A Perth childcare has been fined $25,000 after it was found they had locked and left a child on board the service’s bus for five minutes on a hot summer day.
Kiddo’s OSHC & Vacation Care in Ellenbrook was taken to the State Administrative Tribunal by the Department of Communities chief executive over the February 2025 incident, which saw the seven-year-old accidentally left on the ten-seater minibus.
The tribunal heard the boy was picked up from his pre-primary class and boarded the bus with other children who had been picked up from different schools around the suburb.
The educators dropped off the other children until the boy was the only one left on the bus and they returned to the service.
When they parked the bus, the tribunal heard the two carers became occupied in a conversation with a parent and left the bus without checking.
The boy was left on the bus, which had been turned off, and was locked inside.
The temperature was about 39 degrees as the carers walked into the service, and conducted a head count.
After about five minutes the educators realised the boy was still on the bus, and another carer driving into the facility heard “knocking” coming from the window.
“[The educator] turned around and saw [the boy] in the front passenger seat of … the bus,” the tribunal found.
“[The boy] looked visibly distraught – [he] was crying and red in the face.”
The educators were able to unlock the bus and free the boy, but the tribunal said it was clear the seven-year-old had been at risk of injury if they hadn’t noticed his absence.
The tribunal said the service failed to take a number of steps to stop the incident from happening, and found they had contravened national regulation by failing to maintain a clear disembarking procedure, and keeping an accurate record of children being signed in and out of the service.
It also found that out of the seven educators that worked on the day of the incident, none of them held an approved qualification as defined by national regulations. Under the regulations, at least one educator involved in educating and caring for children must hold at least a certificate III in early childhood education and care.
It also found none of the educators collecting children and dropping them off at the service on the day of the incident held any emergency health qualifications set out in national regulations.
They were also unable to provide paperwork about the incident.
The tribunal noted the service had immediately notified the department about the incident, carried out its own internal investigation, contacted the boy’s parents to apologise and shown “genuine remorse and contrition”.
It also found it had since made a number of improvements to stop the incident from happening again, along with hiring two permanent qualified educators and setting up new procedures and policies to manage risk and regulation when it came to the transportation of children in its care.
However, the tribunal still opted to order the childcare to pay the department a penalty of $25,000 plus legal costs.
