14/06/2026
WE HAVE A CARING CRISIS, AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT CHILDREN.
I often find myself reflecting on the earlier days of early childhood education. A time when people aspired to become teachers, when qualifications were valued, when room sizes and service sizes felt more manageable, and when staff turnover and child protection concerns did not dominate every conversation.
Now, I'm not naïve enough to believe the past was perfect. It wasn't. There were challenges. There were divisions across the sector. There were ongoing debates about how educators were viewed and how they wished to be viewed. But there was something different. It felt as though there was a safety net.
A sense that someone was there to catch you when things became difficult. A belief that support existed. A feeling that no matter how hard things got, there were people and systems holding the sector together.
Today, that safety net feels different. Not absent, but tired and fragile and certainly stretched.
And I'm not the only one feeling it. This isn't a "poor us" post. It's a post about concern because for the wellbeing of our sector, something has to change.
The safety net seems to have been used far more than anyone anticipated when it was first built. The people who have spent years catching others are exhausted. Many of those who once stood around the edges holding the net are now falling into it themselves and that worries me.
Because every educator deserves to know that if they stumble, someone will be there to catch them. But that becomes increasingly difficult when those who have historically provided the support are struggling to stay afloat themselves.
We need to start talking seriously about who is caring for the teachers and educators. Because if we don't strengthen the safety net, there may come a time when there is no one left to hold it.
