Hi families! We wanted to share some important updates about how we're making our service even safer for your children, including protecting them in our digital world.

Why We're Making These Changes

You might have heard about the new National Model Code that's been introduced for childcare centres. This includes significant changes prohibiting the use of personal devices in centres, to reduce the chance of photos and videos being taken of children beyond the purposes of documenting their care and education.

These guidelines are designed for centers, and are not practical in a Family Day Care setting. However, we think the principles behind these changes are so important that we're adopting elements of the code that make sense for our unique service context, and also making improvements that go beyond what is required.

New Policies and Training for Our Educators

We've been working on policy updates to adapt the safety principles from the National Model Code to our service, including:

• Updated Photography Policy.
• New Safe Use of Digital Technologies and Online Environments Policy.
• Updated Social Media Policy.

You can download the latest version of our Policy & Procedures. NOTE: We'll always include a link to these policies at the bottom of this website for easy access.

While we encourage families to review the complete policy documents, highlights of these changes include:

• Families, parents and visitors must not take photos at the service.
• Educators must complete training, and complete a risk assessment pertaining to digital workflows and online safety. Devices that undergo this risk assessment are considered 'approved devices' which can be used to capture and store content.
• No images of children will be posted to social media platforms.
• No images of children will be included on our website.
• The only platform approved for sharing photos with families is StoryPark.
• Any images taken of the children must be deleted from the device once they have been used for documentation purposes.

As you can understand, major changes like this take some time to implement. These changes will be implemented over the next couple of months.

Don't Worry - We'll Still Capture Every Special Moment!

You'll still see all those beautiful moments of your child's day, just through a much safer system.

• StoryPark: All your child's photos and updates will come through the secure StoryPark platform. This will be the only platform approved for sharing photos with families.
• No more text photos: Educators won't be sending photos through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or other messaging apps anymore.

You'll Notice Our Website Looks Different

As stated above, we've made the decision to remove all images of children from our website.

We're really sad about this. However, we've realised that even the tiniest chance of these photos being misused just isn't worth it.

We've also decided not to use those stock photos of children that you see on lots of websites. Sure, those children's parents said yes to the photos, but we keep thinking - what about when those kids grow up? They might not be happy that their photos are everywhere. We want to respect that.

Our website is going to look pretty bare for a little while, but we're working on a new design with photography focused on our educators and their amazing FDC spaces.

Questions? We're Here to Chat

If you want to know more about any of these changes, or if you're wondering how they might affect your family, please just give us a call or contact us via email.

Thank you for trusting us with your most precious little people, and for understanding why these changes matter so much.