ACECQA resources strengthen focus on sleep safety and supervision across ECEC services

Two national resources from ACECQA are placing a renewed focus on how early childhood education and care (ECEC) services identify and manage risks associated with sleep and rest, supervision and the physical design of service environments.

The Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) has released a new Sleep and Rest Risk Assessment Template, alongside comprehensive national guidance on Facilitating Supervision and Child Safety through Building Design – Regulation 115.

Together, the resources provide approved providers, service leaders and educators with practical guidance for two areas closely connected to children's safety: ensuring risks during sleep and rest are actively identified and managed, and ensuring service environments enable educators to effectively supervise children.

Released in August 2026, ACECQA's new Sleep and Rest Risk Assessment Template is designed to help approved providers and services undertake the risk assessments required under Regulation 84C of the Education and Care Services National Regulations.

Approved providers must conduct a sleep and rest risk assessment at least once every 12 months and as soon as practicable after becoming aware of any circumstance that may affect children's safety, health or wellbeing during sleep and rest.

Providers must also keep a record of each assessment and make any necessary changes to their sleep and rest policies and procedures following the assessment. 

Importantly, the requirement applies to all approved providers, including outside school hours care (OSHC) services, while family day care providers must ensure an assessment is undertaken for each FDC residence or approved venue. 

While the new resource provides services with a ready-made framework, ACECQA makes clear that simply downloading and completing the template is not the objective.

The template is intended as a starting point and should be adapted to reflect the circumstances of each centre-based service, FDC residence or approved venue.

ACECQA says the assessment should also be treated as an evolving document that is regularly reviewed and amended when circumstances change or new hazards emerge. 

That means services need to look beyond having a risk assessment on file and consider whether it accurately reflects their current children, staffing, environment and operating arrangements.

The template guides services through the matters that must be considered under Regulation 84C.

These include the number, ages and developmental stages of children; individual sleep and rest needs; health care requirements; cultural preferences; family requests; staffing and supervision arrangements; educator knowledge and training; sleep-area locations; equipment and bedding; potential hazards; and environmental factors including temperature, lighting and ventilation. 

Supervision is particularly prominent.

The resource asks services to consider educator positioning, line of sight, monitoring arrangements, sleep-check frequency and what happens during staff breaks or when relief and casual educators are working.

Where higher or changing risks are identified, supervision and monitoring arrangements need to be adjusted accordingly. 

The inclusion of specific OSHC examples is particularly useful.

ACECQA prompts services to consider circumstances where children may unexpectedly fall asleep, for example, on a beanbag, in a lounge or library area, on a bus or during a movie.

Services should also consider access to quiet rest spaces and circumstances where children may need rest or recovery because of illness, injury, fatigue, long attendance hours, environmental conditions or other factors. 

The examples reinforce that sleep and rest risk management is not confined to cot rooms or services caring for babies.

The second resource takes the supervision conversation in a different direction.

ACECQA's ACECQA Facilitating Supervision and Child Safety through Building Design – Regulation 115 guidance explores how the physical design of an education and care service can either support or impede effective supervision.

The 42-page national guide considers supervision and child safety across numerous areas of a service, including indoor spaces, toilet and hygiene facilities, administration areas, laundries, nappy-change areas and bottle and food preparation spaces. 

At the centre of the guidance is an important principle: effective supervision cannot be considered separately from the environment in which educators are expected to supervise.

Regulation 115 requires centre-based service premises to be designed and maintained in a way that facilitates supervision of children at all times they are being educated and cared for, having regard to children's need for privacy.

The new guidance provides significantly more detail about what this can mean in practice.

Rather than simply considering whether rooms comply with minimum physical requirements, providers, developers and service leaders are encouraged to consider how educators will maintain visibility and awareness as children move through different areas of the service.

This includes identifying potential blind spots and considering how walls, doors, windows, furniture, storage, bathrooms, nappy-change areas and other features influence educators' ability to supervise.

It also reinforces that supervision needs to balance children's safety with their dignity, privacy and rights.

While building design is an obvious consideration during the planning and approval of a new service, the guidance also provides a useful lens for existing providers.

Rooms and environments change over time.

Furniture is moved. Storage is added. Children's use of spaces evolves. Programs change and service operations can develop in ways that were not anticipated when the building was originally designed.

A space that theoretically supports supervision may therefore operate very differently in practice.

For existing providers, the guidance creates an opportunity to walk through their service and consider the environment from an educator's supervision perspective.

Where are the blind spots?

What happens when an educator moves to assist one child?

Can educators maintain awareness of adjoining spaces?

Are furniture and storage arrangements affecting sightlines?

Do toileting and nappy-change arrangements appropriately balance supervision with children's privacy and dignity?

These are operational questions as much as they are design questions.

Although the resources address different regulatory requirements, there is a common thread running through both.

Child safety depends on services identifying risk before an incident occurs.

The sleep and rest template asks services to examine their children, environments, equipment, staffing and practices, identify hazards and put controls in place.

The Regulation 115 guidance asks providers to consider whether the physical environment itself enables educators to maintain effective supervision.

Both shift the conversation from responding to incidents towards identifying the conditions that could contribute to one.

For approved providers and service leaders, the release of the resources provides a timely opportunity to review existing systems.

Services can use the sleep and rest template to compare their current risk assessment against all matters required under Regulation 84C, while the Regulation 115 guidance can support a practical review of supervision across the physical environment.

The process should involve educators rather than sitting solely with management.

Educators working within rooms and environments every day are often best placed to identify where supervision becomes difficult, where routines create additional risk or where existing controls do not work as intended.

Similarly, sleep and rest assessments should reflect the children currently attending the service rather than relying on a generic assessment carried forward from year to year.

Perhaps the most important message from the new resources is that compliance cannot end with documentation.

A completed risk assessment does not make children safer unless the controls identified within it are understood and implemented.

A building designed for visibility does not guarantee effective supervision unless educators are appropriately positioned and actively engaged.

And a policy cannot account for every changing circumstance within a service.

ACECQA's latest resources give providers additional tools to examine the relationship between risk, environment and everyday practice.

For services, the challenge is to use them not simply as another compliance document, but as an opportunity to ask a more important question:

Do our current environments, systems and practices genuinely support educators to keep children safe?