Casa Bambini Essendon

My child attended this centre since nursery until I removed them last week in the 4 year old kinder room. I enrolled my child because the centre was highly recommended by two mums in my mother’s group who sung the centre’s praises. In the beginning, I was very happy with the quality of care my child received and the educators were caring and passionate about their jobs. I received regular updates about my child and formed good relationships with educators and centre management. I knew that my child was happy and well cared for. Over time however I saw many good staff leave and there were multiple management changes. Communication with parents fell off a cliff and we received significant price increases in circumstances where the centre and room resources were seriously out of date, educators were leaving and the food served was terrible. Almost all the children my child started with left as their parents were unhappy with the quality of care they received. I stuck it out because I wanted to give the centre a chance (I gave them multiple!) and I did not want uproot my child to a different centre so close to starting primary school. I should have left earlier. I had to constantly raise even the most basic things with centre management - reinstalling a soap dispenser and replacing rotting timber in the kids bathroom - to requiring that the front desk be attended at peak drop off and pick up times for the overall safety of the children and staff. I personally saw a private courier enter the centre at around 5pm on a weekday due to a fault in the front door which left it unlocked and go from room to room to try to find a staff member to sign off on a package delivery. I had to confront him and ask what he was doing, then had to find a staff member to sign off on the package before he left. The only staff member I could find was a casual who had no idea what to do and was slightly panicked that a man was walking around in the centre (it freaked me out too!). The front door was subsequently fixed and I was assured that the front desk would be attended at peak drop off and pick up times moving forward. And yet, it was still unattended on numerous occasions. The final straw for me was seeing none of my child’s regular educators at drop off without any prior explanation or notice, seeing inappropriate child-to-educator ratios and going yet again from room to room to find someone to raise this issue with. I cannot explain how many times I have raise issues with centre management, the area manager and with G8 with minimal improvements to show for it. I personally made two complaints to the Department of Education because I thought it would compel the centre to improve. It did not. This centre had some fantastic educators and staff, but it does not have the ability to retain them. When one or two staff leave, you can put it down to personal circumstances. When there is a revolving door of educators, children and centre managers, then there are serious and deep seated cultural problems all the way to the top with the way this centre is managed that has nothing to do with the shortage of early learning educators in the industry. Save your sanity. Do not leave your children here. There are better options in the area.