Safety & hygiene

We're for... being COVID safe

To protect the health of tens of thousands of very young children who attend our centres and our people, Goodstart employees must be fully vaccinated for COVID before December 1, 2021.

We have a duty of care to do all that is reasonable to minimise the risk of COVID and we support the reputable health advice that vaccinations are the best way to protect our teams and the children they care for and educate.

While the risks between communities and centres will vary and change, it is clear that COVID 19 will be with us for some time to come.

Our vaccination policy is about doing what’s right in the 671 local communities we are part of across Australia, and protecting the 70,000 children and 15,000 staff in our care.

We will of course continue our focus on other COVID safe practices like ensuring good ventilation in our centres, heightened hygiene and cleaning, led by a national team of health experts who share their knowledge and experience with our centre teams around the nation.

Being fully vaxxed is another way Goodstart has set the benchmark for safe practice in our centres during the pandemic, reassessing absolutely everything we do, including how and when we clean, and how our centre teams have worked with children and interacted with families.

In response to spikes in community transition we’ve changed our pick-up and drop off rules; implemented temperature checks; banned all visitors from entering our centres and changed the way children and educators move through our centres.

We’ve also provided regular updates for families; offered expert webinars for our teams, and worked hard to keep our teams informed with the very best advice.

Over the last few months, we have provided around 1.26 million individual gloves to our 671 centres nation-wide with another 13.73 million on their way.

We’ve provided 300,000 disposable and 30,000 reusable face masks and close to 20,000 litres of hand sanitiser.

We're for continuing to keep our children and all Goodstarters safe

Our new COVID safe practices will stay in place and we will continue to build on all we’ve learned about safety, hygiene and well-being during the pandemic.

 It’s the very least we can do to make sure everyone stays safe in our centres – whether they’re our Goodstarters or your children.

At Goodstart, being COVID safe, safety, health, well-being and hygiene are more than just words – they’re a commitment we make to children in our care, our families and to each other.

At Goodstart safety is part of who we are and what we do and, with vaccination being shown to be an effective way of reducing infection and transmission, we believe this is an important step in keeping children, families and our teams safe and well.