New standards set for child care

Press, 30 March 1985, Page 6

New standards set for child care

Wellington reporter New regulations on standards of service and licensing of child-care centres will come into force on Monday, April 1. The regulations place greater emphasis on trained staff and educational programmes, and require all fully licensed child-care centres to have a trained supervisor. Those without a trained supervisor can be granted only a provisional licence.

The previous regulations came into force in 1960 and since then there has been a big increase in the number and range of child-care centres.

At the same time, there has been a heightened demand by parents that centres licensed to provide child care should provide quality care and education.

The Minister of Social Welfare, Mrs Hercus, said that greater emphasis on

educational care meant centres would be required to provide an appropriate programme of activities for children. This programme would be reviewed regularly to ensure that standards were met.

Under the new regulations, she said, an accreditation board would help in the assessment and recognition of training qualifications for child-care staff. It would consist of six members with qualifications in early childhood care or education. Other new or . revised regulations recognised the special requirements of Te Kohanga Reo centres and also centres for disabled pre-school children.

The Social Welfare Department had been given increased powers to act quickly where it believed children were being illtreated, Mrs Hercus said.

Centres would have to submit a written policy on management practices for

child behaviour ensuring, among other things, that children were not subjected to any form of physical illtreatment, corporal punishment, solitary confinement or immobilisation.

If the department had reasonable grounds to believe this had been breached, Mrs Hercus said, it might direct that the person be removed from contact with the children, or be excluded from entering the centre.

No big changes had been made to the regulations governing the staffing of centres. Some organisations had pressed for higher staffing levels while others had expressed concern that such higher levels would force centres to close. Any significant changes would have to be deferred until the funding of child care was improved.

New Zealand now has 585 child-care centres, caring for a total of 15,470 children.