Choosing a Childcare Cleaner in Melbourne: Eight Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Most centre directors choose a cleaner the same way: three quotes, a walkthrough, and a gut feel about who seemed sensible. The trouble is that the things that go wrong in a childcare clean (a missed nappy-change bench, a product that leaves a residue on the toys, a cleaner nobody vetted holding the alarm code) rarely show up at the walkthrough. They show up in week six, or on the day an authorised officer visits.
These are the eight questions we would ask if we were the director. Put them to every provider, including us, and ask for the answers in writing.
1. Who exactly will be in the building?
Not "our team". Names. A centre needs to know who holds the key and the alarm code, and who covers when that person is sick. Ask whether the cleaners are employees or subcontractors, and whether the same people will come each night. A rotating cast of subcontractors is how cheap quotes are built, and it is also how a centre ends up with strangers on the premises.
2. What checks do they hold?
Ask for a current national police check and a Victorian Working with Children Check for every person who will be on site, and ask how the provider keeps them current. Even if your cleaners only work after the children leave, most centres and most parents expect it, and it removes a question from your next assessment.
3. Which products will be used, and where?
Ask for the product list and the safety data sheets before the first clean. You want low-odour detergents for general surfaces, a disinfectant used only where it is needed, and nothing fragranced in the rooms. The NHMRC's Staying Healthy guidelines are clear that detergent and water does most of the work in an early childhood service; a cleaner who disinfects everything every night is not being more careful, they are leaving more residue where children eat and play. We wrote about the difference between cleaning and disinfecting in childcare separately.
4. How is equipment kept apart?
Colour-coded cloths and mop heads by zone, at minimum: toilets and nappy change in one colour, kitchen and bottle prep in another, play rooms and sleep rooms in a third. Ask to see the equipment on the walkthrough. One bucket for the whole centre is an answer in itself.
5. What does the nightly scope actually say?
A good provider writes it room by room: the nappy-change bench and the step, the toddler toilets and hand basins, the kitchen, the bottle-prep area, the sleep room cots and mattress covers, the play-room floors, the high-touch points at adult and child height. Ask how the scope separates nightly tasks from weekly ones like skirting boards, low windows and toy rotation, and periodic ones like carpet extraction. Our childcare cleaning checklist is a reasonable starting point to compare against.
6. How will you know the clean happened?
This is the question most providers answer badly. "Trust us" is not a record. Every visit we make is signed in and out on our app inside a geofence around the building, with a photo, so the centre can see who was there and for how long. A supervisor inspects on a three-weekly cycle and the score is available to you. Whatever your provider does, it should be something you can check without ringing them.
7. What happens in an outbreak?
Gastro will come through a centre sooner or later. Ask what the provider does when you call at 3 pm to say you have had three vomiting children: whether they can add an outbreak clean that night, which product they switch to, how they handle soft furnishings and toys, and what it costs. If the answer is vague, you will be the one doing it at 6 pm.
8. How do I leave?
Read the term and the notice clause before you compare prices. A long term with a 90-day exit is a contract written by someone who expects you to want out. We work on 30 days' notice. If a provider will not match something close to that, ask why.
A walkthrough worth having
The best walkthroughs happen in the late afternoon, while the rooms still look like a day of children has been through them. That is the state the cleaner will actually meet, and it is the fairest basis for a quote.
We already clean for a childcare centre in Airport West, and our medical and childcare cleaning page explains how we set a centre up. If you run a centre anywhere across Melbourne, ask for a walkthrough and hold us to these eight questions.