Leadership and Management

Working With Children's Check

There are five key amendments to the Act which have been implemented in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. They are:

1. Expansion of the definition of ‘direct contact’ to ensure that people engaging in ‘child-related work’ that involves ‘physical contact’, ‘face to face contact’, ‘oral’, ‘written’ or electronic communication’ are required to obtain a Working with Children Check. However, a Working With Children Check will not be required in circumstances where the contact with a child is occasional and incidental to the work.
2. Remove references to ‘supervision’ from the Act to establish that, to determine whether a person requires a Check, the supervision of a person’s contact with a child is irrelevant. This will enable easier interpretation of the Check’s requirements in situations where it may have been unclear whether a person’s contact with a child was supervised.
3. ‘Kinship care’ to become a new occupational category of ‘child-related work’. This will require family members (and other persons of significance to a child) providing a child with out-of-home care under the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 to obtain a Check.
4. Non-conviction charges (charges that have been finally dealt with other than by a conviction or finding of guilt for the most serious offences for the purposes of the Check) will now form part of a relevant criminal history for the purposes of category C assessments and re-assessments.
5. Enable the Secretary to the Department of Justice and Regulation to compel the production of certain information for the purposes of compliance monitoring.