Copyright brisbanetimes
One of Australia’s biggest childcare chains, which employed an alleged paedophile, knew for years that children were being left unattended at its centres, even as it pushed staff to use high-pressure marketing tactics on parents to boost enrolments and bolster positive reviews. Affinity Education and other childcare chains where alleged Melbourne paedophile Joshua Brown worked have been spruiking their updated safety policies since the scandal plunged the sector into crisis in July. But this masthead has obtained a cache of internal documents that reveal Affinity was aware of long-standing issues with supervision and staffing ratio requirements across its centres, yet continued to push aggressive expansion. Affinity staff memos as far back as 2023 cite children being left unsupervised “too often” at its centres. Leadership suggested educators conduct headcounts and adjust rosters to ensure government-mandated staff ratios were met, or else “position furniture away from fences, gates and doors”. But educators on the ground say the real problem of understaffing was ignored. At the same time, this masthead can reveal that senior staff have been awarded lucrative cash bonuses and shares in the company as incentives for growing child enrolments. And Affinity management encouraged centres to run prize competitions for which parents could write “the best review” – a potential breach of consumer law.
