Child safety and compliance

Early childhood education and care services are required to create and maintain safe environments for children.

Everyone has a role in keeping children safe in education and care services:

• Approved providers (who own services) must create and maintain a child safe culture in all aspects of their service environments. This requirement covers both physical and online environments.
• Services need to be proactive in creating and maintaining a child safe culture. This can be achieved through both workplace changes (like policies and procedures) and relationship elements (like knowledge and interactions).
• State and territory regulatory authorities monitoring services and providers to ensure they comply with their legal obligations and meet national standards for safety, quality, and compliance.

Regulatory authorities may identify compliance issues through monitoring or complaints directly from the public.

State and territory regulatory authorities oversee providers and their services to assess and promote compliance with the National Law and Regulations.

• Assessing and rating a service against the National Quality Standard (NQS) may include a service visit, interviews, phone calls, emails and video conferences. This encourages continuous improvement by engaging the approved provider and the service in a process of self-evaluation, as well as providing a detailed report of their performance against the NQS.
• Short notice or unannounced visits to services encourage providers to comply at all times and provide a more accurate picture of usual service quality.
• Longer notice monitoring visits to services encourage providers and others to comply with their obligations and provides preparation time for compliance visits. For example, ensuring certain paperwork is readily available or particular staff members are present.

Regulatory authorities can place conditions on services and/or providers to require them to achieve compliance.

If an approved provider breaches a condition on approval, the regulatory authority may consider taking further compliance action.

The most significant compliance actions are cancellation of service or provider approval, and prosecuting providers or prohibiting individuals from working in the sector if serious breaches occur.

Look for the ‘Last visited date’ in the Regulatory activities section on their service page on StartingBlocks.gov.au.

Look for ‘Conditions’ in the Regulatory activities section on their service or provider page on StartingBlocks.gov.au.

State and territory regulatory authorities oversee providers and their services to assess and promote compliance with the National Law and Regulations.

Assessing and rating a service against the National Quality Standard (NQS) may include a service visit, interviews, phone calls, emails and video conferences. This encourages continuous improvement by engaging the approved provider and the service in a process of self-evaluation, as well as providing a detailed report of their performance against the NQS.

Short notice or unannounced visits to services encourage providers to comply at all times and provide a more accurate picture of usual service quality.

Longer notice monitoring visits to services encourage providers and others to comply with their obligations and provides preparation time for compliance visits. For example, ensuring certain paperwork is readily available or particular staff members are present.

• Can I see your register of compliance actions against the service?
• Have any of your educators, while working at the service, been reported for inappropriate discipline? If yes, what was the situation and how was it corrected?
• How does the approved provider (owner) prioritise child safety?
• Can I see your Code of Conduct and service philosophy?
• How does the service follow the Child Safe Organisation Principles?
• Does the service use the NQF Child Safe Culture and NQF Online Safety Guides?
• How is behaviour guidance handled?
• What are the qualifications of the educators who will be caring for and educating my children?
• What ongoing child safety professional development do staff participate in?
• How many educators are still studying for their qualification?
• What is the staff turnover like?