About Queensland's Child Safe Organisations system
Queensland’s Child Safe Organisations Act 2024 works to protect children from harm when they interact with organisations.
The Child Safe Organisations Act 2024 (the Act) introduces new legal obligations for businesses and organisations that work with children or provide services or spaces for them. This includes implementing 10 Child Safe Standards, and some will be required to introduce a Reportable Conduct Scheme.
These two elements work together. The Standards aim to create environments that prioritise the safety and wellbeing of children, and the Reportable Conduct Scheme requires organisations to report and investigate allegations of child abuse or misconduct by their staff and volunteers.
Why Child Safe Organisations?
The Child Safe Organisations system was recommended in 2017 by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The Royal Commission heard from thousands of victim-survivors, revealing widespread abuse across institutions and prompting major reforms in how child sexual abuse is understood and prevented. Its final report introduced 10 National Principles to guide organisations in creating safe environments for children. These principles were endorsed by all states and territories in 2019 and since then have been, or are in the process of being, adopted into state-based child safeguarding legislation.
Who needs to comply?
The Act applies to organisations that work with children or provide services or spaces specifically for them. It applies to volunteer and community groups through to large, established organisations across a number of sectors, including child protection, youth justice, health, disability, education, and early childhood education and care.
Around 40,000 organisations across Queensland will need to comply. Visit our Who needs to comply webpage for information about the sectors affected.
What do organisations need to do?
Implementing the Child Safe Standards
The Standards aim to create environments in organisations that prioritise the safety and wellbeing of children. They relate to a broad range of organisational factors, such as leadership and governance, staff and volunteer training and development, involving and engaging children and families in decision-making, complaints management, and promoting equity and diversity. When implementing the Standards, organisations also need to create environments that promote and uphold the right to cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. This is known in the legislation as the Universal Principle, and it means making Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children feel welcome, safe, valued, included and respected. For an organisation to be child safe, it needs to be culturally safe.
Implementing the Standards will look different for each organisation depending on their sector, size and scale, and the kind of work they do with children. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and implementation will depend on organisations’ circumstances; however, organisations that are child safe will actively prioritise and promote children’s safety and wellbeing, manage risks, and respond to concerns quickly and effectively
Child Safe Standards come into effect in a phased approach depending on sector, starting from 1 October 2025.
Implementing a Reportable Conduct Scheme
The Reportable Conduct Scheme enables an appropriate response if harm or misconduct happens in an organisation. It requires organisations to have a system in place to report and investigate allegations or convictions of child abuse or child-related misconduct made about their workers and volunteers. Reportable conduct includes a child sexual offence or misconduct, ill-treatment or neglect of a child, violence against a child and emotional or psychological harm. The conduct can occur once or repeatedly.
Under the scheme, reports are to be made to the head of an organisation, which is a Chief Executive Officer or similar, for investigation and reporting to us. All allegations of criminal conduct must be reported to police. The organisation is required to investigate and respond to the allegations. Reports about the investigation’s outcomes and any improvements to safeguarding made as a result need to be provided to us.
The Reportable Conduct Scheme comes into effect from 1 July 2026.
How will this be enforced?
Under the Act, we are responsible for monitoring and reporting on the operation of the Child Safe Organisations system.
The best outcomes for children and young people occur when organisations understand their responsibilities, have capacity to meet them, and are held accountable when risk or harm isn’t dealt with appropriately. Our focus will be on working cooperatively with organisations to support their compliance, particularly in the early stages of implementation, as part of a graduated model of regulation.
Our approach allows us to escalate interventions where necessary and take decisive action where children’s safety is compromised. We have enforcement powers under the Act, including through compliance notices, legally binding agreements, and fines for non-compliance. Organisations’ details can also be recorded on a public register.
For more information
We have developed a suite of tools to assist organisations on their journey being child safe. This includes a Self-Assessment Tool to help organisations assess their progress and plan the actions they need to take to comply and guidelines to help organisations implement the Standards and the Universal Principle in their operations.
Visit our Training hub or Resources webpage for more information.