Our Approach to Child Safety

At Guardian, our highest priority is ensuring that all children are safe, and feel safe. Each day, it is a privilege to support families with the care and education of their children. We are committed to creating environments where all children are safe and feel confident and secure in our centres. Child safe practices are embedded at every level in our organisation, governance and culture. We are committed to meeting the National Child Safe Standards every day in our centres and as an organisation.

Measures we have in place include:

  • Every team member holds a valid, government approved Working with Children Check clearance and we maintain a centralised electronic database to ensure these clearances are current
  • We reinforce a culture of speaking up about bad behaviour. Our Whistleblower Policy provides a confidential, anonymous way for team members to report any poor behaviour or treatment they see, with no repercussions
  • We complete reference checks from previous employers prior to permanent and casual team members commencing their employment with us.
  • We work in partnership with families by actively seeking feedback and providing a complaints process with clear policies and procedures for addressing concerns.
  • We have policies focused on child safety including our Child Protection and Mandatory Reporting Policy. If a child has been affected by an incident, we have processes in place to ensure families are advised, and kept updated, as soon as possible.
  • We have child safety resources available to all team members on our internal website.
  • We exceed required centre supervision ratios 90% of the time; for the remaining 10%, we meet the regulations.  
  • All Responsible Persons (who are in day-to-day control of our centres) undertake child protection training
  • Our Social Media and Digital Devices Policy ensures children’s safety and privacy by using Guardian-owned devices, sharing content only with family permission, and through approved channels following strict guidelines for use.
  • We do not permit educators to care for children outside of the centre environment e.g. no babysitting
  • We have Safety Champions in our centres to advocate and drive best practice safety initiatives including child safety.
  •  All visitors are required to log in using our central visitor log in system and are required to upload photographic evidence of their identification.
  • All service providers who regularly attend centres are required to have valid Working with Children Checks and must sign in using our system
  • We have specialist Safety and Compliance teams to ensure we continuously monitor and improve our safety approaches across all centres.

We look forward to welcoming you to one of our centres soon, where we’ll be happy to share more about our safety practices and answer any questions you may have.