Early Childhood Education: The Gap Between Family and Institutional Care

Joshua Dale Brown, a 26-year-old early childhood educator, had worked in various childcare centers across Melbourne over the past seven years. In July this year, he was revealed to have allegedly committed prolonged sexual abuse against eight young children.

He now faces over 70 charges, including child sexual assault, production of child abuse materials, and contaminating objects with intent to cause fear and anxiety.

This case is shocking. How could a man gain repeated access to children over seven years abusing them and recording child sexual abuse materials, without anyone noticing or stopping him? Sexual violence typically occurs within the family, but this case unfolded in what is widely considered one of the safest spaces: a childcare center. These centers are presumed to be staffed by professionally trained carers and closely regulated by the government. Yet, even such a system failed to prevent these crimes. This forces us to reflect: Does our childcare system genuinely protect children?

From Historical Support System to Modern Dilemma

The rise of early childhood care systems was originally a response to the women’s liberation movement and changes in the labor market. In the mid to late 20th century, more women entered the workforce, prompting a redivision of family roles. Societies began building systems to help dual-income families, including parental leave, childcare subsidies, and childcare institutions.

In Australia, starting in the 1990s, the government promoted childcare subsidies and regulatory policies aimed at ensuring basic care for children while also boosting the labor force and stimulating the economy. Initially, these efforts supported countless families and opened new career paths for many women.

However, as reliance on childcare services grows and long-term investment lags, the system has begun to show signs of strain. What began as a “supplemental role” has now become the only option for many families. Childcare is no longer merely a support service but a daily necessity. The system has taken on responsibilities that were once shared by families and communities, yet without matching oversight or investment. As a result, it is now overburdened and unbalanced, creating opportunities for people like Joshua Brown to exploit it.

A System of Short-Term Employment

A look at Joshua Brown’s employment history shows that between 2019 and 2025, he worked at 20 different childcare centers in Melbourne. Some jobs lasted only a day, others a week or a month, which were clearly temporary and part-time roles, allowing him to move frequently between centers.

In such a flexible and short-term employment system, regular staff have little opportunity to truly get to know temporary employees, their backgrounds, or behavioral patterns. Sometimes, they can’t even recall their names. This makes it nearly impossible to build effective monitoring relationships. Temporary workers often appear for just a day or two before moving on, making misconduct hard to detect, document, or report. Young children, with their limited memory and verbal skills, often cannot identify their abusers or even recall temporary staff, making it difficult to lodge complaints or raise red flags.

As society pushes for gender equality, more women are returning to work, drastically increasing the demand for childcare. Yet with supply failing to keep up, Australia’s childcare industry faces a severe workforce shortage. In response, the government expanded subsidies in the 1990s to speed up the sector’s growth. While this improved supply, it also triggered quality and oversight problems.

Currently, Australia’s childcare services include long day care centers, community preschools, family daycare, and in-home care. Nearly 70% of these services are run by for-profit private entities, with the rest managed by community or non-profit organizations. Private providers often cut costs by offering low wages and hiring a large number of part-time or casual workers. This leads to high staff turnover and inconsistent care quality. Many centers do not employ enough supervisory staff, or avoid hiring experienced workers due to budget constraints. This creates unmonitored environments where temporary staff operate alone, leaving children vulnerable to abuse by those with harmful intent.

A Shortcut to Immigration

Another issue stemming from the labor shortage is the use of childcare roles as a pathway to immigration. The government has listed early childhood carers as skilled migration occupations. As a result, many people view these jobs as a way to stay in Australia. After completing university degrees, some enroll in diploma-level childcare programs to become certified carers.

However, childcare work is demanding: low pay, high responsibility, emotional intensity, and strict standards. Unless someone genuinely loves working with children, many treat the job merely as a stepping stone for visa eligibility or permanent residency.

But are these individuals truly equipped for the role? Many education providers now offer one-year crash courses tailored for these migrants. Can such short-term training genuinely prepare them to care for children safely and competently? This risks degrading the quality of care and increases safety concerns for children.

Is the Current Regulatory System Effective?

While demand for childcare rises, the regulatory system is failing to keep up. Between 2013 and 2023, available places in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) increased by 50%, with long day care capacity up 69%. By 2023, nearly half of one-year-olds and 90% of four-year-olds were enrolled in ECEC services.

However, rapid expansion hasn’t guaranteed quality. According to the National Quality Standard (NQS), as of 2025, about 10% of centers are still rated as only “Working Towards” the minimum benchmark.

Australia’s main regulatory framework, which is the National Quality Framework (NQF), overseen by the Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), evaluates centers on seven criteria, including curriculum, child safety, staff qualifications, and governance.

Though the NQF outlines assessment procedures, it does not specify how often centers must undergo formal reviews or on-site visits. With over 10,000 ECEC services nationwide and limited resources, actual inspections are infrequent. In a sector plagued by labor shortages and high turnover, relying on self-reporting and risk-based audits is insufficient to identify problems early.

In fact, Joshua Brown had been reported twice in the two years before his crimes were exposed, accused of handling children roughly. These allegations were confirmed via an internal investigation by the center operator, G8. The incidents were reported to the Victoria Reportable Conduct Scheme and the Commission for Children and Young People. Yet despite verified misconduct, the Commission chose not to reassess his Working with Children Check. Instead, he was suspended, given a disciplinary warning, and later returned to work. This raises serious concerns about whether authorities fully grasped the potential risks and whether someone capable of harming children should have been allowed to return to childcare work.

Reforming the System at Its Core

While discussions around regulatory mechanisms are necessary, perhaps we also need to reconsider: is regulation truly the most effective long-term solution? Certainly, strengthening background checks, increasing inspection frequency, and adding risk reporting mechanisms are all important, but these are largely reactive measures. If we truly hope to prevent such tragedies at their root, a more effective approach may lie in raising the professional standards and ethical awareness of childcare workers for cultivating their respect for and understanding of child development. This must begin with education, not just qualifications and certificates.

Currently, many fast-tracked childcare certificate programs focus only on meeting the “minimum passing requirements” and fail to instill a genuine sense of mission or responsibility in caregivers. If Australia can invest in long-term, in-depth, and value-oriented training and internship programs, it would help workers truly grasp the professional nature of the job and its impact on young lives. Only then can the culture of the industry gradually shift, and broader society begin to respect childcare as a legitimate profession. This kind of structural educational reform may be costly, but its long-term benefits far outweigh the reactive costs of investigations and disciplinary actions.

To fundamentally improve the culture of childcare systems, education must focus on cultivating a deep understanding and respect for child development, not just acquiring the minimum certificate. An ideal training system should include modules on child psychology and behavioral development, professional ethics, identifying and supporting mental health concerns, and should offer sufficient hands-on internships and professional supervision. Moreover, ongoing professional development and cross-disciplinary collaboration are essential to improving the overall quality of care. Only in this way can we nurture caregivers with a sense of mission and professional integrity when people are truly equipped to safeguard children’s safety and development.

The Role and Responsibility of Parents

This case also reveals profound shifts in modern family dynamics and their potential consequences. In the past, raising and caring for children was seen as a non-negotiable responsibility of parents. In traditional families, many mothers acted as full-time caregivers, providing constant protection and a stable attachment figure for the child. While the societal view of “stay-at-home moms” carried gender stereotypes, children did have a relatively consistent care environment and familiar adults around them.

However, with dual-income households becoming the norm, more and more parents now outsource childcare to daycare centers, after-school programs, or government services. Even full-time parents often, due to life pressures or personal needs, choose to delegate some of their caregiving responsibilities to friends, family, or through personal time. Within the family, caregiving roles are diversifying. Parents naturally hope their children can grow up in a safe and protected environment, but they also want affordable, flexible, and convenient services. This contradiction has created a structural dilemma: an overreliance on external resources that are increasingly overstretched.

Under pressure to keep costs down, both the government and the industry often prioritize expansion over quality, turning the childcare system into a low-cost service to “look after children,” rather than a space that genuinely supports children’s holistic development. When parents are no longer seen as the primary caregivers, and instead treat childcare as a basic public service, the problem is no longer just whether the service meets a certain quality threshold. Instead, it becomes a question of whether society has misplaced the core responsibility for a child’s growth. When a child’s safety and wellbeing are left in the hands of whoever can offer the cheapest service, it’s sadly no surprise when tragedies occur.

After the Joshua Brown case came to light, many of the affected children’s parents expressed deep shock and guilt. Some admitted that it had never even occurred to them that their child might experience such horror in a center supposedly built for safety. But the reality is that young children cannot clearly articulate their experiences or feelings, as they rely on parents to actively observe, listen, and guide them. For example, parents can ask at pick-up time: “Who did you play with today? What activities did your teacher do with you? Do you like your teacher?” These seemingly simple conversations not only promote parent-child bonding, but can help detect unusual behavior or emotional changes. If a child shows signs of resisting school, anxiety, sadness, or physical discomfort, parents must stay alert and consider whether something inappropriate may have occurred.

In addition, parents should be proactive in engaging with the childcare center, such as attending parent meetings, reviewing quality assessments, monitoring staff turnover, and building open communication with caregivers. When parents raise their awareness and level of involvement, it creates pressure and oversight on institutions as well, driving broader improvements in the system.

Of course, the burden of responsibility cannot rest solely on parents. A sound system and robust oversight remain essential. But in a context where gaps still exist and resources remain tight, parents are often the last line of defense for protecting their children. If society continues to outsource caregiving responsibilities entirely to a marketized, privatized system without appropriate checks, accountability, or risk mitigation, we will only continue to see tragedies like this repeated.