Childcare centre fined for supervision breach

Vasse childcare centre Nature’s Atelier has been fined $12,500 and $3500 in court costs for “numerous systemic failures” in child supervision near roads.

The State Administrative Tribunal last month found that GILMI Enterprises Pty Ltd, trading as Nature’s Atelier, breached Section 165 (1) of the National Law for an offence involving inadequate supervision, resulting in the penalty.

A Department of Communities investigation found that, on June 21 last year, a child enrolled at the service caught a public bus to a bus stop nearby the centre in Vasse with no supervision at the bus stop.

Although this was the usual practice used by the service, on this day no educator was present to collect the seven-year-old and the child was delivered to the service by a concerned member of the public.

Nature’s Atelier director Gillian McAuliffe said the incident occurred 15 months ago and procedures had been changed to ensure it would not happen again.

“On that particular day the two people usually in charge of bus supervision were away on sick leave, the two other staff members followed all procedure but there was a miscommunication and the one child was not supervised.”