Our Service

Leadership Team

Penelope Shone, Director

Penelope has been employed at The Range Children’s Centre for the past 19 years. She was employed as an aid for children with additional needs in 2005. Subsequently, she trained as a room leader and joined the management team as Assistant Director in 2010 and now Director in 2025. Before coming to Australia Penelope had spent 12 years in the Early Childhood industry in New Zealand.

Penelope has a passion for children and their cultures. While in New Zealand Penelope spent 3 years as the cultural support person for the Hawke’s Bay region, encompassing 12 early childhood centres.

Penelope holds a Diploma in Children’s Services, Level 2 First Aid, CPR & Anaphylaxis Training, Standard Mental Health First Aider, Level 2 Food Handlers, Certificate IV Training and Assessing and Advanced Diploma in Children’s Services.

Ashleigh El-dannaoui, Assistant Director

Ashleigh has been an Early Years Educator for 11 years, spending all of those working at The Range. Starting as an educator working alongside all ages, Ashleigh’s pursuit of her own personal and professional development led her to becoming Room Leader, where she transformed the minds and hearts of children for 4 years, as well as sharing her love of self-development with fellow educators.. Ashleigh has a passion for fostering a sense of community and belonging in the children she cares for, allowing them to become confident, independent, and flourish at The Range, and hopes to foster this sense within the wider Range community.

Ashleigh holds a Diploma in Children Services, level 2 First Aid, CPR & Anaphylaxis Training, Standard Mental Health First Aider and Level 1 Food Handlers

Our Mission, Philosophy & Vision

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide high quality long-daycare and kindergarten services to Hobson’s Bay children and their families.

Our Philosophy

At The Range Children’s Centre, we aim to provide an environment that is an extension of the child’s home where they feel safe, welcome, respected and valued.

We build respectful partnerships with families to implement learning opportunities that foster the children’s social, emotional, physical and intellectual wellbeing. By providing a warm and positive environment, we aim for the children and families to have a sense of belonging to the service and the wider community.

We value the importance of play-based learning and offer a wide range of experiences based on each child’s interests, ability and age and stage of development. Literacy, numeracy, physical activity and an appreciation of the arts are integrated into our curriculum on a daily basis.

We believe that children develop their learning through having choice, therefore we regularly implement an indoor /outdoor curriculum to enable the children to move freely from one environment to another and to provide opportunities for siblings to play together.

Our service is inclusive of all cultures and respects and embraces Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.

Sustainable practices and respect for the environment and resources are embedded in our service. This is integrated into the curriculum and reflected daily through educator role modelling and engaging in discussions with children. Providing children and families with a sense of ownership and responsibility for the resources and environment encourages our community to protect and value what we have.

We believe that every educator at The Range Children’s Centre plays an important role in each child’s sense of belonging through positive and supportive interactions, modelling appropriate respectful behaviour and displaying genuine interest and concern for each and every child and their family.

Developing caring and mutually respectful relationships with the children and families is important to us. This is achieved through open communication and by educators taking the time to share aspects of each child’s day with the families.

Listening to children’s voices and responding to them positively builds each child’s sense of belonging. Including their thoughts and ideas in decision making within the rooms plays an important role in developing the educational curriculum and our centre philosophy.

We believe supporting the children’s holistic development will continue to build their confidence, their self-esteem and assist them in showing respect for each other. This will lay the foundation for resilient independent young people who are well equipped to participate in life.

Linked to the National Quality Standards: Quality Area 7- Leadership and Service Management.

Our Vision

Through forming strong partnerships with families and their children and by maintaining open communication we embrace a holistic learning environment that will assist children to become confident and resilient with respect for themselves, the wider community and the environment.

Child Safety Statement

The Range Children’s Centre is committed to the safety and well-being of children and, as such, is committed to creating and maintaining a child safe organisation.

We have zero tolerance of child abuse and are committed to actively contributing to a child safe city where children are protected from abuse.

Our commitment to the safety of children is based on our duty of care and responsibilities to children and always acting in the best interests of children.

Our commitment will be enacted through the implementation and monitoring of the Child Safe Standards.

We all play an important role in protecting children, especially if we have concerns for a child’s safety. We aim to create a culture of child safety that reduces the opportunity for harm and gives staff a clear process to follow when someone raises concerns about child safety or reports abuse.

Our Child Safe Statement applies to all employees, volunteers, work experience students, relevant contractors and stakeholders

Our commitment to children

We are committed to ensuring children feel safe, empowered and are taken seriously if they raise concerns in relation to their safety and well-being.

We value and support diversity, inclusion and equality. In acknowledgment of the particular vulnerabilities of these groups of children, and in accordance with the Child Safe Standards, we particularly support:

· the cultural safety of Indigenous Australian children and children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds

· the participation and empowerment of children with a disability, Indigenous Australian children and children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Our commitment to staff and volunteers

We are committed to ensuring staff, volunteers, students, relief staff and contractors, depending on the nature of their role understand that child safety is everyone’s responsibility.

We will ensure all stakeholders are provided with the necessary support to fulfil their obligations in relation to child safety.

We will ensure all stakeholders are educated in child safety including abuse risks and how to interact and behave with children.

All employees including work experience students, agency staff, volunteers and independent contractors whilst located at TRCC must abide by our Code of Conduct which specifies the standard of conduct required when working with children.

Our commitment to ensuring a child safe organisation

Recruitment

We will ensure all staff and volunteers who work with children have a current Working With Children Check (WWCC) or equivalent and that there is an appropriate screening process for staff and volunteers that work with children including interview guides, advertisements and selection criteria which clearly demonstrate our commitment to child safety.

Training and Supervision

We will ensure all new and existing employees understand the importance of protecting children from harm. This will be supported through induction, training and professional development.

We will ensure staff understand the process for reporting any child safety issues and are supported by management

Reporting

All allegations and concerns in relation to children’s safety will be taken seriously and will be investigated fairly and appropriately.

Management supports and encourages our employees to proactively report any behaviour deemed to be endangering the safety of children.

Reportable incidents and complaints are notified to the relevant authority (Child First, Child Protection or police).

Our History & Constitution

The Range Children’s Centre is a community run child care centre and kindergarten, in the inner Western Suburbs of Victoria, Australia.

The Range offers educational programs, in a nurturing, respectful environment. Children from as young as 6 weeks of age are cared for at The Range Children’s Centre, through to children up to school age. Families are also able to participate in sessional kindergarten programs, for both 3 & 4 year olds.

The Range Children’s Centre has been operating since September 1996. Currently there are 220 families utilizing the service. The Range has a reputation for delivering high quality service to families, with over 200 families on our waitlist needing care in the future. The service has had outstanding results through the National Qualtiy Framework service along with a long and favorable history with the Department Of Human Services.

The Centre is managed by a group of volunteer parents and community members who determine policies, procedures and best practice. This is in consultation with staff and outside resources. All voting members of the Committee of Management work on a volunteer basis. Some members spend up to 30 hours a week, working through projects and being strong advocates for early childhood education.

The families that utilise the service are diverse in culture, values, beliefs and socio-economic background. All are made welcome and are encouraged to actively partake in the daily program with their children. Often families are asked to voice their opinion and offer opportunities for evaluating the program effectiveness. There are also opportunities for families to participate in information programs, such as ‘Behaviour & Guidance Techniques’, ‘First Aid, in the home’ etc.

The Range Children’s Centre has remained financially viable since its opening and is financially audited each year.

The Range is a not-for-profit organisation which welcomes support from outside resources. Any support would be advertised throughout the centre on posters and in newsletters.

Our Constitution

TRCC Constitution 2012