Benowa Early Learning Centre

Honesty, I could write a lot but I’ll just mention the two things that mostly upset me. The staff turnover is non stop. My children would love an educator and feel comfy to be dropped at kindy and within a couple of months they would be gone and I’d have to try and help them understand why they won’t see this important person to them ever again. It got depressing. Some would leave just suddenly, be gone without a word. Even the office ladies would constantly change. You’d send an email about your child and get a long AI response back, it didn’t feel personal, like they even heard you. It didn’t feel like a nice community. Always new faces. Always dropping your child with a stranger, mostly foreign, which is obviously fine but sometimes you just want to have a chat about your child and you could see this was just a job, there wasn’t a motherly feel to most educators. So my biggest concern and in my opinion is dangerous and a huge no, no in bigger centres. Often, nearly always there was one staff member supervising, (mostly in my 2-3 year olds room) in the afternoons from around 4pm, this a serious child safety issue, having at least two educators present is so important, not only for the kids safety and emergencies, but also for accountability around child protection, you always hear of the horror stories happening when it’s one educator, some states I believe it’s actually illegal to only have one.. I would mention this to them when they would email the “give us feedback” emails, but saving money on staff maybe is more important than keeping the kids safe, because for a year after mentioning it a few times, it’s was always the same. Anyway we pulled them out and keep them at home because now because they refuse daycares which is sad. I went to a party recently and that mum and another too had also done the same, I thought that was interesting.