Media Release
New Zealand Playcentre Federation

15 April 2009

Playcentre welcomes decision on police vetting

The New Zealand Playcentre Federation welcomes the National government's decision to drop plans to police vet volunteer parents in their nearly 500 early childhood centres.

A Labour bill introduced last year would have forced Playcentres to obtain police vetting for any volunteer parents who might have had unsupervised access to children. This provision has now been dropped. Employed supervisors will continue to be police vetted.

“This is a sensible result which gives surety to our 11,000 member families”, said Federation President, Marion Pilkington. “Our members were concerned that police vetting might be applied to any parent who wanted to bring their child to a Playcentre, depending on how the word 'unsupervised' was interpreted.”

Playcentre relies on parent volunteers to run its half day sessions for children aged between birth and school entry age. About 90% of adults on duty in Playcentre across the country are volunteers.

“A key part of Playcentre Philosophy is that parents are the best first teachers of their children. We bring parents together into community groups to support each other in educating all of their children. We are pleased that a potential barrier to the involvement of new families has been removed”, said Mrs Pilkington.

Playcentre is very concerned to ensure child safety. It does this by developing communities where people know and are involved with their neighbours. Playcentre would like every family in New Zealand to have access to such a community.

ENDS

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