Unpaid hours, heavy workloads take toll on child care
According to Australia’s first research, child care educators spend only two and a half hours a day with children due to heavy workloads and unpaid hours.
. to work It was released on Wednesday, and more than three quarters of educators have directly affected the quality of care that they can give to children on average nine unpaid hours per week.
Erin Harper, chief researcher of Sydney University, said that the findings have drawn a sharp picture of a sector in the crisis.
“Many educators said that they spend a lot of time to stay away from children in their care, and that they are generally interrupted by administrative business or cleaning tasks.” He said.
The research, which investigates 570 educators, shows that unpaid hours constitute an important part of the general workload.
At least 73 percent of the educators reported that high workloads undermined the quality of the services, 76 percent of the children were affected as a result, he said.
The research reported that the burden of unpaid work, low wage and unrealistic expectations is unsustainable and that many educators are high mental and physical exhaustion.
“These problems are not isolated or random, but systemic.” He said.
“The sector, the sector, inconsistent regulation, limited government supervision and working conditions, a major change, small children and their development has been largely privatized.”
Joshua Dale Brown was accused of 70 sex offenses in a child care center in Melbourne for 70 sex offenses, including eight -year -olds, reforms in the children’s care industry was rapidly monitored.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare promised to accelerate efforts to improve safety standards in child care centers.
The Victoria government introduced its own reforms, including registration to child care employees and educators, prohibited personal mobile phones in centers, and compulsory CCTV installation.
Although security reforms are required in the childhood industry, urgent changes are needed to support educators, to correct the equality of payment and to address workload problems.
