00:01This is an incredibly distressing investigation.
00:05Last year, Wendy Steendam fronted Victorians to detail disturbing abuse allegations
00:09levelled at childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown.
00:13Today is particularly confronting.
00:15She's now left the force, but her focus remains on keeping children safe.
00:19An incident like that obviously spotlights the awfulness of what can go wrong
00:24and how exposed people can be.
00:27It probably speaks to the very heart of why I want a role like this.
00:31From next month, she'll lead the new Victorian Early Childhood Regulation Authority,
00:36a body set up in the wake of the Brown case amid concern over widespread failures in the system.
00:41There's always opportunities to improve information sharing and intelligence sharing.
00:46Operators are on notice with more inspections.
00:48Whilst I can have a strong enforcement focus and a compliance focus, which is important,
00:53it's also about how you work with the sector to get them to undertake their responsibilities.
00:59Vecra is on the hunt for more staff, with more than 50 jobs still to be filled.
01:03There's a raft of challenges ahead, but Wendy Steendam doesn't want to pre-empt issues before she starts.
01:08Are Victorian kids safe in childcare right now?
01:11Yeah, absolutely. I know the overwhelming majority of people that work in that sector
01:15do so because they care deeply about children and want to keep them safe.
01:19The behaviours that we've seen across some of the systems are not the norm and are aberrations
01:26and the reform that's underway is to ensure that that can never happen again.
01:30And my role as a regulator is to ensure that parents can feel confident that what we're doing is actually
01:36ensuring that their child is safe.
01:38There's a determination to her work, but it does carry a major trauma risk.
01:42I've had 40 years in policing. I think you learn and have ways of coping with that.
01:48The way that I deal with it is actually take what you can and make a difference
01:52and actually prevent things from occurring again and work proactively within systems to make sure they are the best.
02:00Something all parents can get behind.
02:08So when you're able to talk about you and you don't have to come into school and you might forget
02:08your way to go back when you funny.
02:09It's time to come out before joking and keep returning to life as you do.
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