Only About Children Williamstown

Took me a while to finally write a review as I was trying to forget the trauma. I had to pull my son out of here and change daycare centres about 10 months ago. He was in the nursery room. When we first started with OAC, the educators were amazing but something changed higher up and everyone started dropping like flies over the course of the last 6 months he was there. There was probably 1-2 educators who left per month on average across the 6 months, some we weren’t even notified about at all until we asked what had happened to them… it was hard to talk to the staff as it felt everyone was secretive and walking on eggshells or were not allowed to tell the truth to the families. All these educators were replaced with daily, different casuals who were rude, distant and uninterested in the children. Often there would be only 1-2 educators with the room full of more than 10 children. There was no consistency or familiarity for the children for months as everyone kept coming and going. Even the director and assistant director at the time eventually left and in-fact, there was only 1 original educator left by the end. There was no transparency or comms from the centre and there was a lot of concerned and upset parents. You could tell the last one left was over worked and burnt out and it was obvious there was some huge lack of support from their head office, but everything felt so hush, hush and shady and the lack of upfront transparency and comms was a horrible feeling for us dropping our 1-2yro son into the unknown each day. My son was never truly settled when there for 1 year (it got worse towards the end with all the turbulence) and we always felt that knot in our stomach, trying to convince ourselves it was normal for it to take time (he’s our first) until we pulled the plug and changed his daycare and noticed a change in him almost immediately at his new daycare. During his time there, when tensions were high and there was so much daily unfamiliarity and inconsistency with educators (which was the worst part for us as we know how harmful that is to very young children who need it to feel safe and feel trust and we could feel it everyday in the unsettled and unease of our son), the centre also offered prizes to those who would leave good reviews on google (some of which were actually staff themselves…) which if you scroll back, you can see reviews all written around the same time. It just felt so wrong. I hope OAC HO have built a better support network to those still left at the time and become better at being transparent and honest with families. And I hope for the childrens sake, consistency, familiarity and a routined environment have been implemented as priority. It’s not normal for your babies to be unsettled for months let alone after 1yr so follow what your gut tells you.