NSW-based early childhood education and care services would have received an update from the NSW Department of Education on 8 September 2020 advising that they "... can use their usual cleaning staff to do a deep clean, that NSW Health doesn’t require you to use specialised cleaning companies – but you can if you want to, and that there is no certification process endorsed by the NSW Government for cleaning companies undertaking cleaning and disinfection services after a COVID-19 outbreak ...", amongst other information provided.
Based on feedback the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW has received from some services who had positive COVID-19 cases and were subsequently directed by the NSW Department of Health to temporarily shutdown, ACA NSW is particularly concerned about their following experiences:
- difficulties in finding cleaning service providers who actually knew how to conduct deep cleaning to the standard required of the NSW Department of Health before they can be allowed to re-open their services; and
- cleaning service providers who pretended they did know how to provide deep cleaning.
There was also a significant enough variance of prices quoted (eg $3,000 to $20,000 to deep clean the same service), thereby creating even more concern about predatory pricing by opportunistic cleaning businesses at the expense of anxious services who do not have expertise in deep cleaning.
Given these experiences so far, ACA NSW is also concerned about the potential for a longer period of time taken to deep clean services if services did not conduct them to the standard required of the NSW Department of Health, and consequently the risk of eroding confidence by parents and staff of the service that remain shutdown until the NSW Department of Health approves its re-opening.
ACA NSW has already escalated this matter to the NSW Minister for Health (the Hon Brad Hazzard MP) due to the abovementioned concerns. The above concerns were also reiterated to the NSW Department of Education earlier this week.
In the meantime, ACA NSW members can now access and use the NSW Government's list of pre-qualified deep cleaning providers (ie NSW Scheme ID SCM8971) that the NSW Government's departments and agencies use. ACA NSW has been able to also collect pricing, commercial and compliance information from the majority of the said deep cleaning providers. This should save ACA NSW members time and provide higher assurance during what can be a chaotic and anxious time.
PUBLISHED: 25 SEPTEMBER 2020