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Child safety

All children have the right to learn and play in nurturing, secure and safe environments. Supporting this right is a fundamental obligation of all Victorian early childhood education and care services.

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The following information may help you to have conversations with families about your service’s commitment to child safety and safety measures in place at your service.

Child safety reforms

In 2025, the Victorian Government introduced child safety measures in early childhood education and care settings, including creating a register of early childhood workers and restricting the use of personal electronic devices.

The government also commissioned the Rapid Child Safety Review to identify actions to further strengthen the safety of children in Victorian early childhood education and care settings.

The government has accepted and is implementing all proposed reforms. This includes:

  • establishing an independent and strengthened Early Childhood Education and Care Regulator to ensure that early childhood services provide high quality and safe early childhood education and care to Victorian children
  • bringing the Working with Children Check (WWCC), Reportable Conduct Scheme and Child Safe Standards into the Social Services Regulator (SSR) so individual workers can be detected more quickly and prevented from working with children again
  • working with experts to provide parents and carers with evidence-based advice and resources on prevention awareness, signs of grooming and how to raise concerns.

Resources

Child Safe Standards

All services are required to comply with the Child Safe Standards. To create and maintain a child safe organisation, services need to consider how they promote and model child safety and put in place systems and processes to keep children safe.

The standards include clear, practical guidance to services on how to create organisational cultures and use practices that are in the best interests of children and protect them from harm.

The standards also outline how you can demonstrate to families and the community that your service prioritises children’s safety, including by:

  • consulting with families on your child safety policies, and regularly seeking formal and informal feedback on how these are working
  • making sure policies are written in clear, easy-to-follow language, and translated where appropriate
  • displaying your child safety policies in a prominent area, as well as publishing them on your website
  • making it clear how parents/carers can raise concerns, including nominating a dedicated person or child safety officer
  • include regular updates on child safety issues in parent communications
  • schedule child safety briefings as part of information sessions
  • include a child safety agenda item at all parent/carer meetings
  • proactively share information about staff qualifications and ratios.

Resources

Child Information Sharing Scheme

The Child Information Sharing Scheme (CISS) enables services to appropriately share information to support child wellbeing or safety. Authorised organisations and professionals can either request information or decide to share it with other authorised professionals. This includes education professionals, such as teachers, day care and kindergarten workers. Information can only be shared when it will assist in providing services, making plans, or investigating or managing risks to children.

Resources

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