Investigating Australia's childcare crisis
The ABC is undertaking a major investigation into Australia's childcare sector, revealing what actually goes on behind closed doors.Adele Ferguson , it has uncovered the alarming depth of Australia's childcare crisis and raised serious questions for private operators, regulators and governments.ongoing national investigation is revealing the true state of one of our most important sectors.
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Some of Australia's leading early childhood education professors release a six-point action plan to help fix the "broken" childcare system.
Parents are demanding answers from centre operators after their children were allegedly sexually abused by other children while in child care.
Paedophiles are using the dark web to share information about how to gain access to childcare centres to sexually abuse babies and toddlers while avoiding getting caught.
The scale of Australia's childcare crisis is deeply distressing for parents. These are the simple questions to ask any childcare provider to know if your child is safe.
Family day care makes up just 5 per cent of Australia's early childhood education and care system, but insiders, experts and regulatory documents paint a picture of a sector beset by troubling incidents and structural risk.
A 26-year-old man in Sydney charged with 10 counts of child sexual abuse has thrust private equity giant Quadrant into the centre of another national childcare scandal, this time in the booming out-of-school-hours sector.
A Queensland childcare centre where a worker was charged with torture has been closed down by the Department of Education, almost a year after the alleged assaults took place.
The ABC understands the educator was allegedly observed by the childcare centre grabbing the child by the neck and head, repeatedly smothering his face with a cot mattress and pillow, pulling his head back, hitting him on the head, putting her foot on his face and kicking him across the floor.
ANALYSIS: Despite repeated warnings from experts and a formal recommendation from a coroner, safe sleep training isn't mandatory for childcare workers everywhere in Australia.
Kids face down asleep in hoodies, electrical sockets exposed and one child locked in a shed. Documents reveal disturbing revelations from inside Australia's childcare sector in crisis.
Thousands of students are getting fast-tracked qualifications to work in childcare centres and it's compromising safety standards, experts warn.
ANALYSIS: For those like me who have been investigating childcare for almost a year now, the news was horrifying but not a surprise.
Parents, educators and experts say the reforms are tokenistic, a band-aid fix, and ignore the deeper structural failures festering in the childcare system.
A boy is left badly burned after an unsafe child care incident. His parents rush him to hospital to save his finger. It should never have happened.
An ABC investigation into for-profit childcare giant Affinity Education highlights ongoing systemic issues around staffing, oversight and safety inside the billion-dollar enterprise.
The former operator of a Sydney childcare centre where children were force-fed until they vomited and strapped in highchairs for hours has been permanently banned from working in the disability support sector.
Some of the country's largest childcare operators are named in a damning cache of regulatory documents the NSW government and regulator tried to keep hidden from the public.
ANALYSIS: At some point, the major parties will have to confront the failures in Australia’s early childhood education and care system head on.
G8 Education, Australia's billion-dollar listed childcare empire, has become embroiled in a damning document dump.
ANALYSIS: New analysis reveals just how lucrative Australia's childcare real estate market is while parents face perpetual fee hikes.
A parliamentary inquiry has been called into the troubled childcare sector following a landmark ABC investigation into serious safety breaches in the industry.
Parents say they are being lied to about the quality of food at childcare centres across the country. Some say they were promised in-house chefs but children were served "two-minute noodles".
ANALYSIS: As the public outcry from educators and parents intensifies, the reluctance of senior politicians responsible for overseeing the broken childcare sector to do something to fix it is striking.
With centres reassessed on average every four years, and some gaming the system, parents cannot be sure their child's centre meets the standards or that staff are properly trained or qualified.
The child and others were left in highchairs for hours at a time, force fed, pinched, yanked, and thrown to the ground.
The mother knew something was wrong. Her four-year-old's tear-streaked face stopped her cold. Heart pounding, she pulled out her phone and hit record.
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