Childcare & early learning · Melbourne
Long day care, kindergartens and outside school hours care across Melbourne's northern suburbs. Cleaned after the last child leaves, by cleaners holding a Victorian Working With Children Check, against a scope written for Quality Areas 2 and 3.
Assessment and rating
An ACECQA assessment and rating visit does not have a cleaning section. It has Quality Area 2, children's health and safety, and Quality Area 3, the physical environment. Both of them turn into questions about cleaning within about ten minutes.
Quality Area 2 covers hygiene practices, the management of illness and infectious disease, and nappy changing and toileting routines. Quality Area 3 covers whether the premises, furniture and equipment are safe, clean and well maintained. A centre that can describe its cleaning arrangements is in an ordinary position. A centre that can hand the assessor a dated scope of works, a chemical register and a monthly inspection report is in a much better one, and that is the position we are trying to put you in.
None of that replaces your own educators' daily hygiene routines, and we would not pretend otherwise. Nappy change surfaces, spills, toileting and food service hygiene during the day belong to your team. What we cover is the contracted clean that happens when the centre is closed, and the periodic work that a centre cannot do around children.
Childcare and education rate: $68 per hour + GST · minimum $750 + GST per month
Screening
A Working With Children Check is issued by a state and is not portable between states. Ours are Victorian, because our Melbourne cleaners work in Victoria.
We run in two states, and a contractor operating across a border can produce a check that looks entirely valid and is issued by the wrong jurisdiction. Ask any contractor who mentions interstate operations which state issued the check for the person attending your centre. It is a fair question and a quick one.
Named cleaners, assigned to your centre, with a named backup who also holds a current check. We do not send a relief person who happens to be free. If your regular cleaner is unwell we tell you in advance and the person covering arrives with your scope and your check requirements already met.
Card numbers and expiry dates supplied to you in writing before the first clean and reissued on renewal without you chasing. Police checks alongside them. The point of a record is that somebody other than us can verify it.
Scope
Floor area tells you almost nothing about how long a centre takes. The nappy change area, the sleep rooms and the toy inventory do.
Change table surfaces, edges and the underside of the lip, steps, bins including the lid and pedal, hand basins and taps, dispensers restocked, child height toilets, rails and the floor including under the change unit. Two step clean and disinfect with equipment that is dedicated to this area and never crosses into a kitchen or a play room.
Cot and stretcher frames, mattress covers wiped, floors, skirtings and the low level surfaces a crawling child reaches. Ventilation grilles and blind cords on a periodic cycle. Bedding handling stays with your educators unless you specifically ask for it in the scope.
Hard toys, activity tables, chairs including the underside of seats and backs, shelving at child height, door furniture and light switches. Soft toys and fabric items go through your own laundering process. Toy rotation cleaning is scheduled rather than attempted every visit, because doing it properly on a cycle beats doing it badly every night.
Benches, sinks, appliance exteriors, the microwave inside and out, bottle preparation surfaces, bins, floors including under the toe kick, and the staff room. Green coded equipment only, kept separate from every other area in the building.
Children put their hands and their mouths on surfaces we have just cleaned, which changes the chemical choice. We use the mildest effective product for each surface, dilute to the label rather than by eye, use pre-labelled decanted bottles rather than unmarked spray bottles, and reserve the hospital grade disinfectant for the areas that genuinely need it: nappy change, toileting, bins and outbreak response.
Where a centre has its own preferred products or a parent has raised a sensitivity, we work from your list rather than ours, and the safety data sheets go into the register either way.
Long day care centres in Melbourne's north commonly run from 6:30am to 6:30pm, which leaves a narrow evening window. We attend after the last child leaves, at the after hours or overnight rate depending on the finish time, and we quote that window honestly rather than pricing a daytime rate for a job that can only happen at night.
Deep cleaning, carpet extraction, high level work and toy rotation cleaning are scheduled into shutdown periods and public holiday closures, costed for the year and divided across twelve invoices so nothing lands as a surprise.
Outbreaks
Every centre gets them. What varies is whether the response is a plan or a phone call at seven in the evening to a contractor who has already gone home.
We write an outbreak response scope alongside your standard one, at signing, so that escalating is a single call rather than a negotiation. It raises the frequency, expands the high touch surface list, moves the whole centre onto the hospital grade disinfectant with observed contact time, and adds a mid-day attendance where you need one. Additional visits with notice are charged at the periodic rate of $68 an hour plus GST; a call out inside 24 hours is $85.
Hand foot and mouth changes the emphasis toward shared toys, activity tables and equipment children mouth. Gastroenteritis changes it toward toileting, nappy change, bins and floors. The two scopes are written separately because they are genuinely different jobs, and the difference is not obvious under pressure at short notice.
Early Learning Victoria centres are operating at Fawkner, Craigieburn and Wollert, with more sites planned across Melbourne's north. These are new build, government procured, compliance heavy premises, and a new centre has no incumbent cleaning contractor to displace.
Alongside them, the growth corridor keeps producing private centres: Craigieburn and the estates around it have added childcare capacity steadily, and Epping and Wollert are doing the same. If you are fitting out a new centre, the pre-opening builders and handover clean is quoted separately at the fit-out rate and is usually the first thing we do for a centre.
Questions
Yes, and the word Victorian matters. A Working With Children Check is issued by a state and is not portable between states, so a contractor operating across a border can hold a valid check issued by the wrong jurisdiction. We run in Victoria and Western Australia, and our Melbourne cleaners hold the Victorian check. Card numbers and expiry dates are supplied in writing before the first clean and reissued on renewal.
Sixty eight dollars an hour plus GST, with a minimum recurring contract of $750 plus GST a month. Most long day care centres in the north can only be cleaned after 6:30pm, so the quote will usually be built on the after hours window, and we say which window it is built on rather than quoting a daytime rate and adjusting it later.
It gives you documents instead of descriptions. A dated scope of works room by room with frequencies, a chemical register with current safety data sheets, Working With Children Check and police check records for the cleaners attending, a colour coded equipment chart on the cupboard wall, and a monthly scored inspection report. Quality Area 2 and Quality Area 3 questions both end up in that folder.
Hard toys, activity tables, chairs and shelving at child height, yes, on a scheduled rotation rather than attempted in full every night. Doing a section properly on a cycle beats doing everything superficially. Soft toys and fabric items go through your own laundering process, and the scope says so plainly so nobody assumes otherwise.
We write an outbreak response scope alongside your standard one when you sign, so escalating is one phone call. It raises frequency, expands the high touch list, moves the centre onto the hospital grade disinfectant with observed contact time and can add a mid-day attendance. The gastroenteritis and hand foot and mouth scopes differ, because one concentrates on toileting, nappy change, bins and floors and the other on shared toys and mouthed equipment.
The mildest effective product for each surface, diluted to the label rather than by eye, in pre-labelled decanted bottles. The TGA listed hospital grade disinfectant, Whiteley Viraclean AUST L 69000, is reserved for nappy change, toileting, bins and outbreak response rather than sprayed across the whole centre. If your centre has preferred products or a parent has raised a sensitivity, we work from your list.
Yes, and it is often the first job we do for a centre. A builders and handover clean before opening is quoted separately at the make good and fit-out rate of $74 an hour plus GST, or as a fixed job price, and it is a different job from a recurring contract. Getting us in for that also means the recurring scope is written by someone who has already seen every room empty.
Occasionally, for outside school hours care sites or a centre with a genuine mid-day gap, and it is priced at the standard daytime rate. For a long day care centre it is usually a poor idea: chemicals, wet floors, equipment and cleaners moving through rooms full of children create more problems than the rate saving is worth. We will say so rather than take the booking.
Next step
Arranged around your operating hours, about forty minutes, no obligation. You get a scope written room by room and three frequency options inside two business days.