Your responsibilities: for sole traders, small businesses and volunteer community groups

The Child Safe Standards are part of a new law—the Child Safe Organisations Act—that aims to protect Queensland children from harm when they interact with businesses and organisations. The Standards aim to create environments that prioritise the safety and wellbeing of children. If you’re doing that, you’re well on your way to being child safe.

Every business and organisation will be at a different stage in its journey to becoming child safe—and that’s OK. Implementing the new law isn’t intended to be onerous or difficult, especially for smaller businesses, like yours. How you implement the Child Safe Standards is intended to be flexible and tailored to the specifics of your organisation – what kind of work you do, who with, and how often.

It's all about putting children’s safety at the forefront of your decisions, making sure you and your workers have all the skills needed to identify risks of harm and take action, and communicating with children and families about how you are prioritising children’s safety and wellbeing.

Our Five steps to getting started webpage gives you some helpful pointers if you’re learning what’s required. This includes basic starting points, like familiarising yourself with the Standards, and making sure you and your staff and volunteers have Blue Cards.

Our Quick Reference Guide and our Child Safe Standards webpages also include tips especially for small businesses, sole traders and volunteer community groups. Our Training hub and Resources webpage can help you and include examples of key documents you may need.

Some businesses or organisations will also need to implement a Reportable Conduct Scheme. This is the second part of the new law that enables a business or organisation to properly respond if harm or misconduct happens. You can find out more about the scheme and whether it applies to you on our Reportable Conduct Scheme webpage.

Last updated
16 September 2025