Strengthening safeguarding: 5 practical steps centres can take

Culture change doesn’t happen overnight, but safeguarding improvements can start today. The technology exists. The solutions are proven. Smart organisations are already implementing them. The question for every centre leader is simple: What will you turn on this week to better protect the children in your care?

 

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made it clear: the systems designed to protect children were failing, and critical gaps in background check monitoring left children exposed. Those gaps still exist today. In many cases, it can take weeks for organisations to be notified of a revoked or suspended check, usually by snail mail, and in some states, individuals can even nominate themselves to receive alerts when their own status changes.

 

Government action and our sector’s response

 

Recent legislation to cut funding for childcare centres not meeting quality standards sends a clear message about children’s safety. The proposed national Working With Children Check linked to reportable conduct represents progress, but historically, government-driven tech solutions take years to deliver.

 

As a parent myself, I want to know that my child’s daycare, kinder, school, and sports clubs are doing everything they can, today, to keep children safe. It can’t wait

 

The cost of fragmented systems

 

Every level attempts to do good: government registers issue credentials, law enforcement run investigations, organisations care for kids. However, the obligation to deploy suitable people legally sits with organisations, and they rely on information being up to date in real-time. 

 

The recent case exposed these critical gaps: valid credentials, movement across 20+ centres over 8 years, with no system connecting the dots. Yes, there’s risk everywhere in our sector, but preventing it from coming through the front door is the first and most important action we can take.

 

Manual checking processes are expensive, error-prone, and leave dangerous gaps. A single abuse claim can cost organisations $150K-$2.6M. 

 

Smart organisations have taken this into their own hands and found solutions that plug those gaps to keep children safe.

 

5 things you can implement immediately

 

1. National and continuous monitoring of working with children checks

 

We need the national register linked to reportable conduct. 

 

Only checking at recruitment, where qualifications and right-to-work checks are often just sighted at the front door but not linked or checked ongoing, is like leaving all the doors and windows open to risk and predators, who we have seen in these environments that should be safe. 

 

2. Robust qualifications checks to reduce risk of poorly trained educators

 

Implement robust reference check processes to understand the pattern of organisations an employee has worked at. Poorly trained educators and carers are creating risk in these environments. 

 

There are some dubious RTOs, falsified qualifications and a lack of uniformity on where organisations can verify the status of a qualification. This issue is largely at recruitment, where we must verify they have received good training and education before they arrive. 

 

3. Centralise workforce compliance checks

 

Pushing down compliance checks to site supervisors in childcare, and to volunteers in sport, is looking for trouble. They don’t have time, skills or access to easy systems to monitor, and there are already calls that they don’t spend enough time with kids. When something goes wrong, they don’t go looking for the site supervisor, they go to the national brand.

 

4. Upskill educators on the job on what quality looks like

 

Prioritisation of educator training on appropriate behaviour of adults towards children, risk, oversight of that training. Building capability in recognising what safe behaviours are and what action follows strengthens your safeguarding culture from the ground up and top down.

 

5. Strengthen action in code of conduct breaches systems

 

In the wait for a nationally consistent reportable conduct scheme, organisations must take a strong stance on managing breaches of conduct that pose risks to children, document it, and share these findings and concerns with other organisations.

 

The real-time and continuous tech already exists. Do we have the political will to use it? Once it’s passed, how quickly can we execute?

 

The funding question

 

If the government wants childcare centres to raise their standards overnight, should they get emergency funding to do it, or is this part of the funding they already get?

 

We all know that building and changing culture is a long-term toil. It doesn’t happen overnight. We want to be assured of those efforts too, but what can organisations deliver immediately if quality and safety is a concern?

 

The path forward

 

The recent cases expose critical gaps: valid credentials, 20+ centres, 8 years of movement across jurisdictions with no system of detection.

 

We can’t wait for perfect legislation. Culture change doesn’t happen overnight, but safeguarding improvements can start today. The technology and knowledge of practice exists. 

 

The question for every centre leader is simple: What will you turn on this week to better protect the children in your care?

 

Children can’t wait. Parents won’t accept delays. And frankly, neither should we.

 

Liv Whitty is a purpose-led leader with a track record of growing businesses that sit at the intersection of technology, social impact and customer experience. Liv is currently leading Oho, an Australian based compliance automation and safeguarding platform.