Will a lightbulb go on for Australia? (doubt it)

[99bottlesofkombucha]

The news in Melbourne for the past week has been dominated by the news of a male childcare worker being charged with abuses against multiple children, and he's worked at 20 childcares in the west and north, some of them being multiple different childcares from a chain. Quite a few articles have raised the increased risk of males in childcare, and one chain has announced men will no longer be able to change nappies and toilet children. I have no idea whether that restriction is legal, and am not totally decided on how I feel about it, but wonder if anyone will realise that if they put this in place they are only restricting the nappy change and toileting role to staff who identify as female? I do have children in childcare in Melbourne.

I wish the lightbulb would go on. Tired of the entitled men lined up at the sinks in women’s toilets at conventions etc.

Are you honestly ok? Don't be ridiculous. That man is disgusting but if you think banning men from child care solves the problem then no it doesn't. Unfortunately women can also be terrible abusers and are. Tighter standards and enforcement is what is required which unfortunately childcare for profit doesn't support

The vast majority of sex offenders are men. Whether you agree with this policy or not, limiting such positions to women only will greatly reduce risk.

I'm not arguing that men commit more sex offences but I'm very interested as to the point of this argument as it is obviously a straw man. The OP is essentially stating Australia needs to ban men and any person born male from working in childcare. That won't protect children from abuse. Around 2-4 per cent of childcare workers are male but still for profit nurseries put children in harm's way through paying workers minimum wage, low worker to child ratios and lack of compliance to regulation. However I would argue Australia actually has quite a lot of regulation. This is a terrible case and awful for those families and children impacted but pretending this was an oversight that would have been solved by banning men is ridiculous.

I avoided pre schools with male staff. One had two males working there and I walked straight back out the door. I don’t care if that hurts anyone’s feelings. Sorry, but my controversial opinion is that pre verbal children should not be alone with men I don’t know extremely well without women chaperoning them. We have chaperones for intimate medical procedures for adults so why not for nappy changing etc? I know, I know, people will say that most abuse happens in the home. And not all men, and women do it too (yeah, like at a ratio of 98 to 2) And just think of Pelicot etc. But it comes down to opportunity. Pre schools give men ample opportunity and access. And children under 6 are extra vulnerable because of their lack of linguistic development. Let men do upper primary and secondary, with stringent safeguards in place. Leave the under 6 year olds to well paid, well resourced, well respected female staff.

I think children shouldn't be alone with any adult in an institution and unfortunately many of the female workers are not well resourced, respected or well paid. Childcare needs to be taken more seriously overall

I am not saying banning men from childcare solves the problem, if you read my opening post, so there's no need to argue that with me, but it is totally misleading to say the risk is equal to that from women when over 90% of the perpetrators are men. Well over 90% I would think, men are overall responsible for about 98% of sexual offences.
Better processes within the childcares are essential. I can't really get my head around for profit childcare and would never buy shares in them. My children are in a not for profit.

Wow. I am not essentially saying that at all, I have not said that at all or anything like that? I have said that 1. a number of articles are calling for that (articles were in mainstream papers and not written by me to be completely clear) and 2. one childcare chain has announced that men will not be allowed to change nappies or do toileting. I'm literally just repeating my op here.
This is a terrible case, that much is true, and this case specifically is clearly one that would not have happened if men were banned as the perpetrator was a man, so the opposite of what you say.
I'm not even arguing men should be banned, but I do wish people wouldn't say either such clearly incorrect things, or not even read the op.

The chaperoning/ doubling up/ ability to be observed at all times by a second staff member within the changing area and toilets are the key processes to really concentrate on to remove the possibility of offending, and possibly cctv including changing areas (which I doubt it ever includes currently) but that perhaps raises other risks and concerns. I don't want to ban male workers from childcare but it doesn't seem too awful to me to say strange men can't change babies nappies. I think male teachers are a really valuable part of the school experience but I also do expect male teachers not to share cabins with girls at school or accompany them into the toilet, as does every other parent out there, and is this really so different?

@Scribblydoo banning men from certain areas isn’t new. We ban men from women’s single sec services because we recognise that by doing so the risk to women is greatly reduced. Why would it be wrong to do the same thing to reduce the risk to children? Child safeguarding is the most important thing here. Yes there should be a greater ration of staff to children, but that is a separate issue.

The charges include child rape, molestation, and hundreds of children tested for STD's after their food was contaminated with bodily fluids.

Safeguarding starts with a risk assessment, and is then an ongoing process of behaviour analysis. It applies to women as well as men, no one is saying all women are safe.
Find a way to stop men contaminating food and abusing women and children; then people can complain that safeguarding is discrimination against men.

Improve the working with children checks. And recognise it isn’t just men that offend against children, unfortunately.

You’ve actually missed the single most essential step, which is processes at the childcare. Improving the wwc will be good, but just like any hiring never foolproof.

So how does this proposal work in practice? If a woman has to leave the floor to change nappies and take a child to the toilet who is left in charge of the other children? A man if he exists, as again 2-4% of childcare workers are male. Why should only women have the literal shit work? How do childcare service managers make this work when already their staffing is taking a massive hit as you can get paid more as a barista with less responsibility and qualifications.Are we banning men from other vulnerable groups? The elderly, the disabled. This essentially doing the patriarchy's work for it.Rather than putting the onus on treating childcare as an essential service and funding it properly and giving workers the respect and pay they deserve. These predators find a way, I agree regulation properly implemented should make that way near impossible but banning a man from hanging a nappy isn't the magic wand

Why not both?

hundreds of children tested for STD's after their food was contaminated with bodily fluids

Jesus shuddering Christ. There really are no words.

Rather than banning men, there should be procedures that ensure no staff, make or female, can be in position where it is possible to abuse the children. Its not as simple as man= danger, woman = safe.

Something of a leap there, I don’t read that from the post at all.

I can assure you us Australian women have already voiced the issue that female child care workers will now get all the sh*t jobs - literally, while males won't have to do those roles. It's also been raised if it's even legal.

It's a knee jerk reaction from one corporate company, and NOT the view of the general population.

It highlights that kids aren't safe anywhere unless there's two adults present to remove opportunity.

Have Australian women said this? I’m in Australia. In discussions with a childcare, and reading the news and announcements. Who is saying this?
also, the practical reality for many or most childcares is that they don’t have male staff so it is the norm for women to do all the nappies as that’s all we have on staff.

No shit Sherlock. Where you did see me say no let’s not improve wwc? You can drive a truck through them.

A well known parenting coach and child psychologist in NZ wrote in one of his books that you should never let teenage boys babysit your young children. I was a new mum when I read it and I appreciated his bluntness on this. It stayed with me. I felt as though it gave me permission to hold the line on this. Another man in charge of home stays for students once warned me, given we had young children, to only accept female students into our home. These were both men in positions where they understood well and truly what the risks of ‘being kind’ are. Don’t be ashamed to hold all men who seek to have anything to do with your children under suspicion until they have proven otherwise. Pre verbal children can’t articulate sexual abuse. At 6 they can hopefully toilet themselves so more effective safeguarding around adult males in intimate spaces is possible and it’s easier to set clear boundaries that children can understand and articulate if they are violated, so that alarms can be raised. Don’t be naive. Yes female staff abuse kids in these places, but the risk of sexual harm is vastly reduced with females. And other forms of abuse are usually caused by under staffing, lack of adequate facilities, and not ensuring staff have the breaks they need (like we do for truck drivers - with stringent log books). Those issues are more easily mitigated. Pedophilia can not be ‘managed’ in a child care setting, no matter what you do. The only way is to keep pedophiles out. Given the vast, vast majority of pedophiles are men, this means that in many situations related to the professional care of pre verbal and pre toilet trained children, it’s best to keep all men out.

If this guy was contaminating the kids food, it sounds like he couldn't have been entirely stopped even by the kind of rule they are proposing, even someone like a cook could engage in some of whatever this creep was up to.

I think realistically, it's not going to be possible to keep all men out of even indirect contact with all children, and the downsides of doing so would likely not be worthwhile. I also think that making record checks more in depth won't make much differernce, they are already the least useful part of the systems to keep kids safe and in some ways are more about liability than safety.

I am on the fence about the proposed rule. I think that it would probably be fairly effective. I also think it's a shame not to have children having caring relationships with men, but then, this is why fathers are so important - we know that men who are not fathers but have regular contact are the biggest risk for abuse. Usually that means the mother's partner, but a daycare worker is the same kind of problem.

And yet - we don't ban mothers from bringing strange men into the home. Which would also be effective, but it would infringe on the rights of others in significant ways.

It's tricky, I personally don't think mums should introduce new partners to young children, and I am not a huge fan of institutional care for small children. But I don't see either of those as things I could compel others to agree with. And society certainly doesn't seem to agree.

It won't be possible to ban biological males in the legislative climate in Australia, we have a ruling here saying that sex is changeable.

I would support this ban despite how heartbreaking it is to legislate distrust in men around children, as a man that genuinely adores the bright spot in the darkness that happy kids bring, especially if the ban caused the government to have to sit down and consider "is it good law that sex is seen as changeable?" as a prerequisite to enacting this ban legally.

As a general discussion point and without any agenda on this: it raises the issue that aside from single sex spaces as respite and shelter, this starts the desire to legislate that in work, one of the two sexes is immutably unsuitable for given roles. There's a theoretical equivalent to say, for example, that some extremely male-dominated roles might evolve to be determined to be male-only by legislation. (I can't think of any examples that don't have echoes of old stereotypes, and would cheapen this discussion, but I'm sure one will occur to me)