Childcare & early learning · Perth
Every cleaner attending your centre holds a current Working With Children Check. The scope is written against the parts of the National Quality Standard an assessor actually asks about, and we clean after close.
Who this is for
Nobody assesses your cleaning contractor. They assess your service. Cleaning turns up inside questions about hygiene practices, nappy change routines, sleep environments and the condition of the premises, and the answer needs to be a document.
That is a different job to cleaning an office at the same square metre rate. Nappy change benches, sleep mats, mouthed toys and low level surfaces are the whole point of the scope, and they are the surfaces a general contractor treats as incidental. We charge $64 an hour plus GST for early learning work, above the standard commercial cleaning rate, because the protocol is slower and every cleaner attending carries a Working With Children Check.
Centres attached to a medical practice or a shopping centre tenancy often need two scopes rather than one. The clinical side is covered on our medical centre cleaning page.
Scope
Written into your scope document with a frequency and a chemical against each line, so it can be filed as evidence rather than described from memory.
Change bench cleaned then disinfected with the contact time observed, bench edges and the wall behind, bin and lid, step stools, hand basin, tap handles, soap and glove dispensers, floor mopped with dedicated equipment. This area gets its own cloths and its own bucket and nothing from it travels anywhere else in the centre.
Cot rails and frames, mattress covers wiped, sleep mats and stackers, shelving, low level surfaces, floors vacuumed and mopped, and ventilation grilles on a periodic cycle. Bedding laundering is usually the centre's own routine, and we write into the scope which of us is doing it so it is never assumed.
Tables and chairs, low shelves and storage tubs, art trolleys, mirrors and acrylic panels at child height, door handles and push plates, light switches, window sills, soft flooring vacuumed and hard flooring mopped. Toys and manipulatives disinfected on the frequency your service sets, with mouthed items done more often.
Child height pans and seats, basins, taps, mirrors, partitions, dispensers refilled, step stools and the floor. Red coded equipment for pans, yellow for the rest, and a separate mop head from every other room in the building. Bathrooms are where a hygiene conversation with a family usually starts.
Benches, sink and tap, splashback, appliance exteriors, microwave inside and out, fridge exterior and handles, cupboard fronts, bins and liners, floor. Green coded equipment only. Food handling itself stays with your staff; we clean the surfaces around it and record that we did.
Sign in bench and touch screens, front door glass and handles, pram parking area, notice boards, office desks and touch points, staff room kitchen and bins, and the corridor floors that carry the whole day's traffic. First and last thing every family sees, cleaned every visit.
Evidence
An assessment and rating visit does not ask to meet your cleaner. It asks how you know your hygiene practices are being followed. These are the documents that answer it.
The default is the lowest toxicity product that will do the job on that surface, not one strong product used everywhere because it is simpler to carry. Detergent and warm water handles most of a playroom. A nappy change bench after a soiling needs a TGA listed hospital grade disinfectant and the contact time it specifies.
Everything is applied after close, surfaces children touch are rinsed or wiped down where the product requires it, and nothing is stored anywhere accessible. Your cleaner's cupboard is locked and the register on the inside of the door lists what is in it.
Outbreak response
Every centre gets them. What changes the length of an outbreak is how quickly the cleaning frequency steps up and how completely the high touch surfaces are covered.
We hold a standing outbreak scope for every childcare client so nobody is designing one at six in the evening. It raises disinfection frequency across door handles, taps, rails, tables, sleep mats, toileting areas and mouthed toys, and it usually runs for the period your service nominates rather than a fixed number of days. Short notice attendance is charged at the emergency rate of $85 an hour plus GST with a two hour minimum, and we quote it on the phone before we come.
Early learning is one of the densest commercial categories in Perth's eastern corridor, and we reach most of it inside fifteen minutes from South Guildford.
Questions
Every cleaner who attends an education or childcare site holds a current WA Working With Children Check. We keep copies and provide them on request, along with national police checks. The legal test is contact with children, but centres ask regardless, so we treat it as mandatory rather than conditional.
We would rather not, and neither would you. Most centres run us after close, when rooms can be reset properly and chemicals are nowhere near children. If a daytime presence is genuinely needed, Working With Children Checks and your sign in protocol are non-negotiable and we quote the daytime rate.
The scope is written to be read by an assessor: area, task, frequency, chemical and a signed record of what was done. We cannot promise an outcome on your assessment and rating, and anyone who does is selling something. What we can do is make sure cleaning is not the part of your evidence that is undocumented.
Mostly Quality Area 2, children's health and safety, and Quality Area 3, the physical environment. Hygiene practices, nappy change and toileting routines, sleep and rest environments, and the condition and maintenance of the premises all sit in that space, and cleaning is evidence for each of them.
The lowest toxicity product that will do the job, chosen per surface rather than one product used everywhere. Where a surface genuinely needs a hospital grade disinfectant, such as a nappy change bench after a soiling, we use a TGA listed product and observe its contact time. Current safety data sheets for everything on site are held in your file, and decanted bottles are labelled.
Yes. We hold an outbreak response scope that steps up disinfection frequency across high touch surfaces, toys, sleep mats and bathrooms, and we can usually attend within 24 hours. Short notice work is charged at the emergency rate of $85 an hour plus GST with a two hour minimum, and we tell you that on the phone rather than on the invoice.
Our other city
Marlow also works across Melbourne's northern suburbs from a base in Broadmeadows. The equivalent page there is childcare cleaning in Melbourne. It is priced separately, because Victorian on-costs are not Western Australian ones: Victoria carries a higher workers compensation rate for cleaning and a portable long service benefits levy that Western Australia does not have.
Next step
We will come after close, walk every room with your director, and come back with a scope document and a monthly figure. Working With Children Checks provided up front.