A furious mother wants answers after her toddlers walked out of an Adelaide daycare centre and onto the edge of busy Main North Road.
9News obtained the video of the small children, including 2-year-old Wyatt, who left Blair Athol Goodstart Childcare Centre and were seen heading towards Main North Road about 10am yesterday.
“I am pretty furious. There’s no excuse,” Wyatt’s mother Makayla Lill told 9news.
Staff quickly realised the toddlers had escaped through a damaged fence panel and ran to their rescue, however, the incident is now the subject of multiple investigations.
9News contacted Goodstart with the dashcam footage an hour after the children first escaped.
Twenty minutes after contacting Goodstart, Lill said the centre first called her.
“The first thing she said was ‘I’m just letting you know Wyatt is safe'”, Lill said.
“That straight away makes you think ‘What’s happened?'”
Staff told her the gap in the fence was missed in a routine perimeter check because it was hidden behind bamboo screening.
“They said he was there for a maximum, this is what makes me upset, 10 seconds,” Lill said.
Some parents have told 9 News today they’ve pulled their children from the centre. Others were confident it was a one-off.
“I don’t hold anything against the daycare. They couldn’t do anything at the time because they didn’t know about the fence,” one parent whose child attends the centre said.
The centre said the fence panel must have come loose over the weekend and was reinforced almost immediately after the incident.
Makayla Lill has made a formal complaint.
An internal investigation is underway and there could be ramifications from Federal regulators.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has asked if Safework has a role.
“I think any parent would be horrified when they see these images. They’re pretty confronting. I think it begs the question of what went wrong in this circumstance,” Malinauskas said.
