In July, two young children let themselves out of a Melbourne kindergarten and walked more than a kilometre down a main road. This week, two five year old boys climbed out of a Canberra childcare centre, using a toy box to get over the fence. Two incidents, two states, three months apart. One escape is a near miss. Two in a season is a pattern, and every provider should stop and look hard at their own centre.
Here is what the two cases have in common, and what to take from them.
Both centres were highly rated
The Melbourne service holds an Exceeding rating and has run for more than a century. The Canberra centre is also rated Exceeding, and had a similar incident back in 2020. These are not struggling services. If it can happen at an Exceeding rated centre with a long history, it can happen at yours. A rating is a snapshot of one assessment, not a guarantee of safety on any given afternoon.
In both cases, the public found the children, not the centre
In Melbourne a passer by followed the children to keep them safe. In Canberra, members of the public spotted the boys before police were called. Sit with that. In both cases, strangers on the street noticed the children were unsupervised before the centre did. The uncomfortable question for all of us is simple: if a child slipped out of your service right now, how long before anyone noticed?
A fence is only as good as what is next to it
The Canberra detail is the one every provider should act on today. The boys did not break the fence. They dragged a toy box over and climbed it. Children’s creativity always outruns what adults expect, so checking your fence is not enough. You have to look at what is near it. Anything a child can push, drag, stack or climb turns a compliant fence into a step ladder. This is exactly what the national guidance on designing premises for supervision is about: the physical environment has to work for supervision, not against it.
So what should you do this week?
Walk your boundary the way a determined five year old would. Look for the gap, the loose panel, the gate that does not quite latch, and above all, the moveable object left near the fence. Check your head count routine at every transition, going outside, coming back in, changing rooms. And make sure your team knows exactly who does what the moment a child is missing. None of this is complicated. It just has to be done, and kept up, on your ordinary days, not only after a headline.
How Childcare Ready can help
Keeping a service genuinely safe, not just compliant on paper, is the hardest and most important part of running a centre. At Childcare Ready, we help providers build and review the systems that keep children safe and keep you compliant. If you want help reviewing your service, contact us today.
