Standard 5

People working with children are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.

The suitability and capability of staff and volunteers is pivotal to creating safe environments for children. Organisations must recruit and maintain a workforce of individuals who are not only qualified but are deeply committed to upholding children’s safety and wellbeing. Staff and volunteers should be supported with ongoing professional development and clear guidance, empowering them to model safe and respectful practices in every interaction.

Actions you can take to apply this Standard in your organisation

• prioritise children’s safety and wellbeing as pre-requisites for employment throughout your recruitment practices, including advertising, referee checks and staff and volunteer pre-employment screening
• ensure all position descriptions outline children’s safety and wellbeing responsibilities and expectations
• ensure and continuously monitor that relevant staff and volunteers have current Working with Children Checks or equivalent background checks
• give all staff and volunteers an appropriate induction and ensure they are aware of their responsibilities to children and to recordkeeping, information sharing and reporting obligations
• include onboarding and regular, ongoing training about children’s safety and wellbeing, including training on cultural safety and trauma-informed care and support, depending on the nature of your business or organisation
• focus ongoing supervision and people management on children’s safety and wellbeing
• ensure a safe and responsive mechanism is in place for reporting concerns.

What if you’re a sole trader, small business or volunteer community group?

• make sure every employee and volunteer, who has direct contact with children, has a positive Working with Children check
• hire staff and select volunteers with the willingness and capability to protect children’s safety and wellbeing
• make sure you and every employee and volunteer can identify signs or risks of harm and knows how to report it
• provide ongoing training to all staff and volunteers and keep a record of all training completed. Maintain personal knowledge if you’re a sole trader
• make sure staff and volunteers know how to report concerns and are comfortable to do so
• if you’re a sole trader, do you have someone you can work with if reports are made against you?

How does cultural safety look?

• train staff and volunteers in culturally safe practices
• invite Aboriginal and Torres Strait people to co-design policies and practices
• for larger organisations, look for opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to hold leadership positions.

Successful implementation looks like a business or organisation where:

• all personnel working with children have undergone rigorous reference checks, hold mandatory clearances to work with children, and complete induction training before working directly with children
• staff and volunteers report feeling confident and supported in their roles regarding children’s safety and wellbeing and cultural safety. There are processes in place to support staff and volunteers to proactively raise concerns and for investigating, responding to and resolving related issues
• clear and documented processes exist for addressing concerns about the suitability of staff or volunteers
• ongoing professional development opportunities are regularly accessed by personnel.

Further guidance

In addition to the information above, please find below some more specific resources that may be helpful for you to meet this standard. This is not an exhaustive list of the resources that are available but is a useful starting point.

There are some practices and activities that many organisations are already doing that will meet this standard. Some of these will be relevant across several standards. For example the development of a Child and Youth Wellbeing Policy could cover several requirements.

Last updated
4 July 2025