System is failing childcare workers: research

In 2021, Charles Sturt University researchers Dr Tamara Cumming and Dr Helen Logan, with Professor Sandie Wong from Macquarie University, published a journal article outlining some of the results they collected from a survey of 73 childcare educators in Australia.

Mapping these results against international guidelines and policy openings in Australia’s National Quality Standard, the article aims to understand how educators’ work environments affect their wellbeing. The researchers concluded that existing policies on quality in early childhood education in Australia attend to only some features of work environments, with a notable absence of attention to supporting educators in the relational complexities of their work.

The researchers concluded that high-quality work environments are needed to support educators to thrive, and the results they collected suggested “that many participants’ workplaces were not ideal adult working environments … and that some practices had significantly negative impacts on educators’ wellbeing”. They recommend government, organisation and service-level policies and practices need to improve for decent work conditions, and the quality of the mental health of educators to increase and thrive.