Everton Park Child Care and Development Centre is the State Winner in Queensland, with a KindiCare Rating of 9.9, and this centre is absolutely incredible!

Everton Park Child Care provides a home-away-from-home for children aged 15 months to five years, and there’s a big and beautiful focus on the natural environment. This centre has an oversized outdoor classroom that’s used every day – rain, wind or shine – and in this leafy learning space children are free to imagine, explore and discover at their own pace. Centre Director, Jon Webb, says, “We understand that young children’s brain development really needs large blocks of uninterrupted play time in natural environments. So, our outdoor classroom is a free-flow zone, where children can play with all ages and move inside and outside whenever they like.” He explains that, “The outdoor classroom is toy-free and totally focused on loose parts, because a stick can be a zillion things, but a dinosaur toy is always a dinosaur.” The outdoor classroom comes with a dedicated Outdoor Educator, who’s currently being trained in Forest Schooling; and the centre’s long-term owner, Con Clifford, invests heavily in the training and development of his whole team. Con knows the importance of this from personal experience, because he’s a qualified Early Childhood Teacher who’s worked his way up through the career ranks and remains deeply committed to young children’s education and care. Con and his wife Julie have owned Everton Park Child Care for 24 years, and Con is a familiar face to all the families, many of whom have longstanding connections with the centre as well! There are plenty of people who attended Everton Park when they were children and have come back as parents and educators, and whether a person is new to this childcare family, or they go way back, this community is incredibly close. Parents happily jump into working bees in that gorgeous outdoor area (being careful to leave any planting to the children!), and the annual Everton Park Art Exhibition is always a big hit, with up to 400 people converging on the centre to enjoy the children’s creativity. As well as being named the top Queensland centre in the 2023 KindiCare Excellence Awards, Everton Park Child Care has also been rated Excellent three times in a row by ACECQA, and there’s no luck or coincidence in any of this. Everton Park Child Care simply understands what children need to learn and grow, and they’ve created a wonderful environment, program and community, with help of their committed team and very supportive owner. Hooray to that, and a big congratulations to our State Winner in Queensland!