EP86 - Beyond the Device Ban: Safeguarding Childhood in a Digital Age
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[00:00:00] Hello, hello, and welcome to the Big-Hearted podcast. My name is Victoria Edmond, and I am your host. Our aim here at the Big-Hearted Podcast is to nurture a community of heart-centered educators to change the perception and delivery of early childhood education and care in Australia, and ultimately around the world.
We want you to be inspired by our guests and the topics we bring to you to think of new ways of being As an educator, we want you to feel a sense of belonging via this podcast so that you can engage any time of the day or night in any place that suits you. We want you to become an educator that delivers education from the heart, as we believe this is how we create great change within our world.
So join us as we discover new ways to inspire each other here. On the big hearted podcast.
[00:01:00] Hello, hello and welcome to this week's podcast. Uh, this podcast comes with a trigger warning. Uh, we will be discussing things that have, uh, that are of a sensitive nature. So I just want you to be prepared. This is absolutely not a podcast that you should listen to with children in presence, in your presence.
Uh, and uh, we do, I will be talking about, um. Exactly why the department is wanting to get rid of, uh, personal devices in early childhood education. Uh, so, so that you understand so that when we are making decisions and you're thinking about this, you are clearly informed as to the exact reasons why, uh, because it's become apparent that there's a whole lot of people that, uh.
Do not understand fully why they are wanting to get rid of personal devices, uh, uh, in long daycare [00:02:00] settings, uh, and potentially family daycare as well. So I just really wanted to be able to clear this up so that you can understand exactly why, uh, plus a few other bits and pieces that I will be touching on in today's episode.
So, firstly, um. Let's just jump straight into the device ban and the reason why, and again, this comes with a trigger warning, that it is distressing information and, um, will make you feel awful, uh, because it made me feel awful when I first became aware of it. I wish I could be naive again. I really wish I didn't have to know this information, but.
When you know it too, you can go about protecting the children and yourself as well. So, um, I'm going to recommend that you listen to the Children in the Pictures podcast [00:03:00] series. It is a harrowing listen, but it will really help you to understand. What's actually been going on? So, um, it details Task Force Argos and how they busted a major ring on the dark web.
So the dark web is, uh, the web that is not controlled. Um, that's where a lot of nefarious things happen and it's where, um, people go to hang out that want to do things that are. Not controlled by the government, and it's where the pedophiles hang out and where drug dealers hang out and all sorts of things happen on the dark web.
Uh, another podcast that I can recommend is, um, uh. The Silk Road and it was done on, oh, now I'm gonna recommend it. I used to listen to this podcast [00:04:00] all the time and I can't remember the name of it now. Uh, it's an Australian case file. Case file. It's an Australian guy that hosts it, that, um, series. It's nothing to do with.
Childcare. Uh, but it will help you to understand the dark web and how it works and what happens on there and why it's a, um, a place that a lot of these people are happy to visit and frequent. So, um, so, so going back to the children in the pictures, so that particular podcast series, uh, is. In my eyes, probably something that every early childhood educator and people that work with children should listen to.
Uh, they detail how they found these people and they detail, um, the lengths that they went to and they detail all of it and how it oper how these rings operate [00:05:00] and. How elusive these people can be and why it can take years upon years, upon years to find these people. So when you understand that, I feel like you have more awareness around the push, and I see the the, the reasoning why, but I also think that it's knee jerky.
And it's not going to actually fix the problem. The problems are far greater and more deeply embedded than just removing devices. But in case you don't go to listen to that podcast series, I want to share with you, pardon me, why they're doing this and why this is a suggestion. Uh, so what, what's happening is.
Oh, how do you start? Where do you start? So basically these [00:06:00] people, they are predators. They prey on. Those of us who are vulnerable, how they've infiltrated early childhood education, and perhaps they've been there forever and we've just never, they've never been uncovered. We know from the guy that was caught in Queensland a year or two ago now, uh, he was the first one that came out and had been operating for decades, uh, and across several jurisdictions and countries.
Um. They. Ha would have gathered all of the information. They would've had been able to say, who is who this is on, uh, where he's posted, how he's posted, identifying, um, things on him as the person who is. Perpetrating the abuse against these children. Um, there would've been identifiable things in the [00:07:00] rooms that these things were done.
Hence why when they put out the, the image of the change table, they asked. Who knows where this change table is. There must have been something on there that was quite identifiable and they put that out into the public and then they were able to catch him. And so what these people do is they prey on the children who are vulnerable.
But they also prey on US adults who are vulnerable too. And I, I would go so far as to say the early childhood education is vulnerable, particularly in the long daycare settings because we have such a shortage in our workforce. We have such an incredible shortage of educators and so services are using agency staff and casuals to come in and, and fill their ratios so they can continue to operate.
Now, we know this is an issue. It's obviously [00:08:00] everywhere at the moment as a major issue, and it doesn't happen in family daycare. And this is what really sets us apart in family daycare, is that you have the same educator. Uh, from the minute you open your doors to the minute you close your doors, with the very odd exception when an educator might need to go for a, um, a, a, an appointment or has leave, and then there is another educator that steps in to cover that.
However, if it's to cover a process, a period of leave, it's still the same educator from the minute the doors open to the minute the doors close. So in my mind that goes a long way to creating the kinds of relationships that we need to have with the children and the communities. So, but that doesn't happen in long daycare.
So how this is a problem where there is a vulnerability now, is that this can be exploited. So [00:09:00] if you are a busy educator who's working with someone you've not worked with before, there's disruption in the room because there's a change to normal routine and normal things that are happening. And you've got an educator that's like, oh, I'll do the cleaning, I'll change the nappies, all the jobs.
That can be quite time consuming. And when you are an educator that's trying to run the room the way it should be run. It's easy to say, oh great. Yep, thanks. That's really helpful. And this is what they do. They infiltrate themselves to be helpful, to be, uh, a, a person that is great to work with, not. Awful to work with.
But before they even do that, they start to groom the team. They start to groom the educator. What they will do is they will see who's likely to be a person that would notice what they're [00:10:00] doing and go, nah, Uhuh not on my watch, buddy. No, that's not gonna happen. And they will start pitting the other educators against them.
This is what they do. This is literally the playbook of what they do. And they will then, um, begin to create disharmony within a team and they will do it very subtly so that when the educator that's likely to notice them goes and says something to someone else, there's already, uh, a toxic cancerous thing going on in there where that.
Other educator, we are like, no. What are you talking about? They're really helpful. No, I love working with them. Da da. I'm not saying that you are just being blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is what they do. They play us against each other as adults, and then we end up gaslighting ourselves. I. Literally, this is what happens and people don't wanna speak up because they don't want to be offensive and all of this sort of stuff.
This is how they operate. [00:11:00] They, they plant these seeds of discourse within teams and then they go and they start doing the offending. I. And they offend against the children that can't speak up and do things. So what has that got to do with personal devices? You ask? Well, what they're doing is they are, and this is a major trigger warning, they're taking images and videos of themselves abusing the children and uploading it on the dark web, and then being part of these big pedophile rings.
Where they share images and videos and photos, and now with the use of ai, they might take a completely innocent photo of a child and use AI to do awful things to it. So this is the problem, but it's the top of the problem. The rest of the problem is that we have a workforce that is. [00:12:00] Able, able to be easy, easily manipulated because it's vulnerable.
It's vulnerable because we have educators that have not had the required training in place. It's vulnerable because the type of training that is available is quick. It is fast paced. Now it's get them, get them qualified so they can get on the floor, put them, they've got an IT degree, let's just. Take heaps of their degree that they've done that has nothing to do with early childhood education and approve them to come into our sector.
After a year of study, a year of study, they have no interest in early childhood education. They're just wanting to get this study done because maybe it is saturated and there's no work for them, so they're gonna go and do something else. Oh, childcare is easy. I'll just do that. They have no understanding of childhood development.
They have no [00:13:00] understanding of theorists and uh, schemas and anything like this. I have no understanding of cultural sensitivity. They have no understanding of what it actually takes to be in an early childhood setting, and that has been watered down and watered down and watered down over the last few years, however long that's been happening for.
Like, even when I did my diploma, it was, I had to do my cert three, which was a full-time course, um, which I laughed because full-time was three six hour days and I completed that in six months. But I went to college every day for three, well, three days a week for six months, and did my, my cert three that.
Was Okay training. I was already a parent, so I already had a lot of, um, the common sense that was required. I'd had a lot of experience with my own children, uh, and so, you know, I was a bit older as well. I was probably [00:14:00] 25 or 26, maybe even closer to, no, I would've been closer to 30 when I started that. So, um, you know, I was late, late twenties, early thirties, so I'd had life experience, but all of my life experience as an adult had involved children.
So I, I had a lot of skills already. Uh, plus I'd done a lot of reading and research myself based on my interests in my own children and wanting to ensure that I. Um, did the best thing I could for my children. So, but this isn't necessarily the case. And, um, this is, this is I think the bigger issue here and the bigger problem, but also.
The idea of getting rid of males in early childhood education is also a bandaid that's not going to fix the problem because not all males are doing this stuff. And there's some wonderful educators that I've worked with personally that I would be horrified that they're feeling if they're still working in early childhood [00:15:00] education, that they're feeling victimized by this because it's pedophiles.
It's pedophiles that are doing this. They're coming in and they're taking advantage of educators who are. Super busy who are trying to manage this massive workload and the stress that comes with it. We've got, I read an article this morning that there was, um, a, a, um, a union that had put out a, I can't remember the name of the union, but they'd put out a, um.
A survey to their members and 75, I think it was 75 or 73%, said that they had multiple children in their rooms that had additional needs and there was not enough support for them. So this is, this is the problem. This is the problem. We have a workload that we literally cannot manage in early childhood education, and as a result.
We have been groomed and taken advantage of because we are vulnerable and we've [00:16:00] been saying for a long time, the ratios are an issue in long daycare settings and this is, this is what's happened. So when the department. Comes along and says we need to ban personal devices. If a service says, okay, we'll just make an educator, get a business owned device, it does not stop what they're trying to circumvent.
It does not address the issue that. These images are being taken and used nefariously and put up in pedophile rings. Now, you could very well have, and I think apps have a lot to answer for because you can add anyone from anywhere and you have no idea who they are. There is no chance of monitoring any of the content that you put up.
Once you press send or once you put post. Once you press post, there's no way, even if it's a private group. You have absolutely no control o over what happens to those [00:17:00] images or videos after you've pressed post. It doesn't matter if it's a private group. You have no control over what they are doing with those images and videos once it lands in their device.
Okay, so this is what we have to really strongly and be very clear about. I personally think we need to get rid of the apps and not be posting images of children that are identifiable. That could be used in nefarious ways, and it could just be three quarters of a face and a and a child wearing a nappy.
Playing around in summertime, in north Queensland. That is a reality. It's too hot, it's far too hot. Children, you know, run around in a pair of shorts and, and nothing else because it's too hot. Like that is something that was brought up at the conference when we talked about this and it's a legitimate thing.
Um, you know, so it's normal in places to do that. But we are forgetting [00:18:00] because we have this naive naivety and we don't look at children like that, but people that do look at children like that will take that and do things with it, and this is what they're trying to prevent. So when a family daycare service is making a suggestion that we'll just make the educators get an iPad just for work, it doesn't.
Fix the problem. It doesn't fix what they're trying to stop. And this is what I think educators and services need to be aware of that these are the reasons because, and, and you might wonder, and another question, and this again comes with a trigger warning, but we need to have these difficult conversations, my friends, is that.
People are like, you know, because this guy that got arrested yesterday is the third one in two weeks that's been arrested yesterday, and he's been charged with one count of rape. And, and when I was talking to a colleague about it, she was like, but surely people are hearing this. [00:19:00] Rape isn't just penis to vagina.
Rape can be a a, a finger, anything that is, um. Penetration. It could be of anything, any part of your body or any object if it penetrates into the vagina, that is rape. And that's why rape cases can sometimes be really hard to prove because you've gotta prove penetration. But what these horrendous human beings are doing are videoing themselves doing these things.
They are videoing themselves doing these things, so this is how they can charge them with this because they have the video evidence of it. And that's a really hard thing to talk about. It's a really hard thing to listen to. And like I said, I wish I could go back to being naive. But I can't, and now I know this information.
I have to share this information with you so [00:20:00] that when you're a service provider and a coordinator and you are having these, these discussions at service-based levels and you are trying to put, uh, policies in place, you have to be aware of this. You have to know this information so that when you go to create these policies, you create policies that are robust and cover this kind of stuff.
So this is why I've created the, uh, national Forum for Service Leaders, which we'll be meeting next Monday night. And, and something else I want to address was that I had some feedback yesterday because I've created a questionnaire form that I want people to fill in before they join the forum. You can just put NA to everything if you want, like.
I don't know why on earth you would, but the purpose of filling in this form is so that we can gather your ideas, and I will correlate that into a [00:21:00] report that I will send out around hopefully lunchtime on Monday. Um, so that you can read it and the agenda before we have the meeting. I don't wanna waste your time.
I don't wanna waste my time. What I wanna do is correlate all of our ideas and all of these concerns together because I guarantee you a lot of the ideas that we have will be similar and a lot of the concerns we have will be similar, but I want to make sure I capture as much of that information as possible.
Right. So I want you to fill in this form so that you can have your concerns raised and addressed. Right Ss, so the feedback that I got yesterday was the form was too long. I mean, it's like, I don't know, five or six questions. And I ask you in there to put in what your concerns are and what you think should happen because for the very simple reason that, and so many services have said that they're just [00:22:00] gonna make their team get a business owned device, but they need to understand.
And I need to know what these things are so that I can address them and say, hang on a second, you're missing the mark. If we go to the Department of Education and we say, well, we are just gonna make our educators purchase a separately by their business device, the department's gonna laugh at us. The department is gonna go, that does not fix the issue.
You've missed the point completely. So this is why I want to be able to have you give your feedback and answer these questions and spend a little bit of time to share this information so that we can gather it together. What we'll do is we'll talk about these things and we'll address these things, and then the following week we'll have another meeting.
And we will have Christie McVee and Kayleen from eSafety, uh, online come and share with us and assist [00:23:00] us with looking at how we can make these ideas stronger. I. So that way we can put a piece towards the government and our politicians that say, we've been proactive, proactive in this. We are preempting these things.
This is what we've considered as a collective in family daycare, and this is what we want you to do. These are some suggestions. This is how we can make this work to make the children safer, to make sure that the educators are safe as well. Like, this is what we need to be doing and, and this is what we will do.
And then the following week after that, we'll meet with educators. We'll have an educator forum as well. So the week of the 28th of August, uh, July, I believe it is. Um, I have my little calendar here. I did look at it earlier, but I've talked so much since then. I don't remember. Yeah, so the week of the 28th of July, I'll have an educator [00:24:00] forum as well where we'll share.
What we've come up with, and we'll seek feedback from educators as well. So, and I'll do the same process with, uh, with all of you guys as well. We'll have a question questionnaire for you to fill in where you can put your information in and we'll collate that information and we'll share it because if we have 500 people respond.
There's gonna be a lot of things similar, but there's going to be some standout suggestions as well. And we want to capture those and we want to be able to build on those ideas. We want to be able to go, well, we are starting here. And then when we hear this, someone else says, but what about this? And then what about that?
And what if we do this? And what if we do that? And eventually we are going to get to some place that we just go, yeah, that feels doable. That feels absolutely the path we should be taking. The, the last thing we wanna do is leave this up to everybody else. If we leave this up to everybody [00:25:00] else, we are going to end up with rules and regulations that do not suit us.
That's legit. What is going to happen? If you can't be bothered filling in a form, you may as well go and look for another job. Um, I'm, uh, you know, I just was gobsmacked to hear that yesterday. We are literally sitting in a place where we can stand up and say, Hey, this is what's happening. This is how we as professionals are gathering together and having, having a look at what's actually going on and coming up with ideas and solutions that are going to work in our favor for our profession.
Because if we don't come out and say anything and. It's been crickets from certain places that is astounding me and concerning me deeply. Um, and if we don't stand up and [00:26:00] we don't all talk about this, we are going to be unhappy with the outcome. And if you do not want to participate, that's fine, but you don't get to complain later.
Is when things don't go the way you want them. So I just, I really, this isn't about competition. I know I'm a service owner. I have, I, I like, I. I don't wanna take your business. That's, that's absolutely not what I'm standing up and doing this for. I'm a hundred percent standing up and doing this because I love family daycare.
I think it is the most superior model for children and for educators. Uh, I really truly do. And I see our numbers are shrinking and what are we doing to improve that? Then if we add on more and more and more requirements. People are going to leave faster [00:27:00] than they're ever coming to us. And then it's not the government that's got rid of us, it's our own apathy and our own unwillingness to stand up and like just to stand up and take action and to, to put your heart on your sleeve and to really.
Advocate for family daycare. I can't understand why you would have an opportunity to share your thoughts and you would just say, oh, it's too hard, because it was too many questions. I mean, I, I just am honestly shocked and I get that people are tired. I, I understand that, but we get to be tired after.
Right now we've got to really, really put our collective heads together and work together so that we [00:28:00] can strengthen family daycare's position and not undermine it and then complain when we don't get what we want. So that's what I wanted to talk to you about today. I want you to understand that real reason why behind devices are being suggested to be banned.
Um, so. Yeah, let's, let's get together. If you are a service leader or if you are an educator, please maybe share this with your service. Um, I know I got a little bit ranty and I don't wanna upset people, but I just can't, I. I can't lay down and not say anything. I can't just be quiet and hope that somebody else is going to stand up and say something or organize something.
I just can't, like, we don't have the time to wait. We honestly don't have the time to wait. And I know this is a heavy topic and I know it's uncomfortable, and I know you're probably feeling like. Ooh, after listening to this, but do you know what, [00:29:00] this is what change is about? This is where change happens.
This is where growth happens. This is where we get to make the change and the suggestions and put our thoughts forward. And yes, they, they may at the end not be listened to, but at least we know we've. We've tried and we've really attempted to put our best foot forward here, and that's what I'm asking you to do.
So, um, please keep your ears and eyes open for the Educator Forum and if you could share this with your service or ask some of the questions of your service. And then let them know the reasons why. Go and listen to the Children In the Pictures podcast. You can download it on Apple and Spotify. Go and listen to the Silk Road by Case file.
That will give you more understanding of how these circles work and how it all happens, so that when you have this understanding, you can [00:30:00] make better decisions. So that my friends is what I wanted to talk to you about today. I'm sorry if I got ranty. Uh, and I, I, I just, we just can't be quiet. We just can't let other people make all these decisions for us.
We have to gather together. We have to put our heads together and work together and unite. Otherwise, who knows where we are gonna end up. Alright friends, that's me. Big love, peace out. And take a breath.
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