The hiring decision you don't realise is also a child safety decision

Nobody told you this in your Certificate III. It wasn't covered in your diploma. It probably hasn't come up in your director training, your compliance review, or your team meetings.

But every time you interview someone for a role in your early childhood centre, you are making a child safety decision.

And most services in Australia have no framework for treating it that way.

I spent nearly a decade with WA Police investigating child sexual abuse as a Detective and Specialist Child Interviewer. I sat across from children who had been harmed by adults who had passed every check, held a current Working With Children Card, and come with glowing references. Adults who had charmed their way into roles specifically because those roles gave them access to children.

That is not a comfortable thing to read. But it is the truth - and the truth is where protection begins.

The gap nobody is talking about

Early childhood services in Australia are among the most regulated environments for children. National Quality Standards, Working With Children Checks, mandated reporting obligations, supervision ratios - the frameworks are extensive.

And yet, in most services, the interview process for hiring educators looks exactly the same as it would for hiring someone to work in a warehouse or a call centre. We ask about qualifications. We ask about experience with children. We ask how they'd handle a child having a tantrum.

We rarely ask the questions that reveal how someone thinks about boundaries, oversight, and professional relationships with children.

That gap is where risk lives.

What offenders who seek access through work actually look like

This is the part that challenges our instincts - because offenders who pursue roles with children rarely look like what we imagine.

They tend to present as enthusiastic, warm, and highly engaged. They are often described as great with kids. They volunteer for extra duties. Families like them. Colleagues trust them.

That likeability is not incidental. It is deliberate. It is the grooming process beginning - not with children, but with the adults around them.

In the recruitment context, behavioural red flags can include:

• An unusually intense emotional focus on their connection with children - particularly when the role is entry-level
• Discomfort with, or subtle resistance to, questions about supervision and oversight
• Difficulty articulating professional boundaries, or dismissing the concept as unnecessary
• A history of moving between child-related roles frequently without clear explanation
• Expressing frustration with child protection policies, or framing them as obstacles to genuine care
• Volunteering, unprompted, for tasks that would give them private access to children
• Language about children that feels possessive, overly familiar, or positions them as uniquely able to connect

None of these in isolation is a definitive red flag. But patterns matter. And the interview process is your first opportunity to notice them.

Interview questions that reveal how someone thinks

The goal of these questions is not to catch someone out or to treat every candidate as a suspect. The vast majority of people who want to work with young children do so for entirely the right reasons.

The goal is to create an interview environment that signals your centre takes safeguarding seriously - and to give candidates with healthy professional thinking the opportunity to demonstrate it naturally. Someone with nothing to hide will answer these questions easily and confidently.

Someone whose thinking is concerning will often reveal it through their answers, their discomfort, or what they choose not to say.

On Boundaries and Supervision

• "How do you feel about working in an environment where open-door policies and active supervision are in place at all times?"
• "Can you describe what appropriate physical boundaries with children look like to you in an early childhood setting?"
• "How would you handle a situation where a child only wanted comfort from you and refused support from other educators?"
• "How do you feel about having your interactions with children observed or reviewed by a supervisor?"

On Child Protection awareness

• "What does grooming mean to you, and what might it look like in an early childhood environment?"
• "If a colleague's behaviour toward a child felt a little off - nothing you could specifically name - what would you do?"
• "Have you ever had to raise a concern about a child or a colleague? Walk me through how you handled it."
• "How do you think about your professional role when a child shares something personal or distressing with you?"

Scenario-Based Questions

• "A child in your care becomes very attached to you and starts saying things like 'you're my favourite, don't tell the others.' How do you respond?"
• "You notice a colleague always volunteers to take the same child to the bathroom. You haven't seen anything wrong, but it happens every day without variation. What do you do?"
• "A parent has started texting you personally about their child, outside of your centre's communication channels. How do you handle that?"
• "A child tells you something that worries you, but asks you to keep it a secret. What do you do?"

What to Listen for in their Answers

Content matters - but so does delivery. Pay attention to:

• Discomfort with oversight questions. Educators with healthy professional boundaries welcome transparency and accountability. Those with concerning motivations often bristle at it, even subtly.
• Vague or dismissive responses to boundary questions. Phrases like "I just go with the flow" or "kids just love me" without any professional framework are worth noting.
• Any minimising of child protection policies. Suggestions that safeguarding procedures get in the way of "real" caring relationships is a significant attitudinal red flag.
• Overemphasis on their special connection with children. Enthusiasm for working with children is wonderful. An excessive, repeated emphasis on being uniquely able to connect with kids - particularly accompanied by discomfort around oversight - warrants attention.
• How they talk about children. Language that is possessive, overly intimate, or that frames the educator as the child's primary emotional anchor is worth paying close attention to.
• What they don't say. A candidate who answers every question about qualifications and experience fluently, but becomes vague or uncomfortable when boundaries and supervision come up, is telling you something.
  
  

Recruitment sets the Culture

The way you approach recruitment sends a message to every person who walks through your door for an interview - and to every member of your existing team who hears about it.

When child protection questions are a normal, expected part of your interview process, you signal that safeguarding is not a box to tick. It is a value your service lives by. Educators who share that value will be energised by it. Those who don't will self-select out - or reveal themselves.

The culture you build in recruitment echoes through induction, through supervision, through the way your team notices and reports concerns. It is not separate from your child safety framework. It is the foundation of it.

No recruitment process eliminates all risk. But a process that asks the right questions, creates the right environment, and positions child safety as a non-negotiable value is one of the most powerful preventative tools your service has.

And it starts long before a child walks through your door.

Want to take this further in your centre?

Keeping Little Ones Safe: Educator Course

My online course designed specifically for early childhood educators and centre leaders covers grooming awareness, pattern recognition, safe environments, and how to create a culture of child protection in your service. Available on-demand - your team can complete it in their own time.

Keeping Little Ones Safe

Book a Professional Development Session

Bring me into your centre for a tailored professional development session with your team. I work with early childhood services across Australia to build safeguarding awareness, strengthen team culture, and give educators the tools and confidence to protect the children in their care.

Get in touch: [email protected] | kristimcvee.com