Families and staff speak out about safety concerns at Guardian childcare centres in Canberra

Dissatisfied families and staff are walking away from one of the country’s biggest childcare providers after revelations of serious and repeated safety incidents.

Some parents and former educators at Guardian Childcare and Education in Canberra have told the ABC about children being forgotten outside, served mouldy bread and spoiled food, narrowly escaping anaphylactic reactions, and returning home in nappies that were either heavily soiled or – in the worst cases – entirely unchanged.

Among the parents who are speaking out about their experiences at the centre is Pia Stark, whose daughter was enrolled at the centre in 2023.

“Out of the eight hours that I’m at work [each day], I’m putting my daughter’s life in somebody else’s hands,” Ms Stark said.

The Canberra mother became suspicious about Guardian when the health of her two-year-old daughter started declining towards the end of last year, prompting multiple doctors’ visits.

“She started losing weight, she wasn’t eating well,” Ms Stark said.

“I found out that they actually were not feeding the children well at all … like mouldy bread, just some plain rice.”

Ms Stark said her daughter developed symptoms such as mystery heat rashes and vomiting.

“Nothing made sense until eventually obviously, we were told what was going on at the daycare,” she said.

She later discovered her child had likely been abandoned in the heat outside one of the centre’s branches.

In a statement, Guardian chief executive Warren Bright said the organisation had a “zero tolerance for child harm policy” and that “sometimes our teams do not deliver to our expectations”.

“In the ACT, we have had a number of our centre leaders and team members resign or be removed from our business as a result of this approach,” Mr Bright said.

Child abandoned outside, parent says

Another parent, Roy Johnson, who is being identified with a pseudonym to protect his identity, was told by staff that his two-year-old son had also been left outside on his own one day in January 2024.

“They only noticed because he banged on the glass door trying to get someone’s attention, trying to get back inside,” Mr Johnson said.

In a meeting with Guardian management, Mr Johnson said he was promised an investigation and involvement by the ACT Education Directorate.

“But since then, I haven’t heard anything,” he said.

In its statement, Guardian said the level of satisfaction for its service in the ACT was high, with 91 per cent of Canberra families ranking it a seven out of 10 in a May 2024 satisfaction survey.

Jewish child allegedly served pork

That same month, single mother Tamsin Friedland said she was forced to intervene when her child, who is Jewish, was served pork meatballs at lunch.

“If they’re not labelling their food for cultural preferences, they’re probably not labelling it for dietary issues or for allergies either,” Ms Friedland said.

That was the case for a fourth parent — who did not want to be named because their child still attends Guardian – who said staff had admitted to accidentally serving garlic, paprika, and banana to a severely allergic child.

“I just don’t feel like staff are taking it seriously … it makes us very hesitant to keep sending her there,” she said.

Parents write letter to Guardian

Guardian is one of the biggest childcare providers in the country, with more than 15,000 children on its books at around 170 centres.

As word around Canberra spread, parents soon realised the spike in incidents had a common thread — they began after the departure of multiple staff members.

Parents signed a letter to Guardian CEO Warren Bright demanding an explanation for the mass exodus.

“Many parents are contemplating leaving or have already started seeking alternative childcare options.”

Mr Bright said retention of team members was a “sector wide challenge, with the ACT being one of the most difficult markets in the country to recruit and retain team members”.

“However, currently our turnover of educators in the ACT is at an all-time low at just about 15 per cent, which is significantly below the sector average,” the statement said.

“We do acknowledge that when we change a leader in a centre this can then have a flow-on effect on the stability of the team.”

Guardian choosing ‘profit over safety’, staff say

The most common complaint coming from families and former educators, however, is that centres were constantly responsible for more children than they were legally allowed.

Educator Jessica Preston left her job at Guardian six months ago.

“Very often we were over ratio — I can’t tell you the amount of time we were over ratio because it was almost all of the time,” she said.

“I remember having 26 children to two educators, and we also had one child who needed one-to-one care. There should have been three or four educators.”

Ratio requirements in the ACT stipulate that there should be one carer for every four children under 24 months (4:1), five children between 24 and 36 months (5:1), and 11 children over 36 months (11:1).

But centres have been criticised for a loophole known as “under roofing” where ratios are calculated across the building, not individual rooms. 

In response, Guardian said the topic of ratios was often “misunderstood by families and team members who believe the ratios apply at room level”.

Parents told the ABC they often witnessed one educator looking after more than 10 toddlers, and a very high turnover of casual staff.

“My husband and I also routinely have to stay behind at drop-off, sometimes for up to half-an-hour, because the number of children exceeds the limit due to staff arriving late,” a mother told the ABC.

When her child was injured in a fall, she said staff made a report that said “no intervention was provided to avoid the fall due to no carers being available to tend to the area”.

A fifth parent, Jack Randell, told the ABC staff had tried to return the wrong child to him at pick-up several times, because staff were never consistently on shift across the week.

But Guardian said it had not received any formal complaint about that incident.

Cherie Muscat, who has worked as an agency educator across the ACT for years, worked two shifts at one Guardian centre in 2018 before raising complaints about educator-to-child ratios, among other issues.

“I was really, really upset to know that this is still ongoing, and that nothing’s been done about it,” she said.

Her agency told her she wouldn’t be sent back.

The statement from Guardian said the company prided itself of being a “high-quality provider of education and care”.

Low supply of nappies, wipes and tissues, former educator says

It costs roughly between $150 to $170 per day — before government subsidies — for a child to attend a Guardian childcare centre, but staff said not enough money was re-invested into centres.

“We were running out of basic things, like toilet paper and paper towels, tissues, even nappies and baby wipes — the basic stuff,” Ms Preston said.

She said she spent hundreds of dollars of her own money to keep things running smoothly.

Guardian said it doubted Ms Preston’s claims.

“We have reviewed the purchase history of these items following your email, and are confident the allegation is false,” Mr Bright said in the statement.

Guardian also said it had a whistleblower channel for staff to raise complaints. 

But when Ms Preston raised her concerns with her managers, she says they were not taken seriously.

“We are required by law to report all of those things, but on multiple occasions I was encouraged not to make reports for that because it made our centre look bad,” she said.

A trainee educator named Rebecca, who has been given a pseudonym to protect her identity, told the ABC she also raised concerns with management in August 2023 about her experience at Guardian.

“There seems to be a consistent failure to support our team members by not having an appropriate amount of staff for the ratio or what is required for ‘adequate supervision’,” she wrote in a letter seen by the ABC.

Guardian said current and former staff members who had failed to report child harm incidents were most likely in breach of their mandatory reporter requirements and their policies on reporting.

Educator’s ‘broken spirit’

Despite not being qualified, Rebecca said she was left in charge of decisions and delegation, especially when there was a high turnover of casual staff.

But when nothing improved, she said she delivered another note to management.

“I hope in the future this company cares for the children and staff more than money and profit,” she said in her note.

Rebecca, who is now fully qualified, has already decided to leave the industry.

She said her experience at Guardian “broke her spirit”.

A billion-dollar business

Guardian is backed by a Swiss private equity firm called Partners Group, which is expected to list Guardian for sale this year for a reported fee of $1 billion. 

It has been traded by investment companies for years, starting with Navis Capital who bought Guardian in 2013 for $120 million and later sold it to Partners Group for $440 million in 2016.

In its statement, Guardian said ownership changes “have not impacted our focus”.

A January 2024 report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found little evidence that for-profit centres were profiteering from the service, but said a more likely explanation for significant childcare fees was the high cost of providing childcare.

A separate inquiry by the Productivity Commission investigating Australia’s early childhood education system was due to be released on June 30, 2024, but has not been released yet.

Mr Bright said the organisation “takes safety extremely seriously”.

Two of Guardian’s ACT centres, in Forrest and Bruce, currently rank below the National Quality Care Standards, the national benchmark for early childhood education and care.

The centres were categorised as “working towards” the national standard, another two were ranked as “meeting” the standard, and four were classed as “exceeding” the standard, though they were last assessed seven years ago in 2017.