that the panel will assess.

We are currently not part of the eligible locations.

Will this program may be made available to other areas of Greater Sydney in the future?

So BCDP is a test and trial program.

It was set up for round one.

There is $5.3 million funding out of the Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund.

So we did have a successful round one, which is why the second round of the program is launched.

At this stage we do not see that there might be.

There won't be another round of the program though, and to register for the webinar, that should be up on our website.

If it is not up on the website, we can contact you.

If you could send us an email directly at ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au, we can reply to you with that registration link if it is not up there, but it should definitely be up on the website for you to be able to register.

How many places are available for Round 2?

That's a great question.

We don't know.

We have like I mentioned there is a, a funding with there was a funding amount of $5.3 million, but we just apply for the program.

At this stage I could not tell you exactly how many places are available for Round 2.

So yes, so if we got the call to say from I'm extremely, the local operations team contacted services.

If you've got the call to say that you weren't eligible, you are eligible to apply for the program.

So if the program is under subscribed, then all eligible applications will make it through to the program.

If by any chance the program is oversubscribed, that is when it goes through to the assessment panel and weightages will apply to your applications.

After the assessment process which concludes in around May, we will send out a notification of outcome to all services, whether they were, whether they were successful or not, to let you know of the outcome of the of the application.

On the application form, it asks us to provide further information on the NQS rating.

The information that they're looking for is just on your NQS rating and why that is.

If you, if you would like, I am more than happy to contact you after today and we can discuss this.

It's up to you.

If you'd like to reach out, you can just pop me an email and I can contact you and we can talk through that if you if you like.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

Irene, am I correct in when I heard this might clarify the question for some people, if they received a meeting rating, they might want to put more information there to give some context for their meeting rating.

Is that correct?

Speaker: Irene Vella

Well, they're working towards rating.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

Sorry, they're working towards.

Sorry, they're working.

Speaker: Irene Vella

Correct.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

If they didn't get a meeting rating, you might want to take that opportunity, provide further information about your working towards rating as opposed to having a meeting rating.

Speaker: Irene Vella

Yeah, absolutely.

I just take one more question.

I'm out of the 8 trial locations.

Can I still apply?

No, Unfortunately, if you fall out of the 8 trial locations, then you are ineligible to apply for the program.

One more question.

Sorry, I keep saying all this question.

I keep saying one more question but I'll just answer this one here.

Yes, Queanbeyan is part of the trial.

If you fall out of the SA 3 area, then unfortunately you will be ineligible.

Your service needs to fall within that SA-3 location.

So if Sutton falls out of the Queanbeyan SA 3 location then unfortunately you will be ineligible to apply for this round.

OK.

I might stop there if we haven't gotten through your question.

If we haven't gotten answered your question, I will.

We will reach out to you after this meeting and get back to you in regards to that.

We do encourage applications and questions.

So reach out to us and apply before the 30th of March.

OK, so thanks again for taking the time to learn about BCDP Round two.

We are proud of the program success in 42 services to date and a place to be able to present this opportunity for another funding round to support even more ECEC services.

We all we know small and standalone services are a value backbone of early childhood education in New South Wales and we're keen to support you to lead with strength, clarity and sustainability.

We hope that today's session has given you a clear understanding of how the program works, from the initial Discover and playing stage in Stage one through to Stage 2 implementation, as well as the support that's available to strengthen your services, business capability, leadership and processes.

We look forward to supporting your service on this journey and helping you build a stronger, more sustainable future for your team, families, and communities.

So if you're ready to take the next step and participate in round two, please complete the application form via Smarty Grant.

We hope to see your application soon.

Thank you.

Speaker: Anthony Semann

Thanks everybody.

End of Transcript

Expanding Quality Access program information session!-20260318_230046UTC-Meeting Recording

Speaker: Lara Stapleton

Good morning.

I'm Lara, Manager, Expanding Quality Access in Early Childhood Outcomes at the NSW Department of Education.

Thank you for joining our second information session on the new Expanding Quality Access program today.

I'm joining from the lands of the Gadigal people and I acknowledge all the various Aboriginal lands you are joining us from today.

I recognise Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander people as the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live.

I pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging as ongoing teachers of knowledge, song lines and stories.

I also acknowledge and pay our respects to Aboriginal and or the Torres Strait Islander colleagues joining us today.

We all strive to ensure every Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander child in NSW achieves their potential through education.

While we are waiting for more to join, I would love to hear from you and learn which Aboriginal lands you are on today.

It'd be great if you could write your response in the question and answer or as you might hear at the Q&A chat section at the top of your screen.

Before we move too far into the session, I will go over a few housekeeping items.

This session is recorded and it will be published on the NSW Department of Education website in the coming weeks.

This published reporting will include captions and a transcript.

As there are so many of us, the microphone and camera and chat functions will be disabled throughout the presentation.

Instead, please submit any questions via the Q&A function.

We anticipate most of your questions will be covered in today's session.

However, we do have a team who are ready to respond directly to questions about the program if you choose to put them in the Q&A function.

Please note, we are not able to answer specific questions such as those about funding or support for a particular service today.

Those types of questions are better directed to the department in our usual way.

Questions submitted in the Q&A function may be also answered after today's session and may include updates on the Expanding Quality Access as frequently asked questions available on the department's website.

For those who've just joined, thank you for joining the NSW Department of Education for the Expanding Quality Access information session.

I'm Lara, the manager of the Expanding Quality Access program.

As not everyone was able to join our first information session, I'm really pleased to share this session with you today, especially because this time we have our program support partners, Community Early Learning Australia and Shakeup Architecture.

Today you will hear from Amy Coulton, Early Childhood Education Specialist from Community Early Learning Australia (CELA), and Susana do Vale, the Director of Shakeup Architecture and a registered architect.

So why was the Expanding Quality Access program created?

As you may know, Expanding Quality Access is a new grants program from the NSW Childcare and Economic Opportunity Fund.

An objective of the fund is increasing participation in the state's workforce, particularly for women.

It does this by making quality early learning and care more affordable and accessible.

Expanding Quality Access aims to support this objective.

Across NSW, we know many families report needing early learning that's available for more weeks of the year, longer hours of the day and for younger children.

We know that in many communities there simply aren't enough services to perhaps meet those needs.

In some places, families are taking longer commutes, patching together care or reducing their work or study hours because suitable care may not be available.

Community preschool can often be the first to see this pressure.

We also know that changing and expanding services isn't simple.

There are real barriers.

50

Barriers.

Whether that's navigating funding applications, workforce changes, or working with preschool committees, or understanding the community need from your families, Expanding Quality Access was created to respond to your realities.

It's designed to help community preschools that want to meet these family needs but also need time, advice and funding support to do that in a planned, sustainable way without compromising their quality.

Now for a brief overview or perhaps a recap of the program for those who've joined us again after our first information session, but also welcome to those who are joining us for the first time.

As you may know, the total program value is $100 million.

The primary outcome of the program is that recipients of funding and support have transitioned from a not for profit community preschool to a not for profit long day care service.

By the 30th of June 2028.

There are 3 operating models.

Services can transition to Model 1 a long day care for children from birth to school age, Model 2 a long day care for children 2-5 years of age.

Model 3 a long day care for children 3-5 years of age.

Using Expanding Quality Access, funded services can be supported to transition to a long day care service as one of the 3 operating models named.

The service must operate for at least 48 weeks per year, primarily provide care as distinct from primarily providing preschool education, and administer the childcare subsidy.

There are three types of funding available to services during this 2 year transition period.

Operation support funding, capital works funding and transition support funding.

Let's go through each type.

Firstly, operation support funding is for the operational costs that are necessary to transition along day care service.

This can be workforce supports such as 10% of award rates for all staff employed at a transition service.

It can also include any additional workforce hours required in transition.

This could include funding for both educators and administrative staff on transition related duties.

Operational support can also cover utility expenses.

This is for the incremental increases in utility bills directly related to extended hours of operations at the transition service, such as electricity, water and waste management.

Additional rent can also be covered if the transition service existing lease requires changes to support transition operations and therefore any additional rent can be funded.

Expanding Quality Access funding is available for capital works essential to your transition plan to a long day care.

The capital works also need to be compliant with regulatory requirements and to be able to be completed with the agreed timeline for transition that is agreed between a provider and the fund board.

This is typically less than 2 years.

Capital Works Funding can be used to build a long day care service on vacant land or convert an existing property to a long day care service with the plan to transition the existing community preschool to the new site, or a transition service to convert an existing building or buildings to enable a long day care service to operate on the site.

In particular, capital works funding is available for new builds.

Funding to build a long day care service on vacant land or convert an existing property to a long day care service.

Extension work extending the footprint of an existing building.

Fit out funding to fit out an existing space into a compliance space for children aged 0-5 years old.

Finally, transition support funding is for the one off activities and items necessary to transition to a long day care.

This is the only one of the 3 types of Expanding Quality Access funding for services that is capped up to $151,250 per service is available.

Transition Support Funding can be used for staff training and professional development.

Costs directly related to transitioning to a long day care.

Software and IT digital upgrades costs directly related to transitioning to a long day care.

It can also be used for resources and equipment and relocation costs to meet the costs of relocation that is necessary to open as a long day care.

Under the Expanding Quality Access Program, an additional 15% loading on top of the total funding allocation may be applied to transition services in one of the 54 priority areas.

This additional 15% loading is to support access to early learning in known undersupplied areas across NSW.

The boundaries of the priority areas are based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 Australian Statistical Geography Standard Statistical Area Level 3, also called SA3 areas.

The priority area boundaries are also where there is an identified undersupply of early learning places for children aged 0-5 years old or non school aged children.

This undersupply is informed by the NSW Department of Education's supply and demand data, which is also informed by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunals (IPART) Independent Marketing Monitoring Review.

To be eligible for the priority area loading, the transition service must be in one of the 54 listed priority SA3 areas.

The 15% loading will be applied automatically.

The full list of areas is in the Program Guidelines or you could email the program team at the department to have them confirm for you.

Just contact ecec.eqa@det.nsw.edu.au for help.

So who can apply?

Expanding Quality Access is an optional funding opportunity open to not for profit providers of existing community preschools or those who represent them.

If an application is submitted by a representative, you might see that those representatives are termed agents in the program guidelines and they have their own eligibility criteria.

Back to service eligibility, a community preschool must be funded under the Start Strong for Community Preschool program and rated at least meeting the National Quality Standard.

I'm pleased to say the Expanding Quality Access program is now open for applications until the 13th of April.

You can apply for Expanding Quality Access online through SmartyGrants.

When you apply, please do seek to address every question and provide the evidence you have to support your application.

You might not have all the detailed steps mapped out or perhaps a fully itemised budget yet for every activity and item needed in your transition.

That's fine.

Provide what you have and keep listening and hear what support you might be able to receive through our partners.

Applications will be assessed by an assessment panel against the program assessment criteria.

The assessment panel will determine if applications demonstrate each criteria that falls under 3 categories in section 2 of the Programme Guidelines.

The 3 categories include Service, Financial and Community.

Applications are assessed to see if they demonstrate readiness, capacity and capability to achieve the program outcomes.

The service, financial and community assessment criteria apply across all 3 funding streams and also can apply across all the 3 long daycare models depending on which one you pick.

If a funding stream or long day care service model is specified for that specific criteria, then it will only apply to that stream or model.

Please consider this with your application.

They could, for example, only be some criteria relevant to catering to children from 0 to 2 years old.

They would not need to be demonstrated in other applications for preschool aged children only.

So I understand that there's a bit to consider.

And as introduced, the department has partnered with CELA and Shakeup to support services in navigating how to turn their ideas and plans such as for capital works or operational funding into an application for Expanding Quality Access.

So to help explain the program more, what it looks like perhaps in practice, we thought it could be useful to take a slightly different approach for the next part of today's session, rather than just running through the Expanding Quality Access guidelines, we're going to bring the program to life using 2 fictional case stories.

Susana, Amy and I will talk you through 2 case stories that cover 2 former community preschools, Valley Preschool and Hilly Preschool.

The purpose is to show how Expanding Quality Access, funding and support could work from applying through to transition.

The aim is to hopefully make the program a bit easier to understand, more relevant and hopefully a bit more engaging.

While we share how Expanding Quality Access could apply at your own service and community.

I will now introduce our case stories, first Valley Preschool and then second Hilly Preschool.

Both are well regarded services, families trust them, and children are connected and thriving.

Starting with Case Story 1: Valley Preschool.

For Valley Preschool and many community preschools, a lot of what they knew about local need came from everyday interactions with families.

Valley Preschool had noticed from everyday interactions that the needs of parents, carers, and guardians had changed in their town.

Increasingly, there were more families in town working from home or down at the new resource facility, which had opened about 20 minutes drive from town.

They also heard some carers needed to work more days to make ends meet, but they weren't able to take those additional days due to caring responsibilities.

So this is where Valley's journey begins.

Valley Preschool was close to their families and that connection meant that they were the first to see when their community needs were changing.

So before transition, Valley Preschool was a 40 place service catering to children aged 3 to 5 years old.

Valley Preschool had a single building and operated Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 4:00 PM.

I will now hand to Amy who will take us through how CELA and Valley Preschool took the informal conversations with parents, carers, and guardians and turned this into some evidence on community need.

We'll later hear from Susana on how Shakeup and Valley Preschool planned and scoped a DA.

To end their ideas, to expand and fit out their single building, to support new families.

Over to Amy.

Speaker: Amy Coulton

Thank you Lara.

So CELA met with Valley Preschool to provide some tailored one on one advice and support for the application.

Now.

This advice included an evaluation on whether to apply, scoping the funding supports needed to transition to a long day care service model, and planning and implementing a successful transition in response to the local demand.

CELA provided Valley Preschool with a budgeting toolkit to assess their services financial sustainability, allowing the service to develop an operating budget for the different scenarios that they were considering.

We helped to design a staff survey to capture meaningful insights about the team experience and readiness for change and also supported in discussing and designing additional survey questions based on the unique service context.

We then provided additional support in assessing their license places, utilisation and how to best meet high quality workforce needs throughout the change.

I'll now hand over to Susana who's going to talk you through the support that they provided Valley Preschool.

Speaker: Susana do Vale

Thank you, Amy.

Shakeup support began with an initial meeting to understand the service, their goals and the infrastructure required to successfully transition under the EQA program.

We then prepared a project timeline with key milestones to confirm the project was achievable within the required time frame.

From there, we worked with Valley Preschool to develop a clear project plan outlining the steps needed to deliver the project.

We also reviewed supporting documentation, identified potential risks and guide the team on the evidence required for the application, ensuring it aligned with the EQA assessment criteria and strengthen their submission.

OK, so this diagram shows the main stages of the typical project from early planning through the construction.

At the start is Feasibility, where you define your project, understand your site budget and planning rules.

This is about making sure your idea is realistic.

The next stage is Concept design, where layouts are developed and the project starts taking shape.

At this stage you're exploring the brief against planning controls and building regulations, and you might have 2-3 or even more potential options to consider.

After that is Design Development, where a preferred concept option is selected and further developed.

The plans become more detailed, often with input from consultants to ensure the design is practical, coordinated and aligned with your goals.

Pre-DA is highly recommended as it allows you to obtain early feedback from Council and identify any potential issues before lodging your application.

The next stage is the DA Lodgement where the application is formally submitted to Council.

Then Council assesses the proposal and if approved, issues an approval with consent.

After that comes the Construction Certificate or CC.

This is where the detailed documentation is completed.

Code compliance is confirmed and approval is given to build.

After obtaining the construction certificate is important to appoint a project manager to oversee delivery, coordinate consultants and contractors and ensure the project is delivered on time and within budget.

It is important to highlight that specialist consultants might be needed at other stages.

Valley Preschool does not have ADA application lodged yet, so Shakeup will support by helping plan the DA, assist with gathering DA documentation, review DA against Section 5 unfunded items and activities to inform costings, assist with lodging DA.

Now this might sound like a lot to take in, but don't worry because we're here to help you.

This slide shows the key steps and timing for Valley Preschool project.

We begin with the application phase, which runs from February through to mid-April, with outcomes announced by the end of May.

If you have not lodged your application, you have the opportunity to submit a DA within 4-6 weeks of a successful outcome.

Once successful, there's a window of opportunity to lodge that DA.

That's the 4-6 weeks.

Applications, in this case around mid-July, would be lodged around mid-July.

After that, the project goes through Council assessment and approval, which takes us into 2027.

From here, we move into the Construction Certificate stage, where all the detailed design is finalised and checked to make sure it meets building regulations and DA conditions, with building works happening from late 2027 through to mid 2028.

The project is planned to be completed by June 2028, aligning with EQA program requirements and ensuring the service is ready to operate under the new model.

This is something that we can create for you.

Lara, back to you.

Speaker: Lara Stapleton

Thank you, Susana and Amy.

So as you heard, Valley received support to plan to transition their service.

They received support from CELA and Shakeup.

With CELA, they confirmed community need for a long daycare model and also confirmed the community values quality service that Valley Preschool provides their children.

Shakeup Architecture helped Valley Preschool to plan a fit out and extension to transition to a long day care and to allow another 10 licensed places.

With this information, Valley Preschool decided to apply for Expanding Quality Access.

They applied to transition their community preschool to a long day care that catered to 3 to 5 year olds that operated 48 weeks per year.

This is considered Model 3 under the program.

Valley Preschool decided this because they wanted to prioritise the same children and also to ensure families had only one drop off at their existing site.

Valley's application was assessed and approved after the 30th of May.

They received a confirmation of Expanding Quality Access funding across transition, operational and capital streams.

The application approval was a key turning point for the service.

With support from CELA and Shakeup in planning, they were more confident to now move from planning into the transition stage.

They knew that now they had funding and a clear framework of support to gradually change over time.

Importantly, they knew this was staged and carefully managed.

Now let's hear from my about how CELA supported Valley in their transition.

Speaker: Amy Coulton

Thank you, Lara.

CELA was able to support Valley by providing tools and guidance on redesigning their education programs to include extended days and supporting the educational leader in designing an extended day program that maintains that enriching learning environment.

We discussed ways to communicate progress to management committees, transitioning the workforce through industrial relations and HR requirements, training educators for identified gaps in managing extended days, adding new policies and procedures to support the long day care model, applying for the childcare subsidy and implementing those policies and procedures to ensure CCS and that the improved provider is registered with PRODA, which is an identity verification process for committee members.

We also supported with the implementation of systems knowledge such as OWNA or Xplore or whatever system the service chose to use, as well as marketing for the provision of longer hours.

I'll hand back over to Susana from Shakeup to run through the capital work support that they provided.

Speaker: Susana do Vale

Thank you.

For Valley Preschool.

Our role didn't stop at early planning.

We supported them right through the transition process.

One of the key things we focused on was timing, helping them prepare and lodge their development application within 4-6 weeks after funding was confirmed.

That early momentum was really important to keep the project on track and demonstrate readiness.

We also work closely with them to track progress and identify risks early, so there were no surprises later in the process.

This included things like approvals, documentation and coordination with consultants.

And importantly, we provided ongoing advice at each stage of the transition because moving from preschool model to long day care isn't just a design change, it's an operational shift as well.

So our role was really about giving them clarity, structure and confidence throughout the journey.

Thank you, Susana and Amy.

Speaker: Lara Stapleton

So using both Expanding Quality Access funding support as well as the support from CELA and Shakeup. Valley long day care was able to open in June 2028.

As a long day care service, Valley maintained preschool programming for children aged 3-5 years old.

The key changes implemented as a long day care and throughout their transition was expanding their operating weeks to 48, extending their operating hours by another 3 hours to 7:00 to 6:00 PM and they increased their licensed places for preschool aged children by 10.

They at the end of transition had a 50 place service.

They were also able to implement the capital works, including a fit out and extension to cater for those additional places and to operate as a viable long day care.

From June 2028, they were applying the Australian Government Child Care Subsidy.

We'll now move to our second case story, Hilly Preschool.

So case story 2 follows Hilly Preschool.

Before Hilly Preschool transitioned to a long day care model, Hilly provider had a vision to expand Hilly Preschool.

As the population had been growing for years, there were more working families moving to Hilly, having a new metro and motorway direct to the CBD and their waitlists were getting long.

This led to Hilly buying a vacant block of land for which they had obtained a Development Application approval from Hilly Council to build a long day care with 30 new places for children aged 0-5 years old.

Unfortunately, Hilly didn't have all the funding and time to implement that change.

That was until Hilly read February's ECEC update and saw the new Expanding Quality Access program.

This led Hilly to consider Expanding Quality Access guidelines as well as the Expanding Quality Access applications SmartyGrants, and throughout that process, they also found the Expanding Quality Access support registration where they registered for support with CELA and Shakeup.

The department referred Hilly to CELA and Shakeup for up to 20 hours of application support.

Amy will now share how CELA supported Hilly provider with their application.

Speaker: Amy Coulton

Thank you Lara.

So CELA supported the application by organising a time to meet with the Hilly Preschool Director and Chairperson to really understand the service operations and the Hilly Preschool community to discuss and inform of CELA's available support options.

For Hilly, CELA suggested that they consult with their community to confirm their needs through a family survey.

CELA provided a draft survey that included questions about operating hours and what families valued most about the current preschool model and assisted them in developing further questions specifically aligned to their community.

CELA also provided Hilly Preschool with a budgeting toolkit, which Hilly Preschool used to assess their future financial sustainability as a long day care model.

We worked with Hilly Preschool to develop an operating budget for the scenarios that they were considering and took into consideration service waitlists, family survey responses and population forecasts, as well as occupancy and other local services to identify what size the service could be increased to.

This supported Hilly to better understand the EQA guidelines section 5 funding streams and spending rules, and 5.4 unfunded items and activity.

The budget toolkit and knowledge helped Hilly to submit a budget for the EQA application according to section 2.1 of the guidelines.

It also assisted Hilly to know what evidence they needed for their application and how to answer the assessment criteria in section 2 of the guidelines of their application.

Further, it supported gathering costings required for the DA and budget development and feasibility, which had been section 2.1 of the guidelines.

And it also assisted with the application against section 3 including 3.1 evidence and section 2.1 faculty and infrastructure, including the DA approvals, budget development and feasibility to capital works.

Now Susana will talk you through the application support Hilly Preschool received from Shakeup Architecture.

Speaker: Susana do Vale

For Hilly Preschool, the key difference is that they have a DA approved.

So the project is further along.

At this stage, our focusing is shifting from planning to delivery and readiness for construction.

Our role is to support them in working through their DA conditions, making sure these are clearly understood and addressed before moving forward.

We reviewed the project scope against the EQA funding guidelines, identifying what's eligible and any gaps or unfunded items.

We also help ensure that the project documentation is coordinated and aligned so what's been approved can be clearly translated into delivery.

We support the preparation of application material, making sure it clearly demonstrates readiness, compliance and alignment with the program requirements.

Ultimately, it's about ensuring the project is resolved, compliant and ready to move efficiently into construction certificate and then construction.

Preschool obviously has an approved DA, so we have supported them by reviewing the DA application to identify planning, recent issues and refined design.

We reviewed the proposal against EQA guidelines such as section 5 funding streams and spending rules. And assist with gathering costings required for DA and budget development and feasibility for capital works.

As in section 2.1 of the guidelines.

This slide outlines the timeline for Hilly Preschool.

As mentioned, Hilly is in a strong position with an approved DA, but the scale of the project is larger as it includes a new build and a 2 campus model.

Because of this, the next stage is about preparing the CC documentation and carefully working through DA conditions and refining project scope, particularly for the new campus.

There is also a greater need at this stage to coordinate consultants and progress the design so the project is ready to move efficiently into the CC stage where detailed documentation, coordination, cost confirmation are finalised.

Once that work is complete, the project can move into construction.

The timeline still targets completion by May 2028.

It's success here relies on strong coordination and clear decision making.

Our role is to support Hilly Preschool in navigating this complexity, helping them move from an approved DA to a deliverable project that is ready for construction and aligned with EQA requirements.

Speaker: Lara Stapleton

Thank you Susana and Amy.

So here after so much discussion with CELA and Shakeup their community and their staff. Hilly Preschool applied for Expanding Quality Access.

They applied to have Hilly transition to a long day care service with 2 buildings, or what we'll call campuses.

Campus 1 is the building where Hilly Preschool applied to retain their existing preschool program for children aged 3-5 years old.

Campus 2 was to be a new building to deliver early learning to children aged 0-3 years old.

In their application, Hilly applied for Capital Works Funding to build Campus 2.

They also applied for Operation Support and Transition Support funding to transition both Hilly campuses to open for 48 weeks per year, with Campus 2 having longer days than Campus 1.

So Hilly provider's application was assessed and approved.

Hilly received confirmation of funding across transition, operational, and capital streams.

This funding supported a planned and manageable transition until January 2028.

I will now hand over to CELA and Shakeup to for them to share how they helped Hilly in their transition.

Over to Amy. Thank you Lara.

Speaker: Amy Coulton

So, as Hilly transitioned into a long day care model. CELA provided tools and guidance on redesigning their education programs to include those extended days.

Ways to communicate progress to leadership and management committees.

Transitioning the workforce through industrial relation requirements and human resource requirements.

Training educators to strengthen pedagogy and practice for children aged 0-2 years alongside programming approaches to support the extended day preschool delivery.

New policies and procedures with a long day care model.

Applying for Child Care Subsidy and implementing those new policies and procedures for CCS as well as registration with PRODA and support with the implementation of systems knowledge.

We provided support on marketing for the provision of longer hours and for extended age groups as well.

Over to you, Susana, to run through the capital works support that you provided for Hilly.

Speaker: Susana do Vale

Thanks Amy.

For Hilly Preschool Shakeup's role was really about supporting them through the delivery phase of their project.

We worked with them to adjust the project plan where needed because as projects move forward, things inevitably change, whether that's timing, scope or approvals.

A big focus for us was helping the service stay on track and meet their agreed milestones so they could demonstrate progress and keep momentum.

And importantly, we were there to help navigate any obstacles that came up along the way, whether that was designed approvals or coordination.

So overall, our role was to provide ongoing practical support to help Hilly move from planning into successful delivery.

I'll now hand over to Lara.

Speaker: Lara Stapleton

Thank you, Susana.

So as you can see from January 2028, Hilly opened their long day care.

They had 2 campuses where campus 1 was the existing, had transitioned the existing 3-5 year old preschool program and was now operating as a long day care.

Campus 2 was a new build for children aged 0-3 years old.

Through their Expanding Quality Access funding and throughout their transition, the service was able to prepare properly.

They were able to provide staff training, update policies and procedures, and put systems in place for both long day care campuses and to be successful in being awarded Child Care Subsidy.

Operational Funding helped manage the additional costs that came with expanding their operations.

This was important as the service had begun opening for more weeks and enrolments gradually increased.

Over at Campus 1, Capital funding also enabled Hilly to build that second campus that they had been wanting to do for so long now.

This meant that they were able to add 30 additional licensed places.

This improved access for the families with younger children in Hilly.

Importantly, the changes were staged and they were carefully managed through Expanding Quality Access and Support.

Having this stage process meant Hilly provider could balance community need, their staff wellbeing and quality rather than trying to make all the changes quickly at once.

So this concludes our case stories.

We'll now move on to share some important information such as how you can register for Expanding Quality Access Support.

I know that we may have said there's a lot to do and what could feel like a short time.

So as mentioned, the optional Expanding Quality Access Support is available.

It's now open and you can link to it at the department's website by scanning the QR code on the screen.

That QR code will link you to the Expanding Quality Access terms of use and procedure.

Please read this and you'll be able to then continue to pop in an application- Sorry a registration through the SmartyGrants form.

I know I keep saying it and we have covered a lot and I guess I think it can be easy to lose track or perhaps maybe just some of the smaller details, including the key dates for Expanding Quality Access.

At this time, we have applications open until the 13th of April.

Leading up to the closing date, we have our Expanding Quality Access Support available.

We plan to have applications assessed throughout April and services will be notified of an outcome from the 30th of May 2026.

So I hope the information so far has helped you perhaps a little bit more understand the Expanding Quality Access program and maybe how to apply for the program and perhaps consider the optional Expanding Quality Access Support and how this could help your service.

I will like to now share some of the questions we have received about the program and our responses.

I will start with the questions submitted from some of our attendees today as part of their registration.

And thank you to those who are in the audience today who submitted those questions.

So our first question is what if community preschools do not own their buildings and lease them from council?

Do you liaise with councils?

For us the answer is applications for capital works

Funding for services in a leased facility need to demonstrate the service has the owner's permission for continued facility use, for a minimum remaining lease term of 5 years and for the planned capital works at the facility.

Applicants will need to obtain evidence from the facility owner, such as permission from council or the school site.

See section 5.1 of the program guidelines for more information.

OK.

So our second question there were 2 and this question, these 2 questions relate to capital works funding stream under Expanding Quality Access with a focus on using capital works funding for a new build.

The first question is can the funding be used to build a new ECEC if not allowed to rebuild on the current preschool site?

The second question is, can a community preschool open a new service with this funding? (same provider)

New builds can be funded under Expanding Quality Access where an existing community preschool needs a new build in order to transition to a long day care model.

For example, for growth or sustainability, applicants must commit to transitioning an existing community preschool to a long day care service model operating a minimum of 48 weeks per year by the 30th of June 2028.

Once this commitment has been made, a range of activities and items including relevant capital works may become eligible for funding where they support the services transition to a long day care.

OK.

So this is our final registration question.

So can Expanding Quality Access support an employed project manager at the transition service to oversee the project?

The program provides funding for workforce supports for staff employed at the transition service, both funding for additional hours required to transition for example an educator or administrative staff on transition related duties, and funding for 10% of the award rates for all staff employed at the transition service.

See section 5.2 of the program guidelines.

There's also transition support funding available under the program to assist with costs necessary to transition the service.

Transition activities including staff training and professional development costs directly related to transitioning along day care can be covered.

See section 5.3 of the guidelines. That concludes our pre-registered questions.

We have one final question which has been a frequently asked question and I will share this question now which is can we transition only a portion of our license places to a long day care?

No, the program does not provide funding and support for community preschools to only transition a portion of their licence places.

The program provides funding and support for the whole service to transition to one of the long day care service models.

It is this commitment to service transition that enables the funding support.

You can find more information in section 2 of the program guidelines.

So we're coming to the end of our session today.

I really thank everybody for tuning in for the Expanding Quality Access information session too.

It's been great to have you here.

We do have a feedback questionnaire you can complete.

It only takes about 2 minutes if you scanned that QR code, and you're welcome to do so and complete the evaluation form to give us some feedback on how did we do.

So.

Thank you everybody for joining.

We appreciate your time and we hope you have a wonderful day.

Thanks.

End of Transcript

ECEC Professional Learning Program – Professional Learning in Action

Speaker: Susan Bird

TAFE NSW acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land, river and sea.

We acknowledge and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging of all nations.

We acknowledge that teaching and learning has happened on these lands for many thousands of years and will continue to do so.

In our teaching and learning, we honour the rich cultural heritage and knowledge of the First Nations peoples.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all children feel valued and respected.

As educators, we strive to incorporate First Nation perspectives and wisdom into our early childhood practices, ensuring that we teach every child to appreciate the diverse histories and cultures that shape our world.

I am Susan Bird based in Orange which stands on the Wiradjuri nation, one of the largest nations in New South Wales in landmass and we have a diverse spread of natural features including Gaanha-bula meaning shoulder 2 which reflects the two pinnacles of Mt. Canobolas.

I am the industry liaison lead for the Early Childhood Education and Care professional learning program.

I have also been the Head Teacher of Early Childhood Education and Care at TAFE NSW for over 10 years.

I am an early childhood teacher and I'm passionate about professional development and empowering early childhood education and care and outside of school hours professionals to make meaningful, confident and evidence informed contributions to children's learning, well being and inclusion.

My daily work is teaching your new recently trained employees and I'm very familiar with what good PD and training looks like.

It is my pleasure to chat to you today about our program and inspire you to access the fee free training platform to further support the capability, confidence and professional growth of you and your teams, ultimately strengthening outcomes for children, families and communities.

Today I am supported by Bhargavi from the Department of Education who is in charge of the slides and Vicky from TAFE NSW, my colleague who will manage the Q&A box.

Welcome to the March 2026 Department of Education ECE Connects online session, so some housekeeping matters before we proceed.

Firstly, this session is being recorded and it will be uploaded to the department's website, so you'll be able to refer back to it after today.

This may take a couple of weeks.

Vicki will pop some links for the program and for the recording in the Q&A in this chat.

For questions related to the program, Vicky will put our shared email address in the chat. Please email us.

If you have any questions during this webinar, please add them to the Q&A and we'll attempt to answer these at the end if there is time.

First, a bit about the Professional Learning program.

The most important resource in the room is the staff.

The program is designed to support, upskill, inspire and value the collective knowledge of the adults working in the room.

Many of the registered participants today have yet to discover the gems on the platform and I'm hoping to show you some of the amazing products on there so you and your teams can fully utilise the fee free professional development available to you.

The program is developed for the sector, by the sector and is Co designed by TAFE NSW and the NSW Department of Education.

Four themes have been selected to provide a framework and a focus for the professional learning and they are inclusion, leadership, business operations and out of school hours care.

Each learning activity on the platform is also assigned a level foundation, intermediate or advanced.

The platform is designed for professionals to access training that meets their individual needs as well as being used for an all of service approach where each staff member completes a learning activity and then the team work together to embed the learnings into the service.

Now onto the platform itself.

A link will be dropped in the chatbox

You can access the platform from the TAFE NSW home page, browse programs and choose ECEC Professional Learning Program.

You will need to register.

This will also give you an option to say where you are currently working and you can keep updated of new learning activities being added to the platform.

As well as registering for the existing professional development.

There are many learning activities already on the platform.

There are a range of professional learning activities on the platform, with more being added regularly.

The platform is designed so educators can access PD, how, where and when it suits them.

The professional learning activities include webinars, micro skills, face to face workshops and a leadership development program.

Face to face workshops may attract a scholarship for eligible participants to support your access to the training.

Today I'm going to do a deep dive into a few of the products that are already on the platform and discuss where it fits with our documents, our National Quality Framework, how you can embed these learnings in your practice, how you can support students and how you can link each product to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

This PD is designed to be used as your regular capability uplift and of course it can count towards your professional development hours.

It's designed so you can share ideas with your teams, use them as a starting point for quality improvement, spark interesting professional conversations that will inform positive change in your workplace.

Feedback from our registered learners tell us that we're on the right track with the topics, the presenters and the content, and we are thrilled to read testimonials from ECEC and OOSH professionals across NSW.

I will share some of those good vibes later in my presentation.

If you think of a topic you would like considered under our four main themes, or you know a presenter, a colleague or have any ideas for our upcoming series of training, please let us know either in the chat or by following the link we will share at the end of the presentation.

As I said, I'm going to talk about some of the products from each colour coded theme.

I'm starting with inclusion, which is green on the platform.

This slide shows the links to the National Quality Framework, the APST, the regulations, the EYLF and gives you a few ideas on how to embed these learnings into your daily practice.

I'm not going to read you these slides.

This Microskill Autism Awareness for ECEC professionals, delivered by Autism Awareness Australia has consistently ranked in our top five most completed resource, demonstrating the strong and ongoing need for autism specific training across the ECEC sector.

By completing this micro skill, educators were able to recognise early signs of autism and implement inclusive strategies that support children and families.

Build confidence of their role to foster supportive, empathetic learning environments.

Improve educator well being and retention by providing realistic tools that reduce stress and burnout.

Some key statistics featured in the micro skill are that an estimated one in 91 Australians are autistic and approximately 290,900 Australians have an autism diagnosis.

These statistics emphasise the importance of early recognition, inclusive practice and a family centred support.

Learning in the micro skills are linked to the National Quality Standards and the EYLF as shown on the slides.

It also links to the UN Convention on the rights of the child and the Early Childhood Australia Code of Ethics.

It even has a reference to Maslow, which I know students will fondly remember.

Having been a TAFE teacher for over 20 years, I've certainly embedded Maslow into many of my unit teachings and hope current and past students have a little giggle that he's going to pop up here.

Why does inclusion matter?

Early childhood professionals have a responsibility to create environments where every child can thrive.

This includes removing barriers for children with autism, designing inclusive accessible environments using a strength based approach that focuses on children's abilities, providing early support to improve long term outcomes, and reducing children's anxiety by meeting their emotional, sensory and developmental needs.

Identifying autism is not the educator's role, but looking out for behaviours help guide our support.

We may notice repetitious behaviours, preference for solitary play, sensory sensitivities including taste, texture, smell and noise, avoidance of eye contact, rigid routines or difficulty with change and strong responses to sensory overload. They are big emotions.

These observations help educators adjust environments and provide co‑regulated emotional support.

We've heard back from our registered learners about these strategies and how useful they were in everyday practice.

Some of the strategies included deep breathing, sensory tools, visual resources, calming spaces, consistent routines, positive reinforcement and learning about emotions.

Practical strategies that educators implemented immediately included creating a supportive environment, setting structured routines, using visual supports and social stories, creating sensory friendly spaces, managing transitions more effectively, communicating clearly, working on developing the social skills with the children, to be patient and kind, to use positive reinforcement and alternative communication methods, to work with families in a truly collaborative manner and to be aware of your local support services.

Maybe create a resource pack for your local families.

Feedback and impact that this micro skill has had on our learners include and these are quotes.

It was a really good and interesting course in the knowledge and understanding of autism.

I have found this topic of autism quite beneficial for me on a professional level as I'm not quite familiar working with children with autism.

This has helped me immensely as I have taken down notes on how to better support the children in my care.

It's a really great platform to understand basic needs.

And finally, this topic was very informative and helped me understand how to respond to children's emotions in a positive and supportive way.

It gave me practical ideas that I can use every day in my service.

The second topic I'm going to build out for you today is a webinar hosted by Settlement Services International SSI Belonging by design, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in Early childhood education and care.

It also sits in the green team inclusion.

I'm really pleased to share this learning with you because inclusion, equity and belonging are at the very heart of high quality early childhood education.

They shape how children experience our settings, how families feel when they walk in our door, and how we as educators work across diverse teams.

This webinar introduced the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging the DEIB framework and gave practical strategies to create respectful, safe, and inclusive environments for culturally diverse staff, children, and their families.

This webinar focused on 4 core outcomes, increasing knowledge of diversity, equity and inclusion, understanding the barriers that can prevent inclusion, strengthening practical strategies for building inclusive environments.

And it ended with a call to action asking participants what is one thing that you can change today. In our sector, we know that some groups of children encounter more barriers than others.

These can include children from low socio economic backgrounds, children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Statistics here are also important.

Only 82% of children facing these barriers attend early childhood education, compared to 90% of other children.

They are half as likely to access early intervention supports.

29% of the NSW population was born overseas and 29.5% of people in New South Wales speak a language other than English at home.

These figures remind us of how diverse our communities truly are and how crucial it is that children and families see themselves reflected, respected and welcomed in our settings.

We also talked a lot about terminology, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Here's what they mean in practice.

Diversity is all the ways in which we differ culture, language, abilities, identities and experiences.

Equity focuses on removing barriers and ensuring people have the resources, opportunities and support they need to succeed.

Inclusion means people feel respected, connected and are able to contribute meaningfully.

Belonging is the outcome. Being seen, understood and valued without needing to change who you are.

One of my favourite quotes that was shared in the webinar captures this beautifully and I have seen a poster in early childhood and education and care services around that say diversity is being invited to the party.

You might know what comes next.

Inclusion is being asked to dance.

Despite our best intentions, families still face barriers such as language differences, the settlement process for newly arrived families, navigating complex systems, work time, socioeconomic pressures, different cultural and belief systems, and a lack of culturally responsive services.

Understanding these barriers helps us design environments that actively break them down rather than unintentionally reinforce them.

Some practical, meaningful actions that we took out of this webinar included days that we could foster inclusion.

Building rapport and showing genuine respect.

Creating safe, predictable and welcoming spaces.

Representing diverse cultures in your environment and resources.

Celebrating everyday diversity, not just cultural days.

Differentiating your support.

Meeting people where they are, modelling curiosity, openness and respect, and responding confidently and calmly to discrimination.

These everyday behaviours create a sense of safety and belonging for all children, families and staff.

Speaking of staff, inclusion doesn't stop with the children.

We also want inclusive, supportive work environments.

Have a think about these ideas.

You could collect and understand diversity data in your area.

You could recruit intentionally to build a diverse team.

Value cultural and language skills.

Strengthen your DEIB policies.

Elevate diverse voices in your decision making.

Create psychologically safe spaces.

Engage in culturally responsive practice.

When educators feel included, safe and valued, this flows directly onto the quality of relationships with children and families.

Families want to feel like they belong to and some strategies explored were to engage early before challenges arise.

Partner with families as experts on their children.

Create safe and respectful spaces for conversations.

Use effective, accessible communication, build community connections. Work with bilingual and bicultural educators where possible.

These practices reduce stress for families and strengthen trust, ultimately improving outcomes for children.

The call to action "What is one thing that you could change today to foster greater inclusion?"

Maybe a small shift like updating resources, inviting families to share their stories, reviewing your policies. These can have a significant positive impact.

I want to share a quote that really anchors the intent behind this work from Arthur Chan.

Diversity is a fact, equity is a choice, inclusion is an action, and belonging is an outcome.

Speaking of quotes, let's get into what some of our learners said after they'd done this webinar with SSI.

We currently do all that was mentioned, however, it was lovely to hear the speaker's perspective and I would like to introduce that more as a reflection topic for our educators to improve on and extend what we already do.

After participating in this topic, I intend to implement the learnings by reflecting on my own practices and ensuring they are inclusive and culturally responsive.

I will support and encourage respectful communication within the team, build stronger partnerships with children and families from diverse backgrounds and model inclusive behaviours in my daily interactions so children can observe and learn from them.

I will embed culture into everyday learning practices, use music and stories, offer home language words.

And the last one. I intend to apply the learnings by strengthening inclusive practices within the service, supporting culturally responsive communication with families, and reflecting on how diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging can be embedded in our daily routines, our team interactions, and our curriculum planning.

So just a little bit of background about the circle of security.

So it's based on attachment theory.

And again, for my old TAFE students, if anyone remembers back to their studies, this is where we learned about John Balby, who was one of the key theorists behind attachment theory.

The Circle of Security approach itself was developed by three psychotherapists in America.

This webinar sits within the inclusion theme, so we're staying on the green team.

The aim of this webinar was to look at the science and the core principles behind the Circle of Security approach, how secure attachments support inclusive learning environments, why inclusion is essential in early childhood education and finally some practical strategies for implementing circle of Security with children who have diverse needs.

We have heard from many students that they were already aware of the Circle of Security theory, but their feedback was that this webinar was theory based and supported by research.

So they were then looking at the cues of the children differently after attending the webinar.

We heard from a learner that was able to articulate that a child who has experienced warmth, safe, and consistent care learns that people can be trusted.

My needs will be met.

I can explore the world safely.

A child who has experienced fear, inconsistency or harm may learn I need to protect myself.

Adults may hurt or reject me.

This world is not safe for me.

Other learner feedback includes these excellent endorsements.

I think the Circle of Security webinar should be offered to all educators.

They should do the whole course.

We're really happy with that one.

Others said.

I will be able to share my understanding and knowledge of Circle of Security in my feedback to students and in my supporting of students of work placement by giving examples of how to respond to children's emotional cues.

And using the science behind Circle of Security and the Aboriginal Cultural Safety Framework to promote student understanding of the underpinning research behind the Circle of Security procedure. I will also be able to suggest how to set up our environment to promote security and use reflection to consider what the child was trying to communicate.

And the last one here.

After participating in this topic, I intend to implement the learnings in my service by applying the principles of the Circle of Security framework.

I will focus on being bigger, stronger, wiser and kinder when guiding children through challenging emotions and ensure I recognise and respond to attachment signals promptly.

For children experiencing intergenerational trauma, displacement or cultural loss, including many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, the idea of a safe, secure space may take longer to build.

This reinforces the importance of culturally safe environments and deep respect for family identity and community.

The visual circle that accompanies the theory is very useful for educators to use as they build safe and secure attachments with children in their care.

Children with insecure attachments may show challenges in social interactions, emotional regulation or engagement.

Our job is not to fix behaviours but to understand the underlying needs.

The circle of security helps us recognise when children need more connection.

Slow down and interpret cues.

Provide co‑regulation for big emotions

Adjust environments to reduce stress.

Create culturally, emotionally and physically safe spaces.

Build trust with families and communities.

This approach is deeply inclusive because it is deeply relational.

Using the physical environment was a core take away from this webinar.

To create cosy spaces, use predictable routines.

Use warm greetings, reflect and pause when you're trying to work out what behaviour is communicating to you.

You can use these ideas in your team and strengthen relationships with all children of all ages in your care.

One of the key ideas behind Circle of Security theory is connection.

Educators cannot effectively teach or support children before building a warm, trusting relationship with them.

Without that secure connection, children may struggle to regulate emotions, engage socially, participate in learning, and feel safe enough to explore.

This underscores the critical role we play in early brain development and emotional well being.

To help deepen this understanding, I pose two reflective questions for you to think about.

How do you build trusting, meaningful relationships with the children in your care?

And how does your service foster meaningful relationships with children?

This micro skill on leadership approaches for educational settings falls in the orange category of leadership and has been very well received on the platform as sometimes early childhood education and care professionals find themselves in a position of leadership without the training or the confidence they feel they require.

Being a leader in an ECEC setting is a real challenge.

There are many moving parts and some really tricky situations present themselves and we may not really know the best course of action.

This micro skill is accompanied by a reflections and actions workbook, so it requires participants to revisit content delivered, check in with themselves and connect to their daily practice to implement the core learnings.

We heard from students that they have continued to implement the learnings through having micro conversations, meeting regularly with staff, and being aware of communication styles.

A student said I want to apply what I've learned about this topic to help build a good team culture by talking to and working with other people.

I will talk to my coworkers on a more frequent basis, ask for their opinions and provide my help where I can.

I will also think about how I do things, make sure I'm following the service philosophy and look for ways to make cultural safety and inclusion a bigger part of my daily life.

This will help me maintain becoming better at being a leader and make the workplace a friendly, team oriented place to work.

We are starting to get a very clear picture of how the content on the platform is having an impressive positive impact on educators across the state and we are thrilled that the platform is receiving such rich and favourable feedback.

Food for thought about leadership was highlighted by this quote from Simon Sinek.

Really appropriate for our sector.

Leadership is not about being in charge, it's about taking care of those in your charge.

Educational leaders who uplift teams often provide effective pedagogical guidance and mentorship.

Model ethical practice and support reflective conversations.

Recognise team strengths and foster professional growth.

Prioritise physical and emotional and psychological safety.

Promote inclusive, collaborative and culturally responsive approaches.

These actions play a direct role in shaping a positive workforce culture and in turn lead to better outcomes for children.

The current early childhood education and care landscape can be challenging for both new and experienced leaders, particularly now as the sector continues to navigate significant change and refocus its priorities.

We have heard that ECEC leaders may feel unsupported and this can cause stress, anxiety and burnout.

The learnings in this micro skill give leaders the foundation to lead with confidence, purpose and cultural respect.

Place based leadership was also explored which means leading with your community, not just within it.

Participants were encouraged to continue to build partnerships with local families, elders and community leaders to ensure culturally safe and aware leadership was being implemented.

This micro skill look to the NSW Aboriginal Cultural Safety Framework, specifically designed for early childhood education and care and provides guidance for services to create safe environments for Aboriginal children, families and staff.

When we talk about leadership in ECEC, we're not talking about titles or hierarchy, we're talking about relationships.

Real leadership shows up in the everyday moments.

The quick check-ins, the quiet listening, the “Hi, how are you going?” as you pass, that helps someone feel seen.

These small interactions build trust over time, and trust is the foundation of a strong team.

A big part of collaborative leadership is knowing how to hold conversations in ways that feel safe, respectful, and culturally responsive.

When leaders show up with presence, curiosity, and genuine care, people feel valued.

They feel like their voice matters.

And that sense of being noticed and heard has a ripple effect.

It supports individual well being and strengthens the whole learning environment for children and families.

Leading teams isn't for everyone.

Being an effective leader takes grit, courage, and a whole lot of energy.

We've all worked with leaders that we admire and we've all worked with leaders that we dread sharing our work day with.

Our aim is to empower early childhood education and care leaders to build their confidence, strength and collaboration and create vibrant, high functioning learning and working environments.

Leadership in our sector is all about relationships, trust and showing up for people in ways that matter.

When leaders feel supported, they're more able to support the teams and that flows directly into better outcomes for children and families.

Leading with purpose is actually a full time job, not to mention the hundreds of other things that we must manage in our work week.

I read somewhere once that ECEC educators ask between 3 and 400 questions a day.

Don't actually quote me on that but I think you get the drift.

Not to mention the number of questions we get asked.

It's a lot.

This micro skill can help you interact with your team in a way that supports growth and connection with your colleagues.

Two of the remaining themes are: the purple team - Business operations and the Blue team of OOSH.

We are aware that the terminology for outside of school hours care can differ from service to service, but we all know what we mean when we mention OOSH educators.

This one in our series is the first of its kind, designed to unpack the role of the nominated supervisor.

This training was very well received by the sector with some highlights shared with us from students such as?

I will strengthen respectful relationships with children, families and colleagues, apply culturally responsive practices and ensure my daily practice aligns with regulatory and quality improvement requirements.

I will apply these learnings by regularly conducting and documenting risk assessments, maintaining up to date safety checks and ensuring that all staff follow child safety procedures consistently.

I will also share best practice with colleagues to strengthen overall safety and quality in our service.

And lastly, ensuring to actively conduct risk assessments which are documented properly.

Identifying potential hazards and putting in strategies to reduce harm.

Monitoring and reviewing activities and routines in each environment to maintain child safety and well being.

Ensuring that this practice aligns with the regulations and NQS.

This is to support a safe and high quality learning environment for children to thrive.

Both of these series are designed to be in order.

The first topic of legal and regulatory responsibilities unpacks who a nominated supervisor is.

A service must appoint at least one nominated supervisor, is plus 18 years old who understands education and care requirements, has skills and experience to manage an ECEC service, is a fit and proper person.

Provides written consent to hold the role.

The laws that are all applied to this role are complex and this webinar clearly unpacked the role within the leadership team and ensured that participants were aware that compliance history moves with them.

Includes past non compliances and can impact service assessment and ratings.

Part 2 of this three part webinar series for both ECEC and OOSH.

Looked closely at leadership and management skills and the role the Nominated Supervisor overseas, including key responsibility areas such as supervision and safety, risk assessment and management, WHS and well being, staffing, medical conditions, food and bev, transport excursions, educational program, incident and illness management, medication administration, drug and alcohol compliance and sleep and rest policies.

Webinar 3 looked at child safety and educational quality and reiterated the important position the Nominated Supervisor holds and is central to leadership and governance, safety and well being, communication and collaboration, quality assurance and continuous improvement, administration, record keeping, financial management, guidance, compliance and staff training.

The 10 Child Safe Standards are a key role for the nominated supervisor and there is other training on our platform targeted towards this topic.

The aim of the Early Childhood Education and Care Professional Learning platform is not to duplicate training that is already available to our sector.

We don't want to see the same training rolled out for free across many platforms.

We aim to provide current, relevant professional learning that helps clarify our roles and makes them more rewarding, allowing us to spend more meaningful time engaging with children, families and our workmates.

The reason we all went into Early Childhood Education and Care was to support children in their development, to impact lives in a positive way and to contribute to quality education and care.

The next webinar series was designed and customised for OOSH professionals.

So the three part of Early Childhood Education and Care was then filmed with a with a target on OOSH educators.

This is an area of our sector that we hear really has targeted PD that is relevant and current to their specific work environment.

We have heard this from lots of our registered participants.

We have had lots of support and positive feedback for the OOSH 3 part webinar series hosted by Gowrie NSW on the role of the nominated Supervisor.

These webinars highlighted the use of My Time Our Place as the approved learning framework and highlighted the transport requirements for OOSH staff, including requirements for regular transportation, staff responsibilities during embark and disembark, and documentation requirements for transport checks.

Participants were able to hear from OOSH experts about the role of the NSW Early Learning Commission, reporting directly to the Minister for Education and Early Learning, and the impact on their daily practice.

Our learners said this about the GOWRIE OOSH nominated supervisor webinar.

I plan to implement the learnings in my staff by ensuring clear communication and collaboration among staff, modelling positive leadership and professional behaviours, supporting colleagues through mentoring and guidance, effectively managing daily routines and resources, and promoting a culture of continuous improvement and reflective practice to enhance outcomes for children and the service.

I plan to implement the learnings by ensuring all staff understand their responsibilities under the National Law, Regulations and Quality Framework, maintaining children's safety through proper supervision and mandatory reporting, supporting colleagues with professional guidance, and continuously improving service policies and practices to enhance educational quality.

This brings me to the end of my deep dive into 4 themes and a snapshot of some of the excellent training available on our platform.

I would like to share with you some more testimonials from our learners.

I'll leave you there for a moment.

Oh, sorry.

Bhargavi could you just go back to the testimonials?

Just back, I think, Yeah, just give a moment to read those.

I'm not gonna read them out from from the PowerPoint.

Thank you.

We have an exciting update about our next training that is going to land on our platform.

A three part webinar series about using culturally appropriate resources to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into your daily work.

There are lots of practical tips in this series and if you'd like to be notified about this training, Please ensure you register for the platform & up to the notifications.

We would love you to spread the word with your workmates and really help promote the platform to all ECEC and OOSH professionals that you work with.

Some of my team working on the platform and not working in the sector like the marketing team, the film crews, the IT support and they've all taken up the challenge to talk to the local staff in the services where their children go and tell them about what we're offering.

So everyone's job to spread the word would be greatly appreciated.

We truly believe that this training will have a lasting and positive impact on the improvement of quality for our sector and provide the professionals with enthusiasm, a bit of spark and love for the job in what has been a challenging time for the sector.

Our top five professional development opportunities on the platform are highlighted here on the slide.

I hope I have piqued your interest and you are now ready to register for the best fee free early childhood education and care focus training available.

You can use the QR code, follow the instructions I mentioned at the beginning to navigate to our platform from the TAFE New South Wales website or follow the link in the chat box.

If you have learner based enquiries, you can email our shared email box as mentioned above.

And if you're our next superstar presenter or you know an excellent and engaging professional who you think has ideas to share based on our 4 themes, please reach out to us.

We would love you to share the word about our platform and encourage your colleagues to sign up for access to the training.

So we probably have some time for questions as well before we head to the feedback.

So I'm just going to ask my colleague Vicky to come on board with me and we might have a discussion and a few questions about about the platform.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

Thanks, Susan, and thank you to our audience today for posting some questions throughout the session, which I've actually responded to in the chat there.

So you can see those responses, Susan.

But I do have some other questions that I think that will help the audience today.

And so the first one is do participants get a certificate?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Great question, Vicky, Thanks.

Yes, once you have completed the learning activity and done the feedback, you'll be issued with a certificate of completion via email.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

Fantastic.

And the next question is, do the sessions count towards maintaining teacher accreditation?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Yes, all learning activities are linked to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, the APST.

The information is found on the flyer.

And for each of the deep dives I've just done, it actually links straight to the professional standards that that training fits under.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

And we do have a question that's just come through.

Susan, are the webinars free?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Yeah, yes.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

Coming through now.

Speaker: Susan Bird

Yes.

Great.

It's all free.

Absolutely.

So that's the major part that we really want to get out to people, that it's TAFE co-designed with the NSW Department of Education fee free training on our platform.

So once you have registered, you have access to all of the existing products on the platform.

And then once you sign up for notifications, we will let you know when the next one is happening.

For instance, yesterday we had a live webinar.

And Vicki probably knows all the statistics, but we had a live webinar that people could sign up and watch live.

And then in a couple of weeks, once the transcript and the accessibility checks have been done, that webinar will land on the the website and then you can access it and listen to it in your own time from there.

So absolutely free, get on board.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

Do you have to be enrolled at TAFE?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Two part question, no you don't, not for the webinars or the micro skills.

So they go through as discussed the the registration on the platform process.

But if you apply and then are successful for a face to face workshop or a leadership development program, there is a scholarship available to help you overcome any barriers about accessing training.

That may be because of financial reasons.

So if you're eligible for a scholarship and you enrol in either the face to face workshops or the leadership development program, you will need an enrollment to TAFE NSW.

And we have an amazing team just for the professional learning platform who support us with enrolling those students.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

And just another one here, Susan.

So behaviours with children are becoming more complex in services.

Do you have any up and come coming training for that topic?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Very good question.

We have lots of exciting topics in the pipeline and we're currently working on a micro skill called Inclusive Practice Essentials.

So stay tuned.

Again, register & up for notifications so you'll be informed when that happens.

And a micro skill is designed for participants to do in their own time.

So you can dip in and out, you can use some time that you might get released to do together with your team as well, and you can do it at your own pace.

I've heard from participants that having a workbook and journaling as they go has been really useful and it's not going to run out.

So that micro skill will stay on with all of the other things on the platform at this stage until June 2029.

And so you can take as long as you want to do the micro skills and you can also revisit them.

So if you might do the autism micro skill in the next coming weeks and it might not be appropriate, you might not have any children in your room that need the particular attention that the micro skill teaches you.

So then next year you might think I've got a different group of children, I might revisit and go back to do the micro skill or go back to your notes and review the knowledge that you learned through the micro skill.

So definitely we're hearing a lot of favourable feedback for more around complex behaviours and definitely the team works on feedback that we get in order to shape our program.

So if you've got any other ideas, we would love to hear them.

We'd love to hear if you've got some superstars at your work that you think would be really great presenters because it's for the sector, by the sector, it's people like you sharing the really great things that you're doing in your workplace with everyone else in the state.

So as far as the registration goes, you actually do have to be a New South Wales, you have to be living in New South Wales and the registration process asks you to select your workplace from the ACECQA, you know, registered services list.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

Good, good.

Also just some feedback and also just comment, is there a plan for TAFE to also develop a module on trauma informed practice?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Oh, very good question, Vicky.

I can't say.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

And also in that area of inclusion again, so I can't see the chat box because I'm very focused on what I'm doing straight ahead.

Speaker: Susan Bird

So these are great questions.

Thank you and please keep them coming.

Yes, trauma informed approach and care around trauma informed principles is very important and we definitely have that in the pipeline as well.

We're hearing from people in the sector that it's not like it used to be that that children are coming to us with much more complex needs and by having targeted training for particular areas is what we've found is very useful for our participants.

And that's where they're going back to their services and doing the things they learnt on the day they learnt them.

So if you went to the webinar yesterday, you could go back to your service and and start doing it.

It's just really achievable.

Strategy focus solution focused training to support the sector at this time.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

And also a question, do you think we'll do any training specific to supporting Down syndrome awareness?

Speaker: Susan Bird

Great question.

We have got some advice from other people in the sector around what training is needed, but certainly we can add that to our list.

And you know, the, the training that actually lands on the platform goes through very rigorous checks and advice from lots of different levels of early childhood education and care professionals.

So we can definitely add that to the list if it's a suggestion.

And also, if you have other suggestions, please email our shared mailbox because we're always wanting to hear what's current and relevant and where the training should go, you know, to be most used for the people actually working every day with the children.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

Very good.

I think we've covered all the questions.

Thank you.

Susan.

There was just one more inquiry about completing.

If you've completed the survey and the platform, how do you get your certificate?

And the answer to that is it is generated automatically and you'll receive your certificate notification in your email.

If that hasn't happened for you, please email us in the pinned email in the chat and we can get someone to help you with that.

Speaker: Susan Bird

And also, Vicky, if it hasn't arrived with you, it may be that you haven't actually pressed the final button in the feedback as well.

So you might be able to go back and just make sure that you've completed the activity that then generates the email completion

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

And a couple more have just coming through, which is really great.

Thank you everyone.

So the next one is someone actually has a suggestion for a great presenter for the programme.

So once again, thank you very much for that.

If you would like to send us an email about that, then one of our team members can reach out to have a talk about that.

So thank you for that.

And just one more here.

Speaker: Susan Bird

So we're really keen to hear about the uncovered gems out there doing great work.

So if you can don’t one of your colleagues in for a terrifying experience like this, a live webinar, then go for it.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

So this one is a new service, just an inquiry that service approval is not showing.

So they're just having trouble with our registration.

So once again, please just reach out to us via via that email in the pinned chat and certainly one of our team members can help you navigate that registration.

Speaker: Susan Bird

And Vicky, would it be true that there is an option there to say that you the service is not on the list or you're not working toward service or something like that, that you can progress with your registration or does it stop you right there?

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

I think you should be able to progress, but if you are having any trouble at all, please just send us an email and we'll help you get that registration complete.

Speaker: Susan Bird

Yeah, we're really looking for lots more registrations and looking at the data for the people who are coming along today.

And thank you for your time is that lots of you out here who have registered for this webinar are not yet registered on the platform.

So the purpose of my webinar today is to really just let you know the high quality fee free training that is on our platform and to really ask you to spread the word because it has been around for a little while.

And there are I think over 15 products on the platform.

And we really just want to get the sector engaging in the training so that you get the best benefit of of the learning and the professional development.

Speaker: Vicki Shearer

I think that's it for questions.

Thanks, Susan.

Speaker: Susan Bird

OK, no problem.

Thank you very much, Vicky.

So we welcome your feedback on this session.

So I think someone has popped the QR code on the screen or click on the pinned link in the question and answers to share some feedback around this webinar because your input helps shape future webinars and presentations to better meet the needs and address your questions.

The DoE ECE Connects is also really keen to make sure that we're delivering the information that is really relevant to you in the sector.

So please take a moment to fill out that feedback for us and let me know how how you felt it all went.

And thank you.

It's actually been my pleasure to share with you our excellent platform.

As you can see, Vicki and I are very passionate about it and the Department of Education representatives are also really passionate about what's going on our platform and a total pleasure to read those testimonials from real students.

The real impact that this learning is having on their daily practice, on their team culture, on their ability to do better work with children and families is really important and I look forward to reading your testimonials once you've undertaken a learning activity, now that you're all going to run off and register for the programme and get busy on the fee free professional development platform.

Thank you very much for your time.

End of Transcript

Health and Development Checks in Early Childhood Education & Care - Program Update

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

Good morning everyone.

We might just give everyone a minute just to jump in before we get started with our session today.

OK.

I can see that we have a good number of people joining us in a session now, so we might kick off.

Good morning and welcome to our session.

This morning we are talking about health and development cheques in Early Learning services.

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

I'd like to begin our session today by acknowledging that I am dialling in from the land of the Dharug people.

I'd like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the lands that I'm on, but also pay my respects to the lands that everybody else is joining from today as well.

Remembering that wherever we're dialling in from, we're dialling in from Aboriginal land.

I'd like to pay my respects to my Aboriginal colleagues from both NSW Health and Education and I'd like to acknowledge all of our colleagues that are online with us today.

Together we are creating a program for Aboriginal children and their families where they feel safe, respected and heard.

OK, we have a great agenda for you today and I'd like to thank you all for taking time out and off the floor today to join us in our session.

It's wonderful to see so many people gathered and we're really excited to share an update on our program with you all.

Today we're going to be unpacking child development milestones and why they matter.

We will share an update on the Health and development Check in Early Learning Services program and the associated resources that we have designed to assist teachers and educators before we get into all of that.

So we've got a little bit of housekeeping for you all.

This session is going to be recorded and it will be uploaded onto the ECE Connect web page at the conclusion of the series.

So we won't be sharing the slides separately from this morning's session.

As we move through the content today, we just ask that you post any questions into the Q&A section.

I'm joined today by my wonderful team and they'll be taking the questions as they come in and they'll work hard to answer them throughout this morning's session.

If you have any questions that don't get answered this morning, please feel free or you think about them later, feel free to send us an email and we'll get back to you.

We're also going to be using Menti throughout the sessions this morning, so we really encourage you to interact with the presentation and the Menti questions

When it's time to participate, a QR code will pop up on the screen for you to go into Menti and answer the questions.

Like I said, we're also going to provide you with our email address at the end of the session.

So if you have any additional questions, you can please email us at any time and we will reply to you.

OK.

So as I suggested on our agenda slide, we're going to structure things a little bit differently today.

I'm going to start with talking about childhood development.

We know that services come from a range of service types and they interact with children from zero to five years of age.

So having an understanding of childhood development milestones across all the age groups are critical to support children's health and development outcomes.

Really excited today because we have our colleague, Stefanie Pang from NSW Ministry of Health with us and she's gonna share some insights with us on typical child development and milestones.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Stef.

Speaker: Stefanie Pang

Thank you, Alicia

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Stefanie Pang and I'm a policy officer from the NSW Ministry of Health.

Thanks so much for this opportunity to be joined today and share some information about childhood development.

OK, so firstly let's have a look at what the data tells us as to why early childhood development and milestones are so important.

The first five years of a child's life, so that's from the time when they are conceived to age 5, is a really critical time for a child's physical, cognitive, social and emotional growth and development.

Research has actually shown that the child's development score at 22 months can be a predictor of their educational outcomes at 26 years of age.

So the early years can really make a huge difference to their life.

Early life experiences can influence a child's learning and performance in school, your behaviour in the adolescent years and also the likelihood of certain health concerns like obesity, elevated blood pressure and depression later on in life.

The 2024 AEDC data showed that only just about 50% of children in New South Wales are developmentally on track when they start school.

As early learning professionals, you see children and families every day, so this puts you in a key position to help support each child's health and development.

So how do we actually observe and track how a child is growing and developing?

As you may already be aware, all parents of children who are born in New South Wales will receive a free copy of the NSW My Personal Health Record or we more commonly call it the Blue Book.

The Blue Book has valuable information about a child's health and development as they learn and grow.

At regular and routine check in periods.

A Child and Family Health nurse or the child's GP will track a child's health and development and observe how they are meeting developmental milestones at different ages.

We call these health and development checks.

These checks are really important because they help track how children grow, are growing and developing by looking at how they play, learn, speak, act and what.

In the blue book, health and development is tracked using a series of checklists that are adapted from the Learn the Signs. Act Early tool.

Learn the Signs. Act Early is a series of developmental milestone checklists that were originally developed by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in America.

And these milestones are based on what we would expect 75% of children to be able to do at relevant ages.

And each checklist looks at 4 developmental domains.

So they are social and emotional, language and communication, cognitive.

So that includes learning, thinking and their problem solving and movement and physical development.

If you participated in the Health and Development Checks in Early Learning Services program, you may already seen or supported families in completing the four year old checklist.

Now let's shift our focus on the journey of a child's development.

It's important to remember that a child's early development is actually a continuous journey which begins at birth.

What we see on the slide is a Milestones Matter resource and it shows the journey and how the milestone tracking is essential across all ages, not just a year before they start school.

The first few checks are completed alongside vaccinations, so we do encourage you to remind parents to get them done together.

At the same time. In tracking how children are learning and growing, we can identify any early support that they need and connect families to the right care.

We've included a QR code on this slide should you wish to find child and family health clinics near you to support families.

And you can also access this journey map as a resource via the QR code at the top right hand corner of the slide.

The links to these resources will also be provided to you in the chat.

And now we're really excited to share with you a brand new resource called the Learn the Signs. Act Early. learning modules, and we will now play a video for you which provides an overview of the learning modules.

As health professionals, teachers and educators, you play a vital role in identifying developmental concerns and supporting children and their families.

The Learn the Signs. Act Early E- Learning series equips you with the essential skills and confidence to strengthen your practise in this critical area.

Across 4 engaging modules, you'll strengthen your practical skills to recognise developmental concerns early and then plan and implement evidence based activities tailored to each child's needs.

Working through realistic scenarios, you'll strengthen how you engage families in conversations about developmental milestones.

You'll also learn how to build stronger collaboration with health professionals to ensure children and families receive the right support at the right time.

The Learn the Signs Act Early E-Learning series is available by the ECEC Professional Learning program on the TAFE NSW website all through My Health Learning for NSW Health staff.

Enrol today and build on the vital work you already do to support children's development.

So now that we've explored what Learn the Signs. Act Early is, as I said, it's a really exciting time to talk to you about these newly released Learn the Signs. Act Early. modules and the learning outcomes.

So what's special about these new modules is that they've been designed for both early learning and health professionals.

By engaging with these modules, both sectors can develop the understanding of your shared and also differing responsibilities and how they can work together to support children and families in a holistic manner.

Early learning and health staff will complete the same modules.

Some of them have branching paths depending on whether they're an early learning or a health professional, but most of the information is the same.

So it's make sure that there will be a shared language and understanding of the really important work that happens every day in both sectors in observing and supporting child development.

So let's take a closer look.

So you can know what to expect from the package.

There are 4 modules and across these 4 modules you will develop practical skills in understanding developmental milestones, observation techniques, effective communication with families and then integrating it all into your everyday practice to support children's development.

These are designed to be completed in sequential order.

So let's take a look at module one.

It focuses on understanding our roles in supporting child development.

This module is designed to enhance your knowledge for supporting child development by working together effectively with your early learning and health sector colleagues as well as parents and carers.

Together you can identify developmental concerns early and help improve outcomes for children in New South Wales.

Module 2 focuses on observation and practise.

In this module, you will learn practical strategies for observing and documenting children's developmental milestones and these skills will translate into your daily practice with families and children.

The observation techniques can help you identify and document developmental milestones in children confidently and accurately.

Module 3 focuses on effective communication with families.

It will equip you with practical communication skills for developmental conversations with families.

Your role really matters because you build trust for early identification, influence families to seek support and can improve children's outcomes through effective communication.

So the first 3 modules will build a strong foundation for you to integrate it all into your everyday practise.

In your role you will experience real life situations in which children will need assistance, families might be worried and you will need to make decisions on next steps.

So this final module, Module 4, will focus on practical application in making decisions, selecting the right follow up actions and completing documentation that supports children's development and well being.

If you are interested in learning more about these modules and topics, the training package will soon be available on the TAFE NSW website and we will let you know further details on how to access as soon as it's available.

In a moment my colleague Hannah will show you how these Learn the Signs. Act Early. tool to will support your practise and how you can access this.

But before that, I'd like to shift our focus momentarily to all year old development.

As you are likely aware, our team is responsible for delivery of the Health and Development Checks in Early Learning Services program.

And the program focuses on 4 year olds, ensuring that appropriate health and development checks are undertaken before the child starts school.

So let's take a closer look at all year old development.

As Alicia mentioned earlier in this presentation, we would like to make this session as interactive as possible.

So on the screen right now you can see some information on how to join us in Menti.

I will give you a second to get yourself set up in Menti and once you are logged in you will see a multi choice question.

Which of the following is an expected developmental milestone for a four year old?

And there are four options.

Answers complex, complex questions.

Plays with peers.

Holds a pencil and writes with a fist.

Says only single words, like milk.

I'll wait for a few seconds for the responses to come in.

Here we are seeing a high proportion who has chosen plays with peers

A few have selected answers complex questions.

Great.

Thanks for your participation everyone.

Yeah, if we go to the next slide, we will be able to see what we would expect for four year olds.

So children develop at different rates.

These milestones provide a helpful reference for what we would typically expect 75% of 4 year olds will be able to do.

So.

A few examples: they might pretend to be something or someone else during play and they would be able to say sentences with four or more words and they could name a few colours of items and can usually catch a large ball most of the time.

So if we think back to those options that we had in the mentee question, so it's really great that we are seeing above 80% that have chosen the correct answer, which is plays with peers.

They might go and ask to play with other children.

The other option, so for example answers complex questions.

We would expect them to answer simple questions, but at that age, not necessarily complex ones.

Holds a pencil and writes with a fist.

We would expect a four year old to generally be able to hold a pencil between their fingers and thumb and not just write with their fist, says only single words like milk.

At four years old, they will usually be able to chain together four or more words into a sentence.

Yeah.

So that's just a little exercise to, yeah, get a flavour of what we would expect with four year olds in the Learn the Signs. Act Early developmental checklist.

Thank you so much for engaging with this little exercise.

And I will now hand back to Hannah to discuss how Learn the Signs. Act Early. and Milestone monitoring can support your daily practise.

Thank you.

Speaker: Hannah Hayes

Thanks, Stef.

That was fantastic and great to see all of that engagement from our attendees online.

So my name's Hannah.

I am a senior policy officer in the Health and Development Checks team and I'm excited to share a little bit more information about the Learn the Signs. Act Early learning module and then I'll roll through with some further information on our program.

So as you're all aware and there's lots of professional development out there and there's only so much time to do it.

So I really wanted to ensure we really highlighted today that how completing these modules and building your understanding of developmental milestones and letting The Signs. Act Early can be beneficial for you, your children and your families in service.

So understanding developmental milestones enhances your current understanding of child development.

When we understand what children are generally expected to achieve by a certain age, we're better able to recognise where a child might need some of that additional support.

This, in turn, can inform your programming and planning.

When you know the milestones and combine that with your knowledge of the children in your care, you'll be able to plan experiences that support children in reaching and extending on those milestones.

Learn the Signs. Act Early, and similar tools can help conversations with families as well.

When there's a developmental concern that you're bringing to a family, it can be really helpful to have an evidence based tool like a milestone checklist to clearly explain those concerns to the family.

It's also a useful tool for a child who, for example, is meeting all of their milestones, but a parent might be concerned because they don't understand what's typical for a child at their age.

So you can really use this tool to demonstrate where that learning progression is at.

Furthermore, it can also help with collaboration with health professionals.

The Learn Signs. Act Early checklist are really familiar to GPs and child and family health nurses.

And it can be really helpful to have a kind of shared language cheat sheet of sorts, whether you're discussing concerns with a health professional in person or supporting a child's family to engage with health professionals.

Before I move on from here, I want to just reiterate that the module will be available soon.

We just really wanted to bring it to you today because we're excited to share it shortly.

So keep an eye out in your inboxes and I'm sure it will be coming to you very shortly.

It will be accessible through the TAFE NSW website, as you can see in the video that Steph shared earlier.

So yeah, watch this space.

OK, so let's discuss how our HDC program fits in in this early intervention space that we've been discussing this morning.

So to begin, we'll give you a quick overview of our program.

If you'd like a more detailed overview of the program itself, please feel free to visit our web pages.

My colleague will be putting those links in the chat right now.

Let's roll through.

Yeah.

So the Health and Development Checks in Early Learning Services program is a partnership between the Department of Education and NSW Health.

Our program provides health and development checks to 4 year olds at participating services across NSW.

Our program builds on existing services where parents and carers can access their child's health and development checks from the Blue Book.

This could be through their local doctor, child and family health nurse or local Aboriginal medical service.

However, we know that many children in New South Wales are not receiving their four year old health and development checks through these avenues, despite the check offering information before starting school.

As per the 2024 AEDC results, we saw that 21.8% of children are starting school developmentally off track in one or more domains.

By expanding access and offering checks within early learning services, our goal is to increase the number of children who complete the four year old health and development check.

This then helps families access the information and support they need to promote their child's health, growth and development and to seek help where needed before their child starts school.

So, since rollout began in September 2023, the HDC program has expanded to health professionals from local health district

Teams complete the checks by looking at each child's health and development, which includes listening and talking skills, gross and fine motor skills, learning, thinking and problem solving skills and how children's bodies are growing such as their height, weight and teeth.

Looking at the stats briefly, we're able to see that the program is reaching many children, families and services across NSW.

We're really excited to see the uptake, so keen to share this with you right now.

As of the 29th of January, we've recorded more than 31,000 checks completed since the program commenced in June 2023.

The graph on the screen now shows that each year more checks are being completed.

Oh, each quarter.

Sorry.

So far in this financial year from July to December, more than 10,000 checks have already been completed.

We expect to see that number grow as the financial year continues to proceed

as we continue through. In 2025 from January to December, there were over 1529 early learning services that engage with the program, which is great to see.

Importantly, these checks provide valuable insights into referral trends and the types of supports children may be needing in the year before school.

So in the financial year 2025 to 2026.

So we're looking at the first six months of that financial year, July to December, 25% of the projected 4 year old population were offered a check.

Of those children offered checks, 59% were offered referrals to allied health services, with the top 4 referral domains being in oral health, speech therapy, occupational therapy and weight management.

30% of children were offered enrichment activities and I'll just explain what those are now.

They're structured, hands on, engaging experiences designed to support a child's development outside of a standard therapy led or educational structure.

So these could include, you know, educational puzzles, drawing scenarios or activity ideas that extend on children's learning experiences.

These kind of activities can be completed in classroom by teachers and educators, but can also be extended on at home by families.

Overall, with all the data on the screen here now, it's really highlighting the importance of health and development checks in supporting early identification and intervention, which is critical in ensuring best possible outcomes for our children and families in New South Wales.

So let's shift focus again now across to our broader HDC support suite.

We've rolled out a support suite of resources for educators and families, and you may have heard of a few.

We'll unpack these today and share some exciting updates across these work streams.

But first, we're curious to learn which of the current HDC program resources you may have accessed yourself or by your service.

So I will give you a moment now to have a look and answer.

So in the menti on the screen now, you'll be able to select from the list provided you can choose as many or as few that apply to you.

If you haven't accessed any yet, that's completely OK, just select have not accessed and I'll just wait a moment for that number to go up.

I think we could probably look at the results now.

What do we think?

All right, So we've got quite a spread and it's great to see how many services have engaged with our Health and Development Participation Grant. We'll shortly provide an update on that piece of work.

It's great to see engagement with our Connect and Communicate toolkit and our family fact sheets.

And for those that haven't yet accessed our resources, part of the reason we're here today is to help bring these resources to your attention.

So I'm looking forward to sharing some more information with you now.

So you may already be aware of the Health and Development Participation grant.

I'll probably continue to refer to it as the HDP grant from here on out because it's less of a mouthful.

So 2026 saw our biggest engagement today with the Health and Development Participation Grant, which we as a team are really thrilled to see.

There is more information coming on what that engagement looked like, which we'll share shortly.

Funding has now been distributed to all successful grant recipients for 2026.

If you have any issues with that, please feel free to reach out to the team.

So as you can see on the screen, the 2026 grant was designed to address 3 key objectives.

Number one, increasing engagement with the HDC in Early Learning program, especially amongst priority populations across NSW. Number 2 increasing capability of teachers and educators to support Children's Health and development.

And then number 3 embedding health and developmental support for children following the check.

We've tried to make sure that these objectives have been embedded, embedded across our funding categories, our eligibility criteria and then the prioritise prioritisation hierarchy used in our assessment process.

We also made sure that funding was available across 2 categories.

As you can see on the screen there, there's category one, just $1500 to support participation in the Health and Development Check program within services.

And then category two, $6000 designed for cohort wide capability uplift and educational resources designed to help educators strengthen their ability to support children's development in the service environment.

Now we're in the spending period

For the 2026 grant round, we'll continue to send bi monthly newsletters to all grant recipients.

The goal of these newsletters is to support recipients understanding of the grant and insights into how others have used the funding in their services.

And you should have received the first one in early March.

Easy to read information sheets.

I'm actually really excited today to share an update on this fact sheet offering.

So the fact sheets include information on what the service should expect pre, during and post health and development checks.

It also answers frequently asked questions about the program and processes.

I encourage all services to engage with this resource to more fully prepare for the HDC program.

Similar fact sheets have been designed for families, providing key information on what the family can expect from opting in to receive a health and development check in their child's early learning service.

This resources is useful for early learning services to share with families, to ease anxieties and to answer key questions on the program that may come up for families.

So I'm thrilled to share that the fact sheets have now been translated to 10 languages, This includes Arabic, Assyrian, Dari, Korean, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, simplified and traditional Chinese, and Vietnamese.

These resources will be invaluable for services seeking to provide additional support to families and carers from diverse cultural and language backgrounds.

You can scan the QR codes on the screen now to access more information on the information sheets and the translations, and my colleague will also be putting the links in the chat for you.

The Culturally Safe Approach Toolkit is another of the professional learning resources developed to support services delivering the Health and Development Checks program.

The toolkit aligns with the Early Years Learning Framework and supports your services engagement with your Reconciliation Action Plan by helping educators embed culturally safe, inclusive and responsive pedagogy into practise.

The toolkit has been designed for flexible, self paced learning, whether individually or as a team, to support ongoing reflection and continuous improvement in culturally safe practises.

It is designed to enhance what services are already doing and is not an additional requirement or obligation.

We've designed the toolkit as a practical guide that supports educators to reflect on and strengthen culturally responsive practise, particularly when supporting Aboriginal children and families through the Health and Development check process.

As highlighted in the poster on the screen, the toolkit aims to help services to create environments where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families feel welcomed, respected and supported, foster cultural safety and responsiveness in everyday practise, and empower educators to deliver culturally affirming practices in service.

Central to the toolkit offering is our Culturally Safe Approach Reflective tool, which you'll see a snippet of on the screen now.

This encourages educators and teams to reflect on their current practises and identify opportunities for improvement.

The Reflection tool focuses on five key areas including creating culturally safe environments, building meaningful relationships with families, supporting shared decision making, applying a trauma informed lens and connecting with local Aboriginal services.

These are all designed to enhance your practise.

My colleague will be sharing the link to the Culturally Safe Approach Toolkit in the Q&A now, and we encourage you to take a look and take some time to reflect.

Last but certainly not least, I want to share our Brighter Beginnings Connect and Communicate toolkit, the C&C Toolkit.

That's probably how I'll refer to it from here on out.

And the C&C Toolkit was launched in August 2025, providing early learning professionals with information and activities to support children's communication development.

It was developed by teachers, for teachers with input from expert speech pathologists and is designed to fit easily into everyday early learning practise and routines.

There is no requirement to use this toolkit, it's simply a resource available for services to use in ways that best support their practise.

We know that communication is is essential for a successful transition to school and to lifelong learning.

Through the HDC and Early Learning Services Program, we've seen that speech and language development is one of the most common areas where children require additional support after their health and development

check. With long wait lists and potential barriers to accessing services.

This toolkit has been designed to provide practical strategies that educators can use to support children's communication development while families wait for further assessment or support.

Once educators learn and embed the strategies they can then revisit the resource later as a refresher or when supporting new staff in service.

The 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 relevant information and evidence based strategies, followed by a practical session to put these strategies into practice.

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

Video resources of the strategies form part of the toolkit.

A suite of resources is also included to make implementing the ideas easier for educators.

You'll see in the toolkit some of the activities might link to flash cards

we've provided those for you to make those as easy as possible to pick up and go.

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

I'm thrilled to share that we've recently launched these fact sheets in 10 different languages to support conversation around children's communication development with families from a range of diverse backgrounds.

If you'd like more information about the toolkit, there's a QR code on the screen now.

Or, as with all of our other resources, my colleague will be posting links in the chat.

Oh, sorry, I'm just going to go back.

I've got a little bit more to add about the toolkit offering.

So in support of the toolkit rollout, we've been rolling out a suite of workshops across NSW.

These have been delivered in partnership with local health district teams.

In 2025 we delivered 8 workshops across the state and we heard a lot of really positive feedback from the sector as an engaging workshop offering and also an opportunity to learn more about the toolkit and how it could work in your service.

This year we'll be delivering a further 5 workshops across NSW.

We held our first workshop for 2026 in Shellharbour on the 10th of March and we may see some of you on Wednesday at our next workshop in Canterbury.

For the remaining workshops, services in participating local health districts will receive invitations to register their interest in attending.

So please keep an eye on your inbox and we look forward to seeing you there.

So I'm going to pause now as we've really whipped through a lot of content today.

Before we wrap up the session, I wanted to take some time to answer some of our commonly asked questions about the program and supports.

If your question isn't answered now, that's OK.

Please pop it in the chat, sorry, in the Q&A and the team will answer you there.

If we don't have time to get to your questions there either, we also recommend emailing us and we'll of course, share that email address before we finish today.

So I have called back Alicia to answer some of our questions.

So question #1 how do we find out when the checks will occur as a Oh my goodness, I'll start again.

How do we find out when the checks will occur as a successful recipient of category one in the 2026 HDP grant?

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

Awesome, Thanks, Hannah.

So that's a great question and I can see that a couple of services also asked that in our Q&A chat today.

So a lot of services that received the 2026 grant in category one have already heard from their local health district.

But if you haven't heard from them yet, you'll hear from them soon.

So your LHD or local health district will contact you to directly to arrange a date and a time for your health and development check visit.

The Department of Education and NSW Health are working together to ensure the program is implemented effectively across all services.

Due to the high number of early learning services involved and receiving a grant, local health districts are scheduling visits throughout the whole year.

So we appreciate early learning services knowing this and your flexibility with the proposed dates as you may not always be able to get the visit at a specific time straight away.

So they will offer you a time and we just ask for your flexibility around that.

If you have any concerns or you would like any more information, please feel free to email us at our email address, which you will get up on the screen shortly.

Speaker: Hannah Hayes

Thank you.

Alicia, if a service isn't a category one recipient of the HDP grant, when will the service have access to those checks?

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

So if you didn't receive category one, you're still welcome to participate in the program and we would just recommend that you show your interest by emailing your local health district.

If you're not sure which local health district you're in, we are going to pop into the chat a link where you can go in and pop in your address and it'll tell you which local health district.

And then we're also popping in the link where you'll be able to find the email addresses for each local health district so you can email them to show your interest.

As we said earlier though, please just be patient.

There is high interest in this program and they are working through the services as as quickly as they can to book you in.

Speaker: Hannah Hayes

Wonderful, thank you.

Another question that we've received is how is it going to be promoted to families that they should share the contents of the report with early learning staff.

So this is in that post check space when when families receive the results of the check.

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

So another great question.

OK, So information from the health and development check is shared directly with families and families can decide what information they would like to share with the Early Learning Service.

To support this process, we encourage services to share with families the easy to read fact sheets that Hannah talked about earlier and the ones that have been translated into 10 different languages.

As Hannah said, this resource explains what families can expect from the process and it encourages them to share relevant information from the report with educators so services can support their child's health and development.

Local health districts may also let services know when the reports have been shared with families and they may also share a service summary report.

This summary gives an overview of the checks completed in their service and what they saw come out of those checks.

A sample service summary report is going to be linked into our chat.

It's on our website, so just pop in and have a look and see what information you will get in that report or that's summary.

Once the checks have been completed, services may choose to follow up with families and ask about the outcome of the check.

As I said, ultimately it's up to the family and it's their choice of what information they will be comfortable sharing with the service.

So it really does come back to every service having strong connections with their families.

We absolutely encourage open communication and where families feel comfortable sharing relevant information so this can support the child in your care and help educators tailor their learning and support to each child's needs.

Speaker: Hannah Hayes

Wonderful, Thanks.

Alicia, we are hearing a lot of questions about the 2026 grant, so I'm just going to read out another one on that one.

So how, how might other services be using their grants?

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

Yeah, really great question as well.

And like you said, there's going to be lots of information coming to services across the year to help them work out how best to spend their money.

So services are using their grant in a range of ways to support children's learning and development.

So category one funding provides relief support so educators can step off the floor to support the delivery of the Health and Development Check program.

This includes tasks such as collating consent forms, liaising with families and health providers, supporting parents with pre screening questionnaires if it's needed and assisting children on the day of the check.

Funding can cover an additional staff hours or relief educators which enable services to participate in the program fully.

Category 2 funding can be used in a number of ways and we encourage you to consider what will work best for your service.

So under category two, we are seeing services using the grant to strengthen educated capability by engaging allied health professionals.

So allied health providers may deliver in service training or they might work with educators and teachers on the floor to embed cohort wide strategies that support children's developmental needs.

Funding can also be used to cover workshop attendance and staffing to release educators from the floor to attend this training.

In some cases, services are also purchasing resources such as fine motor equipment, books, dramatic play materials and these materials are to be relevant for four year old or older children.

We know that services are interested in hearing all the time or what other services are doing.

They love hearing the innovative stories.

So throughout this this year, we're going to be sharing case studies and examples on how different services are spending their money and this will come through your bimonthly newsletter.

As Hannah said, the first one came out in March this year, but we have more planned throughout this year, so please keep an eye on your inbox for any updates as the year progresses. At any time at all

If you're unsure about how these fundings can be spent, we recommend you checking the program guidelines, the funding examples on our website and the frequently asked questions.

But as we've said multiple times already, if you have any doubt and you wanna just check in, please feel free to email us and we will respond to you.

Speaker: Hannah Hayes

Wonderful.

Thank you Alicia.

I've got one final question for you before the in wrap up of today's session.

So what are some early indicators that educators should look for when a child may need additional development developmental support?

Speaker: Alicia Kenyon

Yeah.

And so educators may notice when a child's development is progressing differently from typical milestones.

The Learn the Signs. Act Early resource which are the training modules that are coming soon and the Blue Book support educators to understand developmental milestones across different ages and outline what around 75% of children are typically able to do at each age and stage.

These resources help professionals recognise when a child may need additional support and provide guidance on how to respond.

Training modules will soon be available for both early learning and health professionals.

The modules build understanding of developmental milestones, observation techniques and effective communication with families, working with health professionals and just in general supporting children's development in everyday practice.

If you have a concern about a child in your service, we recommend you speaking to the child's parents or guardians and referring them to your local GP or Child and Family Health Service.

Child and Family Health nurses are free in New South Wales and parents and carers can access these to get their child's health and development checks done.

Families do not require a referral to access Child and Family Health Services and they can provide information and support about their child's development and provide specialised referrals where they might be needed.

If you are unsure about where your closest child family health service is, it's on that lovely poster that Stef shared earlier, but we're also going to pop that into the chat for you now so it's easy to access.

Speaker: Hannah Hayes

Wonderful.

Thank you very much for coming back to answer those questions, Alicia.

I hope that was really useful to the the attendees today.

So thank you all for joining us today.

I've got a bit more to whip through though.

Before we let you go, I want to highlight a few of our key takeaways.

So as my colleague staff outlined today, early intervention matters.

Identifying developmental concerns early helps support children to get the best start in life, enables timely intervention, improves long term outcomes and supports school readiness.

Educators can use the milestones outlined in the Blue Book and Learn the Signs Act Early resources to help guide identification and inform next steps.

A reminder that the Health and Development Checks in Early Learning Services program is available to all long daycare services and preschools across NSW.

It's opt in at this point in time, so we encourage services to get involved.

Email us to learn more.

On the screen now are some QR codes to our information and our web, our contact email, which my colleague will drop in the chat.

So before you leave today, we'd love to hear some of the your feedback on how today's session went.

Please feel free to use the QR code, and we'll also be putting all of the links referenced today in the chat for your ease of reference.

So I'll give you a few moments to get into that survey now.

All right, thank you all for joining the ECE Connect session today and learning more about our program and available supports.

We look forward to continuing to work with you.

End of Transcript

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

Good morning everyone.

Thank you for joining us today.

My name is Kathy Dryden and I'm joined today by Jackie Kelly.

We are both state operations managers within the NSW Early Learning Commission.

We want to get started on time.

I appreciate that some people will still be finding time to join us this morning, but this is also recorded, so if you've missed the first bit, that's fine, you'll be able to go back and watch the recording.

We are delighted to bring you today's session on effective risk management in early education and care.

Every day we care for some of the most curious and eager little learners.

As children explore, they encounter risks and learning to navigate safe and unsafe situations is a normal part of their development.

The support, guidance and thoughtful management of risk provided by approved providers, nominated supervisors and educators helps ensure children can explore safely while having an enriching learning experience.

I would like to start today's session by respectfully acknowledging the custodians of all the lands and waterways in which we live and work on, including the lands of the Yuin people where I'm joining you from today.

For many thousands of years, Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people have lived in harmony, with and carefully managed for the Country which they have a deep spiritual connection.

I would like to pay my respects to Elders past and present as the ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines, stories, and extend that respect to any Aboriginal Torres Strait people with us today.

Thank you for your enduring care of the lands, waterways, and skies for countless years.

They have always been and always will be yours.

For millennia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities have worked together to raise children.

Elders are the holders of knowledge and culture.

However children navigate the future, they come first and are prioritised within the community as they take on the responsibility for the continuing sharing of culture for years to come.

The role of the carers is to be sensitive, observant and responsive to the needs of children.

Elders walk with children, effectively educating them as life happens.

Children are always with other community members and learning is focused on more being with the children, interacting with them and responding to their cues, the specific environment they're in.

As we explore our role in caring for and educating children, let us be inspired by this wisdom to ensure all children are kept safe and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders learners in New South Wales achieve their potential through education.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

Thank you, Kathy, and just for some housekeeping for the session today.

We understand there's a range of ways to learn and absorb information.

So if you'd like to turn on captions, please go to the top bar of Teams meeting screen, select More then, select Language and Speech, then select Show Live Captions and that should make captions appear at the bottom of your screen.

The microphone and camera functions have also been disabled for this presentation.

However, as always, we encourage you to ask questions through the Q&A function.

Resources will also be posted in the chat and there's a team of experts behind the scenes ready to answer your questions.

If you have any service specific questions though, we ask that you contact our information inquiries team via email or phone.

So this team's equipped to assist you and ensure you get the right advice for your service.

So this will be an interactive session and we want to hear from you.

So we'll be using Menti, so please have this ready on your device.

A QR code will be shown on the screen for you to join and participate.

We ask that you take a few moments also at the end of the session to complete a feedback survey as this helps us to continue to develop our content and the content that's useful for you in New South Wales services.

This session will also be recorded and published on the department's education website.

So next we'll move on to the session overview.

So in today's session we will be talking about how risk assessment helps children and educators keep children safe and educators well informed when making risk based decisions in everyday practice.

By working together to reduce the risk of harm, we can help ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of children, families, staff and community members within your service.

Risk assessments are required under the national law for several higher risk areas including excursions, transport, sleep and rest, safe arrivals and departures and medical conditions.

But in everyday practice, risk assessments support thoughtful decision making across many activities.

So today we will focus specifically on two practice areas relating to risk assessments.

The first is supervision, as outlined in National Law sections 165 and 167.

And the second area we'll be looking at is emergency and evacuation procedures that's referenced in Regulation 97.

So together we'll cover what risk actually means, how to assess it as you move around your service, and how to document it properly in a formal risk assessment.

We'll also explore today how to use a risk matrix effectively.

We'll take a close look at how these processes apply in the context of supervision and emergencies and evacuations.

So additionally, we'll also highlight a local service through a case study to show you how they have embedded risk assessment into everyday practice.

We'll see how they involve children and families and use thoughtful, practical strategies to manage risks while supporting children's learning and play.

By the end of the session, we hope you'll feel confident using risk assessments as a practical tool, not just a compliance requirement, and understand how to involve your team, children and families in the process.

Before we get started, though, we'd like to get a sense of how you currently feel about conducting risk assessments.

So we're going to begin with our first Menti poll for the session.

You should see the Menti poll displayed on the screen in front of you and it asks how confident do you feel about conducting risk assessments in your service.

To participate in this poll, what you need to do is scan the QR code, or you can go to Menti.com and enter the code that's shown.

In doing this, please remember that all your responses are completely anonymous, so feel free to share honestly what your thoughts are.

And then as the results come in, we'll take a moment to have a look and reflect on how everyone feels about conducting risk assessments in your service.

So we've got a whole lot coming in really big and fast, which is fantastic.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

It's good to see that there are some very confident and moderately confident people.

And you know, we have some people that not at all confident and that it's a great coverage in terms of skills and experience of people in services and the role that you have in the services.

Extremely confident, we want to get those people to run our session, Jackie.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

That would be wonderful. And it's great, you know, to have that input at the beginning of the session because we'll be asking you similarly towards the end of the session to see how your knowledge and understanding may have been uplifted through this session today.

So thank you everyone.

That's a fantastic response that we've received with that Menti.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

They could go very quickly.

We can go back to those if we need to.

So what we're going to start it before we start looking at hazards and risk assessments in practice, what we want to do is we want to have a look at how the difference between hazard and harm and hazard and risk, because often those two words are interchangeable, but they're actually not quite clear.

So hazard is something that could cause harm, for example, a slippery floor.

The risk is the chance the hazard could be causing harm and how severe that outcome is.

It's important to remember that not every hazard will necessarily result in a harmful outcome.

Risk only exists if there's exposure to that hazard.

In other words, the risk is about both the likelihood of harm occurring and how severe that harm could be if it does happen.

Let's use a simple example that often comes up in childcare quite a bit, especially lately with the way that the weather's been.

Imagine that you've had a downpour of rain.

The children really want to go outside, but you've identified that the rain has caused pockets of water and slippery areas in the backyard.

You can mitigate that risk.

So the risk of sending the children out or even the staff going out.

The likelihood of the risk to the staff is that they could fall, they'll slip, staff and children.

So the risk is quite high if someone fell over and hurt themselves.

So there's certain ways that we can actually control the risk.

So in this one, we could eliminate the risk altogether and not go outside because, you know it's not safe.

We can't go out.

However, we can't completely remove the risk.

The children enjoy going outside.

You've identified that there are spaces in the the backyard that the children can still go and play because you really want them to enjoy that.

In these cases, it's understanding that the likelihood and the potential severity of harm is essential for controlling the risk appropriately.

You want the children to go outside, but you don't necessarily want them to go out and play in those spaces where the slip hazard still occurs.

So you can control them in that example, it might mean that you talk to the children, depending on the ages of the children, and you tell them that we're going to go outside.

However, we need to make sure that we don't play in those spaces.

The hazard is there, the water is there, it's slippery.

We're not going to be able to play on the usual equipment that we will play on.

So you can still go out and take the children outside and they can enjoy that outside time.

But that effective supervision and that information and that communication between staff, you've controlled the risk.

You haven't removed it.

The risk may not go away until the sunshine comes out and everything is dry.

But you've been able to control the risk.

The hazard stays, but the risk is controlled so the children can come out.

It's a very simplified explanation, but it's probably something that you're all encountering in the current weather environments.

OK Risk assessments play a crucial role in helping us identify hazards and risks that are specific to our service and the children who attend.

They provide us with a structured way to prepare for, manage and reduce those risks, all while supporting children's safety and well being.

Importantly, risk assessments also show the reasoning behind the control measures we put in place and explain how decisions were made.

If we use the previous example, we've actually said, you know, part of that decision was that we still wanted the children to enjoy the environment.

So this transparency helps demonstrate that our approach to managing risk is thoughtful, consistent and appropriate for the ages, abilities and the needs of our children in care.

Beyond just being a planning tool, risk assessments are also an important means of communication.

They help educators, staff and families and other stakeholders understand how risks are being managed within the service, enabling children to participate safely in everyday experiences.

Developing and reviewing risk assessments is a truly collaborative approach.

Everyone has a role in identifying hazards unique to the service where they work and contributing to safer practice.

It's really important that when we say everyone, if you're in an OSHC service, you've got double digits, you'll be able to get those children to help you identify those risks.

It's very important that children in as a preschool rooms can actually look at those risks too, when you start talking to children about risk assessments.

Review of risk assessments especially become important when there are changes to the environment, when new risks emerge or existing risks change, following an incident or a near miss, when you accept new activities or equipment are introduced or when new children are enrolled.

All those children who require different needs approaching to managing risks.

It's not just a one stop shop.

It's not just a set and forget.

Because as you know, as children grow and develop, their needs will change.

So the risk assessment process is systematic.

It's a bit like when you're planning your program in your children's daily lives.

Creating a risk assessment is a documented process that supports decision making and ongoing safety management.

Essentially, it's a structured way of thinking through hazards and planning how to keep children's and staff safe.

Risk assessments can vary quite a bit depending on their purpose.

For instance, a risk assessment for an excursion looks very different from one focused on medical management.

The flow chart you see on this slide illustrates that risk assessment is a cyclical process.

It's not a one off task.

Instead, we continually identify, assess and evaluate and control and review risk to make our environment as safe as possible.

As I've said, it's not just a set and forget process.

Let's step through the five key steps of risk assessment.

First, identify.

Start by looking at everything that could cause harm in a childcare service. I think that's probably everything, including the children.

Consider both obvious and less obvious hazards like weather events or equipment failure.

Next Assess.

Determine how likely each hazard is to occur and what impact it could have.

Not all hazards carry the same risk.

Focus on those most likely to happen and those could seriously affect our staff.

Slips, trips and falls as we said with water slips is probably one of the most common ones we would have in services.

Then you would evaluate, consider who might be harmed, children, staff, visitors and how severe the consequences could be, particularly for children with mobility, medical or behaviour needs.

Finally, review, monitor, update and improve risk assessment regularly, especially after drills, incidents, changes for staffing, casual staffing, the environment or children's needs.

Seek feedback from relevant authorities when needed.

And one thing that you can do in your service is if you've got staff that are used to working in different rooms, get them to swap the rooms around.

Because quite often when there are risks in the room environment, you get a bit comfortable.

So having somebody go into a different room and have a look at those risks is really, really helpful because they're looking at it with fresh eyes.

By following the cyclical process, identify, assess, evaluate and then review, we ensure that risks are managed systematically and they help staff make informed decisions.

It's really important that clear and thorough documentation is essential, so anyone reviewing the risk assessment can easily understand how risks were identified, why they're relevant and what control measures in place.

It's a bit like work, health and safety.

It's everybody's responsibility.

To support this process, many services use a rich matrix which we'll now have a look at next.

I think many of you who have been working will have seen this.

You might see these in fire stations and childcare centres and workplaces.

They're actually quite a common and well used risk tool.

That said that many, many, many businesses will use.

A risk matrix is a useful tool that helps us prioritise risks by focusing on two key factors. How likely something is going to happen and how serious the impact would be if it did occur.

Using a risk matrix gives us a consistent way to decide which risks need immediate action and which can be managed through routine controls.

The matrix includes 5 levels of likelihood, asking how probable is the risk.

It also has 5 levels of consequence, asking if this happens, how serious could it be?

When we're thinking about consequences, it's important to consider who might be affected and how vulnerable they are.

By combining the likelihood and consequences, the matrix produces a risk rating ranging from insignificant to major.

That rating guides us to the level of control needed.

Higher risks need stronger controls and more urgent action for those services that are in the Blue Mountains or are in flood affected areas.

I am sure that these controls and these measures are very, very familiar to you.

Remember, the matrix supports decision making but doesn't replace professional judgement, and once controls are in place we need to reassess the risk for effectiveness.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

So now we're going to put into practice what we've just learnt through the previous slides in another Menti activity.

So here's the scenario.

Children are helping to prepare and cook pancakes in an electric fry pan as well as preparing a fruit salad.

With this activity, there are several risks to consider.

These could include food allergies, food contamination, burns from hot cooking appliances, supervision levels, and children's ability to handle utensils safely.

Now, next, we use the risk matrix to determine the risk rating.

We begin by thinking about the likelihood, whether the risks are rare, unlikely or possible.

And then we consider the consequence, how serious the impact could be.

So combining likelihood and consequence, we work out the overall risk rating for this activity.

So what we'd like you to do now using Menti is to take a moment to enter what you think the risk rating should be for this scenario just described.

And we'll have a look as the responses come in and see where we land with that.

Ok. So there's a lot coming in.

Thank you.

There's a range critical - high. High has the most number of responses at the moment, moderate or low.

So when we have a look at this.

It would seem what we've decided is after considering the control measures we can put into place in this scenario, we've determined that the likelihood is likely and the consequence is significant and this results in a risk rating of high and and that seems to be what the majority of our responses are that are coming in.

So thank you

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

And I think to whether people are looking at critical would be looking at the ages of the children as well without specifically saying the ages of the children giving 3 year olds knives and hot things around it could be much higher depending on the ages of the children that are participating in this activity.

But even with school aged children, we wouldn't be looking at a high risk.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

So yes, it's always contextually based like Kathy's describing the ages of the children can make a difference, locations and even educators.

So the next slide is a another Menti.

And so what we're asking here is for you to think about using the same scenario, what control measures could be put in place to lower the risk rating.

so you can enter any strategies you believe could help and it will come out as a word cloud.

So we've got supervision is one of the the biggest responses.

Yeah, additional staff, limit the number of children, lower ratios.

A lot of feedback around that relate to staffing, supervision, ratios of children, smaller groups of children, increased supervision. Dynamic supervision,

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

I think active supervision is one of my favourite things to say is that activeness is like not just sitting back and watching there you go.

Active supervision has made an appearance.

It's really important that active supervision is there and that the staff are fully engaged in the activity as well.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

And a whole lot of fantastic sort of control measures that we're seeing in that word cloud and all very comunication.

So important. Planning really another key component. Dynamic supervision.

So that really is a really good suggestion. Oh, I really like that dynamic suggestion. Yes, builds on active supervision, dynamic supervision, close supervision.

So there's certainly some recurring kind of themes, I think in some of the control measures that everyone's inputting and all very appropriate and relevant and obviously would be contextual to the particular scenario and situation that you're dealing with as well within your service.

So fantastic.

Thank you everyone.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

Some great responses.

Other things that we can actually look at is checking children's allergies before they participated in different activities that there's some activities that they may not be able to do, dietary information using child safe knives.

And I think somebody put in their resources and equipment and hand washing, you know, making sure that the children are hand washing beforehand and it may be on there, but I probably just can't see it.

That is great.

Thank you very much everybody.

So when we apply the risk matrix, let's revisit our risk matrix matrix now that measures are implemented.

We've checked allergy information, we're using child safe knives and ensured, hand washing has happened and the children are supervised closely considering individual abilities.

Children have been instructed on the safe use of hot electrical appliances with educators demonstrating safe practices.

I didn't think to say demonstration first up.

With these controls in place as reassessing the risk, the likelihood of injury, allergic reaction or food contamination is now unlikely.

However, the consequences still remain significant.

So a risk rating could actually be looked at now as moderate because we've put those controls in place.

This experience still involves risks, so using professional judgement to weigh risks against the benefits for the children's learning is essential in every activity.

Now let's turn to risk assessment in supervision, an important area of practice that we do every day.

So adequate supervision and I'm starting to love the word dynamic supervision after our word cloud, is a minimum.

Adequate supervision is the minimum legislated for our expectations.

But I do like dynamic, ensuring the children are always supervised through policies, procedures and processes, including risk assessment.

The National Law section 165 states that it's an offence to inadequately supervise children.

Section 167 covers offences relating to protection from Harman hazards and regulation 115 mandates service premises are to be designed to facilitate supervision.

For family day care, regulation 116 requires a risk assessment of each residence or venue before care is provided, including any inaccessible, any accessible premises, structures or areas.

As per the new legislative reforms.

Supervision risk assessment also inform how services document who is supervising children at any time.

So some of the common supervision risks we find when we come out to services

Some of the supervision, it's lines of sight, can result in poor visibility or blind spots, bathrooms, cubbies, doorways.

They can limit educators ability to see the children.

Risk assessments help to identify these areas and guide staff positioning.

Little places where children can hide behind sheds, things like that.

Transition times are another place where we find that there's a large risk, such as moving between spaces like indoors to outdoors and they're high risk movements and children can become separated if supervision isn't planned.

It's really important with some of thoses time with those transitions, if you have a child who is quite sensitive to change that they may be the ones that you need to identify in that time because just that process of transitioning from one space to another may be the things that will change their behaviour.

Mixed age groups, different abilities in size or understanding of risk when children play together can increase risks.

Risk assessments help staff to understand why they need to adjust the supervision accordingly.

High risk activities such as water play, climbing or excursions require enhanced supervision, clear positioning and active monitoring.

And finally, as I said before, individual needs.

Some children have medical or behaviour or developmental needs requiring closer supervision at all times.

But you'll know those children.

And as I said, as children start to grow and change, those risks may change with those children.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

So thinking about supervision strategies that reduce risk.

Risk assessments ensure that all of these risks are identified and planned for.

They clarify that staff positioning, ensure all areas and children are visible, support consistency across the team, manage high risk times and spaces and enable early identification of hazards.

Strategies included in your risk assessment might be adult positioning within play spaces, moving throughout the environment, using peripheral vision to scan the area, monitoring children's noises and stress levels, and knowing each child's strengths and abilities.

And finally, how educators communicate with each other.

That was one of our words in our last Menti as well.

Communication was really an important factor as well.

It's everyone's responsibility to be familiar with their service's risk assessment and act accordingly.

So onboarding new staff should include a discussion around risk assessments and responsibilities.

And by applying these strategies consistently, we ensure a safer environment and proactive supervision for every child.

So the next slide talks to safe fencing in ECE services.

So fencing is something that we know can pose significant risk to children, especially when combined with blind spots, climbable features or ineffective transition procedures.

Fencing can create entrapment hazards, require ongoing risk assessment and active supervision.

So Kidsafe NSW recommends avoiding loop top or rod top style fences that children can climb onto or get caught in.

Or if you have those types of fencing designs in place that you take steps to mitigate the risks of these.

So the highest risk fencing includes loop or rod top fencing styles, fencing that's 1,200mm or below, and fencing that's accessible to children aged 0 to 3 years.

So services need strong supervision practices around fences and must actively manage blind spots where risks are identified.

Services should mitigate or fix hazards by modifying the environment or using other controls.

The NSW Early Learning Commission issued urgent communications in September and December 2025 advising of the risks of loop and rod top fencing styles.

So I would encourage you to go back to those and have a look at that information as well.

But also for more information you can visit the Kids Safe Australia website.

They have some good information around those fencing types as well.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

Thanks, Jackie

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

So emergency and evacuation legislation, Kathy will talk to.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

Emergency evacuation legislation.

This is something that is a passion for all of us.

Another area of practice where risk assessments are vital is emergency and evacuation.

In NSW, services are required to assess and plan for potential emergencies that may affect children's safety and operation of the service.

This is supported by provisions in both the National Regulations and the National Law, including Regulation 97, two which states a risk assessment must be conducted to identify relevant emergencies.

And a new section of the National Law 219A which allows the regulatory to order closure of some or all NSW services, including FDC, if an emergency threatens children's safety.

So some of our common emergency and evacuation risks.

Understanding the common risks and the strategies we use to reduce the risks help keep children safe.

Common emergency risks include environmental hazards such as fire, smoke, flooding, extreme weather hazards in the physical environment.

And it will be, you know, as Jackie, I've said before with context, context is everything.

If you're in the Blue Mountains, you'd be looking at a higher level of fire risk than what you would be looking at other sorts of risks.

But the risks are still there.

If you're in a metro area, road risks are really important, especially if you have car accidents outside your service.

Communication risks include breakdown causing confusion during emergencies.

Risk assessments support clear plans.

Supervision risk where insufficient staffing or poor positioning can separate children.

Risk assessment help plan safe environments and we all know that some children either hear an alarm and they're scared and they want to hide or they want to go find a fire truck.

So it's really important that you understand the different reactions of the children so that supervision isn't impeded if a child tries to avoid the area.

And that's why practice is really important.

Practice those drills, they're not just there for the regulations, they're there to keep children safe so that they all know what to do and that panic is not going to be as much when it happens.

Blocked or unsafe evacuation routes, clutter or locked doors can delay evacuation.

Regular checks to keep those clear.

That is something that is quite common that we find when we go out and do service checks.

It is quite common.

You've got this lovely space down the side of your service that you're going to use to store cleaning equipment or spare chairs or broken bits of equipment until you get to them later on.

You really have to be very clear that that space is kept clear.

The reasons why it has to be kept clear because they need to be used in case of an emergency.

There would be nothing worse if that was your only escape route and it was full of clutter.

So please ensure that as part of your daily checks that those areas are clear.

Finally, the individual needs of children, including mobility, medical or behaviour needs require extra support and must be considered in plans and account for every child.

And you know your children well.

You'll know how they react.

And that's why planning and practising is so important.

Identifying, assessing these risks in advancement means services can put in effective controls in place and respond calmly and safely in emergency situations.

And again, it has to happen under the legislation.

There's certain times, but it might be that you do them more often.

You might do them when new staff start, when children change rooms and change routines.

So it's really up to you as how often that you do this.

There is a minimum requirement, but you might look at your own risks and you might think that they need to be done more often because of the changes in your service.

So emergency and evacuation strategies that can reduce risk, they are a key control for safe and coordinated responses.

They clarify staff responsibilities, they support consistent practice across the team, they help services prepare for urgent unfamiliar situations and they support supervision and communication and individual children's needs during evacuation.

It's everyone's responsibility to be familiar with their services emergency risk assessment.

Too often we find we go out to services and we ask staff, are you familiar with your risk assessment?

Are you familiar with your path out?

And they'll say, Yep, there's a map up on the wall.

That's what they showed me on the first day.

It's not enough just to show somebody where the map is on the wall and how to get out because when the emergency happens, they're not going to be looking for a map on the wall.

They need to know what the process is.

It's everybody's responsibility to be familiar with their services.

Emergency risk assessment, including casual staff and including parents who may be there at drop off time.

Including risk assessments in induction, sharing them digitally and conducting regular audits with educator feedback helps to ensure that familiarity.

By applying these strategies consistently, services strengthen preparedness and reduce the risk of harm when an emergency does occur.

OK, Jackie's going to do a case study for you.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

So thank you.

We're just going to have a a look at a real life example of a service that's embedded risk assessment in daily practice.

So this is a semi rural service that views risk is not something to eliminate, but as an opportunity for thoughtful management that supports children's learning and safety.

Risky play is common in their rural setting and the outdoor area is designed for children to explore, take calculated risks and build confidence under careful supervision.

Their risk assessment process is structured but practical.

They start by physically immersing themselves in the space, identifying hazards, assessing likelihood and consequence using a risk matrix and using a risk benefit analysis.

So they're asking things like what could go wrong and what benefit does this experience offer children?

And this helps them to weigh up the risks and the benefits.

Controls are tailored and reviewed annually or more often as new risks emerge, like Kathy explained just earlier, they're reviewed if there's new children, new educators, or something changes within the environment.

So a strength of their approach is involving children's voices.

So for example, when reviewing their snake risk assessment, the educators asked children where snakes could hide, and their children identified spots that the adults hadn't even considered.

And this prompted updates and more frequent drills actively involving the children.

Children's contributions are documented and families are regularly consulted, especially for excursions.

They've moved away from an overly prescriptive supervision maps and identifying instead supervision opportunities and moving with children as play unfolds, guided by risk assessment outcomes.

So external research and advice are used at the service where relevant, such as Fire NSW for evacuation and veterinary advice for pets.

After drills, they reflect, gather feedback and update risk assessments.

And this is their advice - to walk the space, involve all stakeholders, make risk assessments usable and contextually relevant and give educators chances to lead emergency drills.

Confidence grows through reflection and practice.

Since adopting this approach, the service reports increase confidence, stronger family collaboration, alignment with policy and children with deeper safety awareness.

So using this real life example, we can see that effective risk assessment is collaborative, reflective, practical and it guides decisions supporting children's learning, safety and well being.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

Thanks Jackie.

We appreciate we've sort of thrown a lot of information at you in a very short period of time.

So before we close, we'd like to see how your confidence around conducting risk assessments has changed.

After this webinar, you'll see a Menti poll on your screen.

As before, scan the QR code or go to Menti.com and enter the code.

All responses are anonymous.

Let's take a moment to submit the responses, and we'll discuss what you've shared.

I'm so glad that we have got no, no confidence at all.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

We've got quite a few coming in.

Thank you everyone.

Keep them coming in very confident.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

Our extremely confident people have doubled, which is good.

And the more that you conduct the risk assessments in your service and the more you communicate that with staff and ensure that everybody takes that responsibility in terms of risk assessments, the confidence will grow.

It becomes, you know, that it becomes an everyday thing.

I was trying to think of the right word, but it's that muscle memory.

When you practice things, it becomes muscle memory.

But again, it's not a set and forget.

You can't become complacent.

You need to review those risk assessments when things change, which in early childhood services, probably every few months, weeks and even daily things can change for you.

Speaker: Jacqueline Kelly

And so important the discussions around ensuring all educators, you know children, but new educators, that's a really strong component of your induction processes with new staff as well.

And that they really understand not just, you know, like Kathy said, here's the evacuation map on the wall, that they really understand the practices that sit behind your risk assessments and what that looks like at your service.

Speaker: Kathy Dryden

And really good evaluations will help guide the next practices, not just a tick and flick to say that we have done this.

I know that I did an evacuation once and lost a staff member, couldn't find her anywhere.

She was about to finish her shift, went back into the staff room and actually went to get a handbag and we couldn't find her.

And it was interesting around, you know, because it was just a evacuation in a practice.

She didn't think it wasn't important to show that.

But what the children are seeing is what your actions are showing them.

So it's really important.

It's not just what you're telling the children, it's also the actions around that too.

OK, we might move on to resources.

So there are several resources available to support your risk assessment practice provided by the Early Learning Commission, ACECQA and the NSW Department of Education.

These offer guidance, templates and practical examples of how to help you develop, review and implement effective risk assessments in your service.

They are pinned at the top of the chat so that you will be able to take a shot of those or link into those directly from.

We've also got a feedback invitation for you.

Your feedback in this session is highly valued.

Please use the QR code on your screen to share your thoughts and let us know how we can improve for future sessions.

We appreciate your input and look forward to hearing your suggestions.

So we're going to leave that up there for a couple of minutes because we know that they go off very, very quickly.

So if you can get that QR code on that would be fantastic.

On behalf of Jackie and myself, I would like to thank everybody who's joined us for this session.

We have covered a lot of ground and I hope you've picked up some new tips, some resources and some practical strategies to support you in creating risk assessments at your service.

Regulations are there to provide routine and structure and safety, but every scenario involving children requires appropriate risk controls and we understand that it's not a one size fits all.

Every context is different, every child is different.

Strong risk assessments help services demonstrate that they are taking reasonable steps to keep children and staff safe.

Thank you again for your participation.

A big thank you for the team behind us answering all the questions and supporting today's session.

And thank you for your time because we know that is something that is very precious and very valuable to all our people working out there in early childhood.

We hope you have a great day and enjoy the rest of your day.

End of Transcript

Speaker: Belinda Wakeford

Good morning everybody.

Welcome.

Looks like we've got a large group already joining us this morning, which is fantastic.

Now we'll get started.

Good morning and thank you for joining us.

My name is Belinda Wakeford, I'm a manager in the State Operations Network within the NSW Early Learning Commission and I'm really pleased to welcome you all to today's session on preparing for assessment and driving continuous improvement.

This morning session.

I will talk to you about understanding what to expect during assessment and rating and how to prepare effectively for that.

We're also going to talk about ongoing self assessment and adapting to evolving legislation and quality standards, how this really supports continuous improvement, moving beyond just achieving your rating to genuinely enhancing your quality practice.

So as we kick off this morning, I'd really like to start this session by respectfully acknowledging that I'm hosting this webinar today from the lands of the Dharawal people.

I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you all work today and any Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people.

Joining this webinar.

I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waterways across NSW.

So we understand there are very many various ways to learn and absorb information.

So a few things to try and help you through this morning's webinar.

If you would like to turn on captions, if you go to the top bar of your teams meeting screen, you'll be able to select a button pressed more than select language and speech, and then select Show live captions.

That should make captions appear at the bottom of your screen.

And we'll pop these instructions in the Q&A section.

If someone from my team could do that and pin that to the top.

So then you can turn them on and off as needed throughout the webinar.

The microphone and camera functions have been disabled for this presentation this morning.

However, as always, we encourage you to use the Q&A function.

We have a team of experts in A&R behind the scenes ready to answer all of your questions.

If you do though have any service specific questions, we ask that you contact our information and enquiries team.

Either via phone or email which will pop into the chat for you.

That team are really quick to assist you and ensure you get the right advice for your particular service.

In addition, if we don't get to any of your live questions today, please do reach out and we're very happy to respond to those for you.

A range of resources will be posted in the Q&A function and we encourage you to access these throughout the session today.

And we will be using a menti and I'm really keen for your participation via our QR codes.

And we recognise that while you're attending our session today, you'll not be working directly with children.

At the end of the webinar, we'll ask that you just take a few moments to complete our survey, as your feedback really does help us to continue to develop content that's useful for you working in the sector.

We are recording the session, which will be published on the Department of Education's website along with our other ECE Connect sessions.

So I'm really delighted to bring you today's session on assessment and driving continuous improvement.

During this session, Kate's going to join us to look at self assessment and how that supports ongoing quality improvement, as well as how this supports you and your team.

During assessment and rating.

We'll provide some guidance on articulating key practices in a way that's really clear and succinct and meaningful for you and your teams.

Linda's then going to join us to talk to share some important information about exceeding the national quality standard.

And as I mentioned, we will share some resources and support with you as we move through the session today.

So to kick us off, we are going to have a little bit of a menti question and answer.

So I really encourage you to use the QR code that's available on the screen or pop in the menti code.

So I'll just give you a few moments to jump on board with that and see the few people joining.

The first question is there, do your families understand your services quality rating?

There's a few people not sure.

A bit of a mix there of not sure and, and yes, and I would expect that that would be typical of what we would expect.

There's varying levels of understanding of the quality ratings across the community.

So if I move to the next question on the menti, that is how do you communicate your quality rating with families?

What are the best ways that you have found to engage families to help them support that understanding?

We've got the quality rating certificate, which fantastic to see.

They're all being displayed, emails and newsletters also great ways of sharing that information with families.

We do also have a range of information on our website that supports engaging with families about your quality rating, and I will drop a link in the chat for you to access these.

The third question on our mentees is how do you engage families in your quality improvement process?

So I was thinking about that how are families involved in yourself assessment process?

If they are, how do your families contribute to your service goals?

And I guess how are their voices represented?

Surveys look to be really a popular way of engaging families, acknowledging sometimes that can be really difficult.

So thinking about different ways of doing that.

We know that our families are often time poor.

So thinking different ways that we can engage them and and capture their voices.

The last question we have there is I guess if we're thinking about self assessment and quality improvement planning in three words or less, how would you describe your current experience with self assessment and quality improvement planning?

This is from your perspective.

Are you familiar with self assessment?

How have you and your team engaged in the process?

What processes do you use to improve quality?

I'd be keen to hear if you've encountered challenges along the way as well.

I can see lots of people mentioning time consuming processes.

I think that a lot of you will find some of the tips and things that we go through today really helpful in that space.

So I'm really confident that you'll each get something out of today's session from Kate and Linda as well.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for taking time to share that with us.

I'm going to invite Kate to join us now.

Thanks so much, Kate, for making time to join our webinar this morning.

So Kate is an authorised officer in our continuous improvement team and Kate's here to join to talk with you about the cycle of self assessment and articulating key practices.

So good morning, Kate.

Speaker: Kate Barnes

Morning, Belinda.

Thank you.

Today I'm going to share some of the tips that my colleagues and I discussed when we work with services who contact the Continuous Improvement team for support with their self assessment.

Using self assessment as the foundation of quality improvement planning is the best way to identify your services strengths and areas for improvement across all seven quality areas.

It enables you to reflect on your practices, plan targeted actions to enhance quality and prepare thoroughly for the assessment and rating process.

This proactive approach supports continuous improvement and helps your service to consistently meet the national quality standard.

So let's talk about what self assessment is because you need to understand what you are doing to be able to do it well.

It's really simple.

Self assessment is evaluating your work skills or performance and in the early childhood education and care context.

Self assessment involves evaluating your work skills and performance against the national laws and regulations and the national quality standards to identify your strengths and pinpoint the areas that require improvement.

Through self assessment, you can gain valuable insight into your current practices and the quality of education and care provided to children and families attending your service.

Because of this, self assessment is most effective when everyone feels involved and they're comfortable and are open, honest and reflective.

A positive workplace culture and clear communication gives everyone the chance to participate and have their voice heard.

When self assessment and quality improvement planning is shared and collaborative, it includes all team members, children, families and the wider service community, and the quality of the service is greatly enhanced.

Adopting a self assessment approach helps the team at see the service with fresh eyes and from new perspectives.

That leads to deeper understanding of service practices and builds confidence in quality improvement planning.

And it helps everyone understand both the what and the why behind what they do.

What we know is that when all staff and educators clearly understand what guides their practice, they can work together towards continuous improvements that enhance outcomes for children and ensure the service is really ready to demonstrate its quality and compliance during an assessment and rating visit.

Let's take a closer look at the self assessment and quality improvement planning process.

Next slide please.

So thank you.

Self assessment is an ongoing cycle.

It involves closely examining your practice, recognising strengths and identifying opportunities for improvement and examining practice.

It's about identifying and understanding what you do.

Before you start.

Your team should be familiar with the National Quality Standard and the related legislative requirements.

It's important as a team that you regularly reflect on your service practices, policies and procedures and think about how they align with the seven quality areas so that you have a clear understanding of the current practices and the overall quality of your service.

Self assessment is an ongoing process.

It's made up of five key steps.

First, reflection on your service philosophy.

This means thinking about the core beliefs and values that guide your service and then making sure they align with your daily practices and goals.

Next is the assessment of your practices against legislative requirements.

Here you review how your current practice complies with the national laws and regulations relevant to your service type.

And 3rd is an assessment of your practice to identify your strengths.

You do this by measuring your practice against the National Quality Standards.

It's important to evaluate your services performance across the seven quality areas and recognise what's working well.

This is key to understanding what and why you do what you do.

This is about spotting those areas identified during the previous steps where changes or enhancement could could raise the overall quality of your service.

And finally, review and reflect on the self assessment process itself.

Think about how effective it was, what did you learn and how you might improve future self assessment cycles.

How you document yourself assessment though, and your quality improvement process is entirely up to you and there are a few easily accessible options available to support you.

In New South Wales, the Self Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal and the NSW Self Assessment Working Document have been developed based on feedback from the sector to support approved providers to meet requirements of Regulation 55 and 56 and to document their quality improvement plan.

However, you can also choose to use another format that suits you if you like, such as the ACECQA QIP format if you prefer.

We're going to talk about a couple of the steps of the cycle in a bit more detail now.

Assessing compliance. This is the second stage of the self-assessment cycle and it involves analysing what your service does against the legislative requirements or the National Law and Regulations and asking are you meeting your regulatory obligations?

The National Law sets the minimum requirement for children's education and care across Australia, while the National Regulations provide detailed descriptions of how the provisions of the law are applied.

Together, the Legislative framework forms the foundation of the National Quality Framework and provides a structure that helps to ensure that services provide safe, nurturing and educational environments for children.

It's especially important to review this stage at present as there have been many legislative changes in recent months, including those related to the child safety reforms.

When you assess regulatory requirements as non compliant, you must take immediate steps to rectify the non compliance.

Let's take a look a closer look at what can help with this.

As we've talked about, the national law and regulations are the foundation of the National Quality Framework.

Before you look at your quality practices, it's really important to make sure that your practice meets these legislative requirements.

Instead of just assuming that your practices are on track, it's a good idea to refer to the legislation.

NSW has recently implemented nation leading reforms in early childhood education and care services.

Where the national law hasn't gone far enough to protect children, NSW has introduced stronger measures to keep children safe.

It's important to be aware of these changes as some legislative requirements now differ from the national requirements.

We'll share the links to the NSW law and regulations here in the chat so you can easily access them.

Also, the ACECQA website has been updated and now includes the link directly to the NSW legislation.

We'll also put that link in the chat for you.

Even if your service has met the requirements before, keep in mind that there's been a lot of legislative amendments recently, including important child safety reforms that focus on Children's Health, safety and wellbeing.

The Self Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal has a list of many legislative requirements under each standard to help your team review your practices.

However, when you're reflecting on these requirements, it's helpful to really dive into each part of the legislation to make sure you know what's expected and that your practice aligns.

If you do identify gaps in your practice, be sure to prioritise these immediately.

And if you're ever unsure, Section 4 of the Guide to the National Quality Framework, titled Operational Requirements, is a really great resource.

It outlines the requirements for operating an education and care service, including the responsibilities of the approved providers, nominated supervisors and educators.

The guide is easy to follow and explains how to meet the law and regulations, and details are organised by each quality area.

The third step in the cycle is to identify your services strengths or key practices, the things that you're most proud of and that make you smile.

The Continuous Improvement team provide a lot of support to services with this, and to help we've also created a useful resource, The Guide to Articulating Key Practices and Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement offers practical tips to help you identify your key practices, to explain them clearly, and to foster a culture of continuous improvement within your service.

It also includes some helpful examples, and we'll pop a link to the chat for you as well.

When it comes time to think about your key practices, the best place to start is the guide to the National Quality Framework.

Because the National Quality Standard sets the benchmark for the quality of education and care services in Australia.

The NQS includes 7 quality areas that are key to delivering positive outcomes for children.

And when you write your key practices, you're measuring and recording what you do to meet each of those quality areas.

Section 3 of the Guide to the National Quality Framework is titled National Quality Standard and Assessment and Rating, and it's a valuable resource to help you and your team identify and assess your key practices.

In this section, you'll find the regulatory requirements that underpin each element, giving you a clear foundation for your practice.

There's also introductory statements for each quality area standard and element, describing the intent and how certain practices contribute to quality outcomes.

There's an assessment guide for what meeting the NQS looks like, with descriptors of common practices and reflective questions specific to each quality area, which are really helpful prompts to think about how, what and why of your services practices.

Every service is unique and how the elements of the NQS are met depends on your service context, which includes your environment, the team, the children, families and the wider community.

However, using these parts of the guide can help you to ensure your key practices are clearly aligned with the NQS and genuinely support quality outcomes for children and families who use your service.

Writing key practices can be a daunting task at first, so let's talk about what key practices are.

Key practices are specific actions or approaches that demonstrate how your service meets the elements aligned to the National Quality Standard.

Key practices are concrete and tangible.

They're observable behaviours, processes or routines that directly contribute to high quality outcomes for children, and they are typically documented in your policies, reflected in everyday interactions and known by your team.

When articulating key practices, focus on what educators actually do that is aligned with the elements of each standard.

Key practices are about quality in what you do.

They describe the how of your work with children, families in the community and each other, and they make your work visible.

The NSW Self Assessment approach invites services to identify up to five key practices, each consisting of up to 500 characters, which is approximately 70 to 80 words.

You may not have five key practices for every element, nor are you required to, and you're also not expected to use all the available characters.

Key practices are your usual approach or routine.

They are strengths that deliver quality outcomes for children and families.

The things that your team are most proud of.

They should reflect your individual service context.

For example, if your service is part of a large provider group, you may have overarching guiding documents.

However, how is this implemented at an individual service level may vary on for your families, your educators, children, on the community context.

And they're also the things that you like to explain to new families or to other visitors to help them understand what makes your service special and different to the service down the road.

We find that when people are documenting their key practices, other things sneak in because of the way we, as a sector, are used to writing.

It's important to note that these extra things get in the way of sharing the key elements of what you do and they use up your valuable space.

So we recommend to services we work with to come back and think, what have I included in my key practices that I don't really need?

What does not add value?

And then you'll have more room to show off what you do.

Key practices are about what you do consistently.

They're about the how of your work.

This means that they're not statements about your beliefs or your values.

These are your philosophy.

Key practices are also not your intentions or your aspirational goals.

These are your key improvements.

They're not one off events or isolated activities like a special excursion.

Instead, key practices are ongoing approaches or routines that demonstrate how you operate.

Key practices are separate from legislative requirement.

You don't need to list things like that you maintain a record for the supply, authorization and use of devices or that all staff complete mandatory child protection training as this is required by law.

Officers will check those requirements during their visit and they're expected to be in place.

And you will have also already looked at that in the second part of yourself assessment.

Instead, focus on your quality practices.

What do you do above the requirements that keep children safe and how do you make sure those requirements are followed?

Key practices do not need to direct readers to where the evidence is kept, such as a specific program or document.

While documentation can support the demonstration of your practices, your educators already know this, and the officers will confirm key practices through a multitude of ways.

Observation, discussions with your team, and seeing evidence in action.

Try to avoid using direct quotations from the Guide to the National Quality Framework as well and other broad general statements.

Instead, keep things practical and specific to your service.

Explain how you do things.

Also, try not to use overly technical language.

These documents are only useful if educators, families and officers can understand them.

The best descriptions of key practices are action based, they show real practice and they're concise and direct, without introductions or conclusions.

I like to remind my services not to overthink key practices.

They're just what you do.

You can always get feedback on your key practices at any time by contacting the Continuous Improvement Team.

So while the purpose of self assessment is to drive continuous improvement, I think we might need to go forward on the slides please.

Thank you.

It's so while the purpose of a self assessment is to drive continuous improvement at your service, we all know that self assessment's also an important tool for assessment and rating.

Just if you just as you have reviewed your philosophy, compliance with legislative requirements and key practices against the NQS, the officer will do the same during your assessment and rating visit.

And in New South Wales, our officers use yourself assessment to guide that process, ensuring that your practices are clearly seen and heard during the visit.

When you've been honest and realistic and taken time to closely identify and clearly articulate your key practices, the officer will be able to recognise them and your educators will feel more confident to show their everyday practice.

We often hear that services and educators feel apprehensive when it's time for assessment and rating and that's completely understandable.

Using a self assessment approach and engaging your team in this process is something you can do to help your educators develop their understanding and confidence about your daily practices and their quality to feel prepared for the visit.

Remember, you're at your service every day, so you know your practices really well, what you do and why you do it.

That familiarity is a real strength for your ongoing quality improvement, but also during assessment and rating.

When you come back to your key practices before a visit, think about how they'll be confirmed through observations, citing documents and discussions.

These evidence collection methods are explained more in the Guide to the National Quality Framework.

But you can ask yourself, can the officers see this practice happening?

For example, does it happen during group time, sleep and rest routines or during arrivals and departures?

Is the practice actually written?

This might be a family handbook, program plans, meeting minutes and importantly, can educators talk about these practices.

For example, educators might explain to an officer that they completed Red Nose Safe sleep training during their induction, and they update it annually with the rest of the team in a meeting.

When you think about key practices as concrete descriptors of what you do, it makes preparing for the visit more manageable and less daunting.

You and your educators are simply talking about what you do every day and showing your commitment to quality.

Continuous improvement is key to quality education and care, and it's important to remember that process doesn't end after your assessment and rating visit.

This isn't set and forget.

Instead, we encourage services to see quality improvement as ongoing.

Your assessment and rating report is a valuable resource.

It highlights your strengths and the areas where your team can improve, and it gives you suggestions for future planning.

Use the feedback in the QIP notes, engage with the resources, and set specific goals and action plans to continue improving.

Engaging children and families in the continuous improvement process is also important.

Share your improvement journey with them.

Invite their suggestions.

This collaboration helps create a stronger, more supportive learning environment.

And remember to celebrate your successes.

Highlight and discuss the evidence and summaries in your report to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work that you've all been doing.

And then make improvement a routine part of team discussions, not just something that you revisit for the next visit of review.

Keep quality at the forefront of your practice, using your report and the voices of your children's families and educators to drive ongoing growth.

Continuous improvement is about working together, rolling and striving for excellence in everything that we do.

I'm now going to hand over to Linda who will take you through a scenario that shows how one service uses self assessment to drive continuous improvement and ensure that practices remain effective and meet the national quality standard.

This example will highlight practical strategies and ongoing reflection that contributes to the provision of quality education and care.

Thanks, Kate

Speaker: Linda Ball

I think a few people are just looking for the chat function.

If you have any questions that you'd like answered, please feel free to pop them in the Q&A, which is at the top of your screen and our people behind the scenes will happily work a way to answer those for you.

So just moving on to the scenario.

So in 2023, an outside school hours care service undertook A comprehensive review of its child safety practices to align with the NSW Child Safe Standards.

Recognising the critical importance of creating an environment that promotes the safety, well being and protection of children, the leadership team began by engaging educators and staff in a reflective process to strengthen their organisational culture and practices.

The team based their review on the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, which provide a framework for fostering safe, inclusive and accountable environments and these principles served as the foundation for examining existing policies and procedures and day to day practices within the service. The review involved assessing current guidelines and identifying gaps related to child safety and well being, consulting with educators, families and children to gather their diverse perspectives and benchmarking practices against the Child Safe Standards and the National Principles.

Following the review, the Service implemented several key initiatives which included updating child protection and behaviour guidance policies to reflect best practice standards, introducing mandatory nationally recognised child protection training for all educators and staff, ensuring consistent understanding and application of child safety obligations.

They developed clear procedures for reporting and responding to concerns of harm and abuse.

And they fostered an open culture encouraging ongoing dialogue around child safety and well being.

Introducing policies and procedures on the safe use of online environments and a register for devices used at the service.

As well as implementing a blanket ban on the use of personal devices used or worn by educators, which included wearing of smartwatches and capabilities of taking, transmitting and storing images or videos.

This service successfully embedded a stronger culture of child safety which is characterised by increased awareness and accountability among all staff regarding their role in safeguarding children.

It improved confidence in recognising and responding to potential risks or incidents and it created stronger partnerships for families to collaboratively support children's safety and well being.

Here we can see how the services reflective approach, grounded in the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, demonstrated a proactive commitment to child safety.

By reviewing and strengthening their practices and ensuring mandatory training and introducing policies and procedures around the safe use of online environments, as well as self imposing restrictions on the use of personal devices, the service established A safer, more supportive environment for children and the broader community.

We know that in October 2025, legislative changes introduced by the NSW Early Learning Commission resulted in some of these changes implemented by the service used prior, now mandated in all NSW education and care services.

While in 2023 these initiatives may have reflected high quality practice, now as the quality landscape continues to improve, legislative changes have shifted some practices which has now become minimum regulatory requirements rather than a reflection of high quality practice.

So this scenario demonstrates how a collaborative, reflective and practical approach guides decisions that support quality practices and in turn, supports children's learning, safety and well being every day.

We're now going to take a look at what it means to be exceeding the National Quality Standard.

To be eligible for an overall rating of exceeding, a service must demonstrate that their practice goes above and beyond what is expected at the meeting.

National Quality standard level.

This higher benchmark for quality expected at the exceeding level is defined by three themes which have been determined by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).

And these themes outline what services need to demonstrate in their practice for a standard to be rated as exceeding the national quality standard.

So we're going to take a little bit of closer look at these themes.

To achieve a rating exceeding for any standard, all three exceeding themes need to be demonstrated and awarded for that standard.

To achieve an exceeding rating for the quality area, all standards in that quality area must also be exceeding.

And these themes, as you'll know, are Theme 1 practices embedded in service operations.

Theme 2 practice is informed by critical reflection, and Theme 3 practice is shaped by meaningful engagement with families and all the community.

So we're going to unpack these themes a little further.

So theme one embedded practise is everyday practise which occurs consistently, frequently and intentionally as part of an ongoing process that's understood and implemented by all educators across all aspects of the program and service practise.

This ensures a sense of continuity and predictability for children.

So, for example, high quality practice is usual across the service and is consistent among all educators and staff, regardless of whether or not they're permanent or casually employed.

Each educator's practice reflects a clear understanding of the requirements of the standard and the practice for the standard aligns with the service philosophy and the principles and practices of the approved learning frameworks, policies and procedures and current pedagogy.

Essentially, embedded practice has a clear intent that reflects a deep understanding of the why and the how you do what you do.

So when considering whether your practice is embedded, some questions for consideration might be how is the service quality maintained at all times, especially during the most challenging moments and when there's variation in educated responses, for example during meal times, rest times, transition times or when casual educators are president the service?

How is the service philosophy clearly articulated and reflected in daily routines?

And if so, how can educators and staff confidently explain how their practice aligns to the National Quality Framework?

The service philosophy improved learning frameworks, policies and procedures and current pedagogy and is practice, flexible and responsive to children's needs and changing circumstances.

Most educators naturally reflect on their practice throughout the day, making decisions in response to what's happening.

So for example, adding resources or activities to support children's interests or re engaging those who seem to be disengaged.

Critical reflection, however, goes deeper than just reviewing or evaluating.

It is an ongoing, thoughtful process of questioning and analysing that helps educators understand their own beliefs and values and biases, and how these influence their interactions and relationships with children, family and colleagues.

It also involves considering multiple perspectives, research and best practice and recommendations by recognised authorities to identify any key areas for improvement.

Simply put, critical reflection shapes practice when educators regularly reflect both individually and together, guiding decision making and driving continuous improvement to benefit children and families and educators.

When critical reflection is evident.

Reflection on practice is regular and ongoing, not just a one off event.

Opportunities for improvements are identified and acted upon.

Educators are aware of the factors influencing their practice and are committed to continuous learning and growth and decision making processes incorporate diverse perspectives through thoughtful and robust discussions.

When practice is informed by critical reflection, educators consider, question, analyse and re evaluate planning and decision making for that standard.

This supports a culture of ongoing self assessment that helps identify continuous improvement and improved outcomes for children, families and your educators.

So some questions to consider when thinking about whether reflection is truly critical in nature might include what is the process for undertaking critical reflection at the service and who's involved in that process?

Is research on best practice reviewed before implementing an approach to ensure it aligns with the philosophy and current practice. Following critical reflection, what practices have changed or maintained, or perhaps been strengthened?

What factors did you consider in making these decisions and why?

During the critical reflection process, what information sources have educators referred to?

Have they sought input or collaborated with others both within and outside the service?

While there is no legislative requirement for critical reflection to be documented, doing so can be really a valuable way for services to track and demonstrate how critical reflection influences practice and supports continuous improvement.

The focus should be on the process of critical reflection rather than that product or the template that you're using.

Remember, children can be active participants in critical reflection and documenting can take many forms, such as notes in the program, entries in a reflective journal or diary, or in the minutes of your team meetings.

The third theme, practice is shaped by meaningful engagement with families and other community, is when educators actively seek input, guidance and feedback from the children, families and the community.

Such engagement helps to shift thinking, shape ongoing practice and foster a culture of inclusiveness and sense of belonging for everyone involved.

Every education and care service is unique, as are the children, families and communities that they serve.

This theme really recognises that high quality practice is informed by and tailored to the unique strengths and needs of these groups, which can also vary across service types.

Meaningful engagement with families goes beyond simply providing opportunities for families to contribute to children's programs or to complete surveys.

What truly matters is how that feedback is used to influence and shape the practice.

So some questions to consider when thinking about whether your practice is meaningfully shaped by families and the community might include how do you learn about and understand the needs of the children and their families?

And how do you use this information to influence your practice?

What steps are taken if families and the community are reluctant to engage in or provide feedback?

Are there established partnerships with community organisations and local support agencies and if so, how do these partnerships enrich practice at the service?

How does the service include the local and broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities into the program and is there a clear vision of how you will develop partnerships with community and families, and if so, how is this vision implemented in the practise at the service?

When recording your key practices for exceeding themes, the same principles apply.

You really need to clearly describe what you actually do.

Simply using language from the theme descriptor, such as embedded critical reflection or meaningful engagement, will not be confirmed if those practices are not genuinely occurring.

So, as Kate has mentioned earlier, it's really important to be honest and realistic about your practice and continue to strive for improvement in the quality.

Finally, it is really important to note that to receive an exceeding rating in Quality Area 1, Educational Program and Practice, services must meet legislative requirements in addition to the three exceeding themes.

So Section 5 of the National Law defines a preschool program as an early childhood education program delivered by a qualified early childhood teacher to children, that is, to two children in the year, that is 2 years before grade one of school.

So in New South Wales, Grade 1 is considered to be kindergarten and typically starting at around age 5.

To meet this requirement, the preschool program must be taught by an early childhood teacher at the service or the service must have a documented arrangement with another approved provider delivering the program and families must be informed accordingly.

Regulation 62 (2) applies to all services educating children.

Educating children who are under the age under school age.

Sorry, without meeting these requirements, a service cannot achieve an exceeding rating in Quality Area 1 regardless of other exceeding themes being met.

In this case, the rating in Quality Area 1 will remain at meeting the national quality standard.

Thanks, Belinda.

Speaker: Belinda Wakeford

Excellent.

Thanks very much, Linda.

That's really helpful information and thank you to Kate as well.

There were some really good questions that came through in the chat while you were talking about articulating key practices as well and whether they need to be updated between assessment and rating.

That came through a couple of times.

And I think it's important to note that there isn't a requirement to provide new key practices.

I think what's really important is ensuring that what you're sharing with us is actually what's happening at your service.

So that's really good.

Jump on into the Q&A section.

There has been an update to the posts that have been put in there with the links of information as well.

So thank you to the team for doing that.

So as mentioned, to assist with quality improvement planning ACECQA have also developed a wide range of resources that are freely available on their website.

And as we've mentioned a few times through this session, the guide to the national quality framework, which has recently been updated to reflect the legislative changes, provides guidance on the national quality standard and exceeding the national quality framework.

So there's some really helpful case studies that might flow on was a really good one that you shared, Linda, about what was and what is now.

I think the case studies in the in the guide are also really helpful.

Just on that, I just was responding to a question that someone had popped in the chat about the number of legislative reform work that has occurred over the last few months and acknowledging that takes time to get across and implement at your service that you know, those have been put in place to further strengthen safeguards for children.

We will put information in the chat about where you can go on our website to have a look at further details about the legislative changes that was mentioned earlier, we really encourage you to reach out to our information inquiries team that will be really well suited to answer any service specific questions that you might have in relation to that as well.

So Kate and Linda have both joined us from our continuous improvement team which you know is available to you in the sector.

They are a team of dedicated authorised officers who are able to support you and your individual service through self assessment and quality improvement.

In general.

The team are available at any point in time.

You don't have to be coming up for ANR, whatever is most suitable to you.

You can reach out to the team to talk about where you're up to in your journey and support you in articulating your key practices in a way that is really clear and educators are connected to it.

Your service.

I think that's a really a quick key point of difference, ensuring that everyone is really understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it in your service.

So reach out to the team.

I think we've popped details in there of how to get in touch.

That would be really great.

We also, I think Vanessa's popped some information about our self assessment and quality improvement planning portal.

The team are also available to support if you have any technical difficulties in that space as well.

So please just get in touch.

We'll update the links in the chat for you so that they're really clear and and available at the top.

I'm just going to move on to the next slide if we could, please.

It brings us to the end of our session and the information we're sharing with you today.

As I mentioned, we really value the feedback that you provide us.

So we've got a QR code up here.

If you wouldn't mind to take a few moments just to complete that online survey for us, give us your feedback, let us know what else that you might like to hear further information about.

We really appreciate that to help us for our next sessions.

So I will leave that up there for you for a moment.

And then if you have any other questions, feel free to pop in the chat.

We will quickly finish off some of those questions.

If we don't get to them all, please reach out to our information and inquiries team.

And a huge thank you to everybody that has joined the session.

So I think we had over 700 join us online, which is fantastic, but wish you all a wonderful day ahead and thanks again for joining.

End of Transcript