Education and care provider, Harpreet Dhaliwal, has been ordered to pay $8600 by the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) after an eight-year-old boy was found 300 metres away from the Albany outside school hours care service, The Village St Joe's OSHC.
The 29 January 2025 incident occurred after the boy, who requires one-on-one supervision, left the service through an external gate.
Staff noticed the child was missing about 17 minutes after he left the service and began to search for him. He was located at a nearby school after being missing for approximately 27 minutes in total.
While The Village St Joe's OSHC had the right number of educators present at the service, one staff member was working in the kitchen instead of directly working with children. This resulted in a failure to meet the prescribed educator to child ratio and was a contributing factor to this incident.
A Department of Communities (Communities) investigation found that the approved provider had breached the Education and Care Services National Law (Western Australia) by failing to adequately supervise a child in their care, failing to meet the prescribed educator to child ratio and failing to follow relevant policy and procedures.
Harpreet Dhaliwal was also ordered to pay $2,000 towards Communities' legal costs.
More information on the SAT order is available on the eCourts website .
As stated by Angelo Barbaro, Executive Director, Regulation and Quality, Department of Communities:
"Adequate supervision is vital to keeping children safe within education and care services.
"Approved Providers are reminded that for staff to be counted in the ratios they must be directly working with the children and cannot be involved in other tasks such as food preparation or cleaning.
"While it's incredibly fortunate that the child was found unharmed, services must prevent these types of incidents by adequately supervising all children in their care.
"Our community place a great deal of trust in providers to comply with the law and keep our children safe.
"As this outcome shows, there are consequences for breaching the community's trust and the laws that providers must follow."
