The Child Care Quality Assurance Spot Check Survey 2008

The Child Care Quality Assurance (CCQA) Spot Checks were introduced in 2006 to help monitor and maintain the quality of child care services across Australia.

In June 2007 a survey of child care services that had received a Spot Check was undertaken. The aim of the survey was to assess the Spot Check process and gain a picture of how Spot Checks were perceived by child care services.

In March 2008, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) through the Office of Early Childhood Education and Child Care (OECECC) and in consultation with the National Childcare Accreditation Council (NCAC), commissioned another Quality Assurance Spot Check survey. The 2008 report included a benchmarking report that outlined the changes in attitudes, perceptions and suggestions for improvement. It also included a comparison with the results of a Spot Check Survey conducted in 2007.

The survey involved a telephone survey of 40 child care services. It was conducted across long day care (15), outside school hours care (23) and family day care (2) services. Commercial and community services were sampled and the group was representative of those services that received a Spot Check between 3 March 2008 and 19 March 2008. Service Directors or management most closely involved with the Spot Check process were interviewed.

The overall results indicated that most of the child care services surveyed considered the Spot Check process a positive and worthwhile process. It is important to note that due to the small number of services sampled the results are not fully representative of all child care services who have received a Spot Check; but the results do provide a small snapshot of how some child care services feel about the Spot Check process.

Other survey findings highlighted that the child care services sampled found that:

There was minimal disruption at the service during a Spot Check;
All respondents considered their Validator professional, courteous and constructive;
Spot Checks are useful as a learning tool for maintaining high quality care; and
Only a minority of services had been asked to produce documentation.

The majority of child care services surveyed stated that the assessment of a service’s continuous improvement process complemented the Spot Check process and commented that this would ensure that all services were operating on an improvement model and would also provide an overall view of a service.

The child care services surveyed also put forward three main suggestions for improving the Spot Check process including:

Services to receive written feedback of Spot Check results for their service;
Improving the timing of the visit to avoid clashing with times that children are picked up or dropped off; and
NCAC to provide information about the Spot Check process (recent changes, future direction) and the Validator (their training and what they are looking for).

The 2008 results when compared to the 2007 findings showed that services found the Spot Check process to be an easier, less demanding experience for child care services.

DEEWR and NCAC have discussed the feedback and suggestions from the Spot Check survey and have agreed to implement the following from October 2008:

Amend the Spot Check Report to include a section on continuous improvement;
Validators will record in the Spot Check Report observations on practice that is meeting the standard required for Accreditation; and
Validators to provide information on the spot check process to services at the commencement of a Spot Check.

2007 Spot Check Survey Report PDF PDF Document (432.7 KB) RTF RTF (68.6 MB) DOC MS Word (2.1 MB)