Speaker 1: Kyoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 3: We're halfway through the year.
Speaker 2: But there have already been a number of confronting headlines
Speaker 2: about early childhood education providers in twenty twenty five. Earlier
Speaker 2: this year, the Herald ran a number of stories around
Speaker 2: children escaping from centers around the country, and in the
Speaker 2: last week, two coroners' reports have come out highlighting tragic
Speaker 2: deaths that befell two young children. The news comes after
Speaker 2: a review by the Ministry of Regulation into ecees and
Speaker 2: how they operate, with another review just announced by the
Speaker 2: Education Ministry into funding coming next Today on the Front Page,
Speaker 2: we're discussing what's happening with the rules, regulations and funding
Speaker 2: with doctor Sarah Alexander, Chief Advisor to the Office of
Speaker 2: Early Childhood Education. Sarah, I want to start with some
Speaker 2: high profile stories that The Herald has covered this year
Speaker 2: around early childhood education centers. Notably, in the last week,
Speaker 2: we've reported on two coroners' findings around death related to ecees.
Speaker 2: The first was about Lorenzo Miranda, who was twenty months
Speaker 2: when he suffered a fatal but invisible head injury after
Speaker 2: a fallback in twenty seventeen. He later died in hospital,
Speaker 2: and findings found that ECE workers could not have expected
Speaker 2: to have identified something was wrong with Lorenzo, but it
Speaker 2: was noted they should have informed the parents about what happened.
Speaker 3: What do you make of this case?
Speaker 4: In my opinion, to me, it's pretty much of a
Speaker 4: cover up. I believe that the workers, that the teachers
Speaker 4: should have known what had happened, that it was possible
Speaker 4: to recognize some of the signs of a serious hit injury,
Speaker 4: and that there were a number of failings in the
Speaker 4: case of of this early childhood service that he attended.
Speaker 3: Is there anything to learn from this event?
Speaker 4: Reading the reports from the Ministry of Education, from Work
Speaker 4: Safe and from the coroner, what we can gather from
Speaker 4: those reports is that little Lorenzo potentially probably fell from
Speaker 4: an adult sized chair. There was an adult sized table
Speaker 4: and cheers in the center. That should not be the case.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm of the belief that if a child's
Speaker 4: feet can't touch the floor when they're seated, then that
Speaker 4: seat is too big for them. So you know, firstly,
Speaker 4: there was inappropriate furniture there, and I think that's a
Speaker 4: lesson for all of their child's services and for parents
Speaker 4: when they're you know, going down to look for an
Speaker 4: early child's service for their child. You know, what is
Speaker 4: the size of the furniture? Is the furniture that my
Speaker 4: child is going to be using safe? Another thing was
Speaker 4: that there was on that particular day that Lorenzo had
Speaker 4: his fall, there was staff coming and going, there was
Speaker 4: a birthday party happening in the room. There was really
Speaker 4: no one person looking after him that day. Know, he
Speaker 4: was cared for by multiple staff, so there wasn't a
Speaker 4: primary you know what we call a primary caregiver, And
Speaker 4: that's just something else that we would like to see
Speaker 4: in the office of ec Change, you know, a requirement
Speaker 4: that for under two year olds in particular, because they're
Speaker 4: so vulnerable, that under two year olds to have someone
Speaker 4: who is responsible for them and who will look out
Speaker 4: for them at all times, someone who's keeping an eye
Speaker 4: on them. Then there was also the issue that the
Speaker 4: fall was not recorded, so there was no information passed
Speaker 4: on to the family that Lorenzo had fallen, probably from
Speaker 4: the cheer because he was seen lying at the bottom
Speaker 4: of the adult side's cheer and also possible signs of
Speaker 4: head injury were missed. And you know, the main one
Speaker 4: there is drowsiness because when the parents came to pick
Speaker 4: him up, you know, he was lying in the lap
Speaker 4: of a teacher and extremely drowsy, and you know that
Speaker 4: was not like him. And you know, not at that
Speaker 4: time of day either.
Speaker 5: Domestic ending, nobody told me anything I went to pick
Speaker 5: him up, so we had no clue. We were just
Speaker 5: handed over a baby that was had a brain bleed
Speaker 5: and we didn't know. Cause that's one of the hardest
Speaker 5: things as well, was you know, I held him when
Speaker 5: he came into the world, and I also that we
Speaker 5: also held him when he left the world.
Speaker 4: It's just.
Speaker 5: It's not something that you want to do as a
Speaker 5: parent ever ever.
Speaker 2: And the other case was one that your organization actually
Speaker 2: spotted around the death of a five month old back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Why did this one catch your attention?
Speaker 1: It caught our.
Speaker 4: Attention because it's one of probably many cases in early childhood.
Speaker 4: But it caught our attention because it was an unexplained deaths.
Speaker 4: But there were a number of features, a number of
Speaker 4: things seemed to add up to this unexplained death. That
Speaker 4: possibly if these things weren't happening at the time, that
Speaker 4: baby might still be alive.
Speaker 3: Now and can you tell me what happened.
Speaker 4: So it started off with, you know, five months old baby,
Speaker 4: you know, seemingly healthy, you know, apart from what infants
Speaker 4: often get is you know, colds and running you know,
Speaker 4: running noses, and he had had a bit of a
Speaker 4: cough at the time. He was fed for lunch a
Speaker 4: pouch of baby food. But the teacher said at the
Speaker 4: time that he had his food, that he didn't take
Speaker 4: to eating the food very well, and that that was
Speaker 4: unusual for him. He was put to bed with a
Speaker 4: loose blanket, which is not following guidance for the protection
Speaker 4: you know, to mitigate the risks of sud I in
Speaker 4: terms of sudden death. So you know, that's not a
Speaker 4: best practice thing, you know, to put a baby to
Speaker 4: bed with loose bedding, with a loose blanket. He was
Speaker 4: also put into a room with up to eight other
Speaker 4: infants and left to sleep, only being checked every ten
Speaker 4: minutes or so. Now, an early child is centers, you
Speaker 4: know that can be busy places, noisy places. So a
Speaker 4: lot of centers had doors on the sleep rooms. Doors
Speaker 4: the sleep from door may or may not have been closed.
Speaker 4: It's not mentioned in the reports. There might not have
Speaker 4: been a baby monitor. So really that those nine babies
Speaker 4: who were sleeping in the room at the time we're
Speaker 4: lived without an adult watching over them, and yet the
Speaker 4: Ministry of Education says that that's perfectly fine because that
Speaker 4: meets current regulation standards. We believe that infants, particularly should
Speaker 4: have someone watching over them, someone who can see them
Speaker 4: when you're sleeping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in both of those cases, do you think the
Speaker 2: regulations in place at the moment go far enough to
Speaker 2: protect children? Because in both situations it seems that there's
Speaker 2: been changes made as a result of these deaths.
Speaker 4: Not really, believe it or not, there seems to have
Speaker 4: been quite a cover up because you know, we're just
Speaker 4: reporting the stories now. These deaths happened some time ago.
Speaker 4: You know, the five month old baby die back in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, and the child who dived from a
Speaker 4: fatal fall that was back in twenty seventeen, so you know,
Speaker 4: their information's not out there that What the Ministry of
Speaker 4: Education has done has just basically been to maybe put
Speaker 4: some more advice on their website or to provide links
Speaker 4: through to other agencies to health agencies on recommended best practices.
Speaker 4: But regulations have a changed, requirements haven't changed. Babies can
Speaker 4: still be put down to sleep in a sleep rome
Speaker 4: and left unchecked for ten minutes at a time at
Speaker 4: adult sized furniture can still be in playrooms for children
Speaker 4: who were too young to use that size of furniture
Speaker 4: and not given good supervision around that furniture. And you know,
Speaker 4: there is no requirement for a primary caregiver for infants
Speaker 4: in early childhood services. So there haven't been any regulation improvements.
Speaker 4: In fact, regulations were better some years ago.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand, before two thousand and eight, I
Speaker 1: think it was regulations before two thousand and eight require
Speaker 1: that there'd be an adult in the room when children
Speaker 1: were resting or sleeping.
Speaker 2: Well, that just seems like common sense. Why isn't that happening?
Speaker 4: It does seem like common sense, and you'd expect all
Speaker 4: early chittered services to be following common sense, but it seems,
Speaker 4: you know from our investigations that actually it doesn't. Common
Speaker 4: sense isn't always followed. You know, early chided services are
Speaker 4: busy places. They can have high staff. High staff turn either.
Speaker 4: They can be run by operators who don't know what
Speaker 4: best practices are and aren't aware of research, and so
Speaker 4: you know they'll follow the regulations perhaps, but those regulations
Speaker 4: in themselves aren't adequate enough when there is a lack
Speaker 4: of knowledge about best practices and when there are other
Speaker 4: streetses and strains on the services, meaning that you know
Speaker 4: they won't go that extra mile. And we'd like to
Speaker 4: see services go that extra mile and do the best
Speaker 4: practices and provide the high quality and be aware of
Speaker 4: what can lead to injuries into deaths, because you know
Speaker 4: one andrey one dar is just one two innings.
Speaker 2: The other situation the Herald has covered a lot earlier
Speaker 2: this year was around children managing to escape for lack
Speaker 2: of a better term, from their ec centers. Now. Information
Speaker 2: obtained by the Rotarua Daily Post under the Official Information
Speaker 2: Act found that between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: three hundred and twenty one children managed to abscond.
Speaker 3: Are you surprised by those figures?
Speaker 4: No, And those figures probably represent just kind of like
Speaker 4: the tip of the iceberg because it's not a requirement
Speaker 4: for services to report to the Ministry of Education of
Speaker 4: the child escapes, so it could be a lot more.
Speaker 4: The figure could be much much higher than there, and
Speaker 4: we don't know because it's not a requirement to report
Speaker 4: child escapes. And the word child escape in itself is
Speaker 4: language that perhaps we shouldn't be using, but as indicative
Speaker 4: of the state of the early childhood sector in terms
Speaker 4: of the laxness of regulations and the fact that we
Speaker 4: see children escaping rather than children wanting to be in
Speaker 4: their early childhood service and loving being there, you know.
Speaker 4: And what we want is, you know, for every child
Speaker 4: to be leager in the morning and want to dash
Speaker 4: out the door and go to the early childhood service
Speaker 4: because it's a great place to be rather than a
Speaker 4: place to escape from.
Speaker 2: Should there be penalties or something in place for ecs
Speaker 2: that I suppose have in an abscondee.
Speaker 4: In some cases it's because of the child has high
Speaker 4: needs in terms of behavior and they might just climb
Speaker 4: the fence because you know, the climbers. Yeah. In terms
Speaker 4: of whether or not there should be penalties, it should.
Speaker 4: What we are advocating in the Office of Early Childhood
Speaker 4: Education is for information for parents to be made available
Speaker 4: on when there have been escapes, when there have been
Speaker 4: there is incidents when there have been deaths, so there
Speaker 4: is transparency because then parents or teachers that are going
Speaker 4: to work at a service and other services can know, hey,
Speaker 4: these are the things that we need to change in
Speaker 4: our service, so you know, this sort of thing won't
Speaker 4: happen again, or it won't happen at our service. And
Speaker 4: I think that's a real issue, is the lack of transparency.
Speaker 4: The fact that you know, these two cases of child death,
Speaker 4: there have been you know, multiple serious other cases of
Speaker 4: serious injuries that over time will be uncovered and that
Speaker 4: we'll be discussing, you know, more about because you know,
Speaker 4: we've got a commitment in the Office of ECE to
Speaker 4: start the ball rolling to get some transparency going because
Speaker 4: the Ministry of Education at the moment does not want
Speaker 4: these cases to be known. And you know, even the
Speaker 4: Ministry for Regulation, David Seymour has recently required that that
Speaker 4: ECE be his first target for the Ministry for Regulation
Speaker 4: to do a review of regulations. Now the Ministry for
Speaker 4: Regulation has completed its report, changes to base, it cut
Speaker 4: out a lot of regulations and requirements have been approved
Speaker 4: by Cabinet. This is serious because you know, as these
Speaker 4: cases that you know we are talking about show regulations
Speaker 4: not strong enough as it is, and we need tighter
Speaker 4: regulations rather than fewer regulations. And we also need regulations
Speaker 4: to be in areas where we know there are needs
Speaker 4: for requirements to be set, because otherwise the requirements may
Speaker 4: not be followed within an early childhood service.
Speaker 6: The report makes fifteen recommendations to modernize and simplify regulations
Speaker 6: across ECE so that service providers can get on with
Speaker 6: what they do best, providing safe, high quality spaces.
Speaker 3: For children to reach their potential.
Speaker 6: The Ministry is recommended removing, changing, or merging approximately three
Speaker 6: quarters of the ninety eight licensing criteria for center based services,
Speaker 6: simplifying the system so it focuses on children's and education
Speaker 6: instead of paperwork.
Speaker 2: Regulations around early childhood education have been in the spotlight
Speaker 2: of course, this year, the Ministry of Regulation shows easy Ease,
Speaker 2: like you said, is the first sector a review looking.
Speaker 3: At the laws.
Speaker 2: Those include more flexible requirements around qualifications for staff and
Speaker 2: reducing licensing criteria by about seventy five percent. Firstly, can
Speaker 2: you explain what licensing criteria is?
Speaker 4: Well, when you get a warrant fitness of your car,
Speaker 4: there is like a checklist and the mechanic will go
Speaker 4: through and check you know, breaks, steering and so on,
Speaker 4: seat belts and so forth. The same with an early
Speaker 4: chartered service. When someone wants to open an early charted service,
Speaker 4: the Ministry will go into it with its checklist and
Speaker 4: check off that it's doing these things, and then it's
Speaker 4: expected to continue doing these things while it's operating, so
Speaker 4: you know, both before it starts operating and while it's operating.
Speaker 4: And if the service, it's mostly through complaints and through
Speaker 4: serious incidents that the Ministry finds out that a service
Speaker 4: may potentially be having problems in complying with the licensing
Speaker 4: requirements and it will then go into a check. In
Speaker 4: New Zealand, we don't have a system of regular checks
Speaker 4: on early childhood services by the Ministry of Education.
Speaker 2: I've read some comments from you where it's clear you
Speaker 2: aren't happy about these changes. In one report, you said
Speaker 2: it would weaken the care of our children and that
Speaker 2: it paved the way for baby farming.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 4: Yes, well, we're very concerned and you know, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: the regulatory change as will because the Ministry for Regulation
Speaker 4: didn't take into account and its recommendations. What we can
Speaker 4: learn from serious incidents. It didn't look into complaints that
Speaker 4: have been made about early childhood services to see, well,
Speaker 4: you know, how can regulations be better and provide better
Speaker 4: protection for children and enhance improve the standard of their
Speaker 4: care and education. Instead, you know, it's like a how
Speaker 4: can we slash regulations and requirements? And then we've also
Speaker 4: got the added worry about this clause within the Ministry
Speaker 4: for Regulations recommendations to allow for a mix of qualifications. Now,
Speaker 4: really we should be having teachers who are knowledgeable about
Speaker 4: child development, who have completed a high level of training
Speaker 4: working in early childhood services. You know, where parents leave
Speaker 4: their children, they entrust their child and the care of
Speaker 4: someone and they expect that person to have knowledge about,
Speaker 4: you know, what is the best way to care for
Speaker 4: the child, and you know, in terms of being a
Speaker 4: good educator and teacher. And so we're very worried that,
Speaker 4: you know, the qualification requirements already are very loose in
Speaker 4: terms of the number of qualified staff required. It's possible
Speaker 4: at times for them to be no early childed education
Speaker 4: qualified teacher working with children. You know, it's allowed for
Speaker 4: someone to be a primary school trained teacher who's trained
Speaker 4: to work with older children, and the rest of the
Speaker 4: staff maybe have had no training at all. They could
Speaker 4: be you know, kids straight out of school seven, you know,
Speaker 4: eighteen year olds for example, so or just you know,
Speaker 4: just relief teachers who aren't qualified, who haven't been through
Speaker 4: the teaching counsel and got a practicing certificate and been
Speaker 4: verified that they meet the standards of being a teacher.
Speaker 2: Sarah, I don't have children, but I'm still terrified by
Speaker 2: what I'm hearing from you. Is there anything in the
Speaker 2: regulations or anything in the changes that actually can quell fears,
Speaker 2: or is the fact of the matter is that the
Speaker 2: government needs to tighten, actually tighten regulations around e ces.
Speaker 4: There's nothing in the changes that are going to quell
Speaker 4: the fears. You know, we've got a bad situation already
Speaker 4: and it could potentially get worse. And you know that's
Speaker 4: why I say, you know, there's a high risk here
Speaker 4: that we're going to go to the level of child
Speaker 4: farming because you know, we reduce the regulations down and
Speaker 4: and trust service providers. You know, some know, some services
Speaker 4: will continue to operate really well and do wonderfully by children.
Speaker 4: Others we are you know, for example, money is a
Speaker 4: motive for operating the service. You know, that is putting
Speaker 4: children at risk, and we shouldn't allow that risk. You know,
Speaker 4: we should have stringent standards and they should be good policing,
Speaker 4: monitoring by the Ministry for Education because you know, that's
Speaker 4: what we parents rely on and that's what we'd love
Speaker 4: to see as a sector where everyone's providing you know, safe,
Speaker 4: high quality care and education for children.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us, Sarah.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzadherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Seals and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer.
Speaker 3: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
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Speaker 2: behind the headlines.