Children First Early Education Cranbrook - Early Bird Family Saver - 4 Weeks Free Childcare*

If you care about quality standards in early childhood education, and consider safety paramount for your children, I cannot recommend this centre. This review follows several unacceptable biting incidents involving my ~2 y.o daughter despite expressing several former concerns. The response from this centre and area manager have been appalling despite multiple efforts to collaborate to resolve recurring biting incidents and seeking reasonable explanation for how incidents occurred. 5 incidents occurred within 5 months. The first incident occurred Jul 2024 (Tiny Tots). The fifth and final incident occurred today Dec 2024 (Toddlers). There have been 2+ bite wounds in 2 of 5 reported incidents. On 2 occasions, I took my daughter home only to discover bite marks which had not been noticed or communicated to me by anyone at the centre. Despite requesting latest incident report copies, the centre failed to provide, further communicate and follow through with action plans conveyed. I immediately discontinued my child at this centre after today, despite her final intended day not being far off and will progress formal complaints. Observed challenges in this centre's child:educator ratio: The centre went through change of directorship Jul 2024, following the sudden departure of their former centre director. They since had ongoing staff retention challenges, resulting in poor communication, poor transition/handover between educators, and conflicting messages in response to incident queries. The lack of familiar faces due to initial inconsistency from constant change of unmotivated staff made the initial 3 months in Tiny Tots extremely challenging for my toddler to adapt comfortably. She is usually extemely happy in other childcare environments with the right level of engagement, experience, and genuine care. The educators would leave my daughter crying, with little engagement and little support for over an hour with each drop off for several months initially, and thought that was a normal and appropriate duration despite me telling them this was out of character. While there are some lovely educators that have given their best lately, she did seem to enjoy Toddler room activities a lot more. The campus is modernised compared to other TSV childcare centres and has great facilities and resources, but the overall experience outweighs the positive. Quality care, children FIRST, safety, culture, and good education is VITAL. After so many collective issues at this centre over time, I constantly started worrying that something bad could happen to my daughter on any given day she was attending childcare. It has been heartbreaking seeing it diminish my daughters happiness and confidence overtime, resulting in her being extremely upset, acting unlike herself, to having nightmares several days and weeks following each incident. She cries during evening bath time when she sees her bite wounds and this centre have not shown authenticity and care towards limiting these challenges or mitigating risk. The centre does not have zero tolerance or best practice solutions to biting incidents and require plenty of feedback to drastically uplift their standards. Despite all efforts to communicate and resolve, improvement was too slow and the experience becoming horrific. The lack of care and preventative measure could one day, result in an incident beyond repair for any one of the children, and this should really be treated with greater urgency to better improve standards, process and procedures to avoid any major future incidents and a more ideal childcare environment. For context: My daughter commenced childcare at an early age (3-4 months) and naturally has a bright, bubbly personality. She thrived in 2 former wonderful childcare environments in Sydney, but the results have been the opposite since her attendance at Children First. I regret that I did not remove her from this centre instinctively sooner. She will be returning to her former childcare centre interstate, which comparably provides excellent professional care and standards.