THE YMCA was not meeting best practice at a Sydney child care centre when it was assessed by the NSW Department of Education after allegations were made against staff member Jonathan Lord.
Ruth Callaghan, the department's general manager of early education and care directorate gave evidence at the national inquiry into child sex abuse in Sydney on Wednesday.
She said there was an unannounced visit to the Caringbah centre by a department monitoring team in January 2012.
Lord was stood down by the YMCA in late 2011.
While the visit was not totally related to Lord, the team was monitoring how the centre was adapting to major legal changes around childcare provision, she said.
The new law had only been in place for two weeks at that stage, but it provided for the first time a standardised national regulation of child care services.
The directorate team that visited Caringbah found the centre was complying with the requirements, but some follow-up actions were needed.
One of them was the use of personal vehicles to transport children.
Over the past few days, the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, has heard that Lord, a former YMCA worker, drove children in his car during outings.
Lord is serving 10 years in jail for sexual assaults on children, with most of the offences occurring when he was employed at YMCA.
In response to a question from Gail Furness SC for the commission, Ms Callaghan said: "Based on what I know of the monitoring visit, I would not say that the evidence I have indicates best practice by the YMCA."
There were two subsequent visits to Caringbah, an educational one in June 2012 and another monitoring one in May this year.
In May a number of areas of non-compliance were identified, including that an educator didn't have a Working With Children Check (WWCC).
Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said the YMCA did have a substantial policy book but he asked Ms Callaghan if there was any process where the directorate could check whether staff actually knew the policies and were capable of implementing them.
She said the directorate staff would not quiz childcare staff but said overall assessment and rating certainly included scrutiny around staff qualifications.
Earlier on Wednesday, the commission heard from YMCA child care workers who were based in south Sydney where Lord had also worked.
Chloe Starr, who was trained for two weeks by Lord to take over his job as co-ordinator at St Patrick's Child Care Centre, said he was like a role model.
"I was put in the beginning, in sort of like a role model type role with Jon. I worked with him and he was showing me how to run the centre," she said.
Ms Starr said she didn't see him do anything unusual.
"When I was being trained by him I thought he was very enthusiastic and had a passion for his job."
The commission heard that Lord, who was in his early 20s at the time, had babysitting jobs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
In retrospect Ms Starr said she thought this suspicious.
Ms Starr who had a casual job at YMCA when she was still at school, said she did not provide a resume, references or referees before getting the full-time job as co-ordinator.
She had no recollection of receiving any child protection training.
Both she and other workers say it was only after the Lord allegations that child protection training became compulsory.
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