We recently sat down with Tracey Davey, an early childhood consultant with over 30 years in education, to discuss the challenges services face with risk management and how she’s helping transform the sector’s approach through innovative solutions.

Tracey, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I grew up in a very small town in rural Victoria, watching people work really hard. My parents had really high expectations for us to achieve our full potential, and that really links with my sense of capability. Coming from a small rural town, after university, I wanted to explore the world.

I’ve been in education for over 30 years total. I started as a primary teacher in the UK, worked in primary education for about ten years, then moved into secondary school for another ten years. Now I’ve come full circle back into the early years, where I’ve been for about ten years working as a consultant and VIT trained mentor teacher.

I’m still super passionate about working with children every day. They are definitely the best part of the job for me. They are so smart, so honest, and so joyful. That’s why I still love coming to work every day.

You recently told us about an approved provider being asked about their risk management plan. Can you share that situation?

Most approved providers, center directors, and even staff are aware that risk management plans help reduce risk in services. But people are very time poor. When I’m going around helping different services, people search online and find blank templates for risk assessments. There are so many of those products around.

But the risk factors and how we reduce those risk factors need to be talked about very carefully and are very specific to each service. This prompted me to create a really large bank of risk assessments that can be made specific or altered to be more relevant to your service, but at least it’s a starting place that identifies really key common risks.

When I saw that need across services, I created a risk assessment section in 1Place. As new risk assessments are required according to regulations, or when I decide a really common risk assessment is missing, I add that content.

Are there organizational risk assessments similar to what NSW Office of Children’s Guardian uses in Victoria?

I think the sector as a whole has become aware of just how helpful risk assessments can be in identifying, analyzing, and controlling potential risks. With the risk assessments I’m focusing on, sometimes there are standard ones like safe sleep and rest, child safe risk assessments, but we also have a reporting function in 1Place where staff can report disclosures, concerns, allegations, complaints, or notifiable incidents.

What I’m finding is that when we report something like that, part of the debriefing process involves thinking about reducing risk in the future. A lot of new risk assessments come from those incidents.

So it’s ongoing amendment – a moving part?

Exactly. We’re starting to see traction where people understand that if we’re proactive rather than reactive, we’re looking at the likelihood of potential incidents happening before they actually happen. By doing the risk assessment before it happens, that obviously helps reduce risk in the future.

Beyond tools, what challenges do services face with risk management?

It’s definitely about developing a culture where people will speak up and self-report. When staff can see that their feedback and reporting really ends up in a helpful place for other people, that makes a difference.

As well as having these tools, the organization has to have a culture where we’re celebrating people speaking up and identifying things that will eliminate danger for all of us. We’ve all worked in services where you report things to managers and it’s like “thanks for that” and it goes nowhere.

I want staff, children, and families to understand that they reduce risk themselves by speaking up and being part of the process.

So the culture challenge is when managers don’t see the importance and don’t act on reports?

Yes, definitely. That’s where these tools support them because center managers tell me they’re very time poor. The whole idea of having this specific bank of risk assessments for early childhood means you’ve got ten really common risk factors, who’s responsible, and how we’re going to reduce the risk. If there are additional things specific to your center, you can add and edit to make it even better.

Whereas if you download something from the internet, it’s going to be very generic with no real risk factors identified.

Who should be doing what in terms of risk management?

When a staff member, family, or child raises a concern, complaint, disclosure, or allegation, there needs to be a register to write it down and pull on that information from a historical perspective.

What normally happens is when the concern is identified, it’s sent to the nominated supervisor via 1Place. The person who makes the concern has a record that they’ve done it – they’ve done their part. When the nominated supervisor gets it, they can work with the reporting and management team to create a risk assessment to ensure that concern is covered and won’t happen again.

Sometimes people report something that’s been a near miss, and there’s already a good policy and risk assessment in place. But the fact they’re reporting it shows it’s clearly not embedded or something we need to revisit.

If it’s a brand new risk we haven’t seen before – and that happens all the time in our sector – the nominated supervisor has it in real time. Part of the next process is looking at who this needs to be reported to, whether a risk assessment has been created, and following guided steps that tell you clearly who you need to communicate with, what your legal obligations are, and what you already have in place.

When it’s finalized, the initial reporter gets feedback when the case is closed – in a positive way, reinforcing that we’ve taken it very seriously.

What if the complaint is against the nominated supervisor?

Most services in their policy have a nominated person or two people who you can make complaints, disclosures, or allegations to. That’s usually the nominated supervisor and the approved provider, so you’d choose the other person.

What are your top priorities for services right now?

We’re creating quite a resource in the child safe space. As well as the new Child Safe guide and online tools that help embed the child safe standards, the challenge every year is ensuring we continue to focus on the 11 standards through professional development, team meetings, and professional reading.

What’s been interesting is that every year I work with teams to embed the new standards, there’s been a different focus, new tool, or better way to add to the toolkit. We continually never let it fall off the radar.

You’re also passionate about student supervision and mentoring.

The service I visited yesterday has had over 100 students this year – it’s a 135-place service that prides itself on giving back to education. We have probably eight universities that give us students quarterly, and maybe five RTOs we support as well.

As an older person wanting to give back to education, when I was a young teacher, I had many strong mentors. My practice developed through robust discussion and support from mentors who were very good teachers.

In early childhood, there seems to be a lack of mentor teachers with age and experience. I want children in our care to be taught daily in a play-based environment with an inquiry approach. Because I learned to teach that way, my daily life as a teacher is enjoyable – even over 50, every day I’m learning new things alongside the children.

With students and graduate teachers I’m supporting, one of the hardest things is beginning their teaching journey and living that practice daily. Getting them to think differently – it shouldn’t be 100% teacher-led. It’s all about what children are noticing in the environment, what they’re interested in. If we follow their genuine interests, we learn alongside them.

I want to have an impact on new graduates and the quality of early childhood education teachers before I leave the sector.

Ready to transform your risk management approach?

Tracey’s insights highlight the critical need for sector-specific, culturally-embedded risk management systems. If you’re ready to move beyond generic templates to a comprehensive, proactive approach, we can help.

Download our comprehensive Risk Management Implementation Kit – includes sector-specific templates, cultural change strategies, and step-by-step implementation guides that Tracey references in this interview.

Get Tracey’s Complete Risk Management Framework

As Tracey mentioned, generic online templates simply don’t work for early childhood services. Download her comprehensive toolkit that will help you to implement her approach.