Working With Children Checks for coaches: how Australian clubs should track them

A Working With Children Check is a state or territory screening clearance that a person must hold before doing child-related work, paid or voluntary, in that jurisdiction. For sports clubs, swim schools and academies, that covers almost every coach, instructor and program volunteer who works with junior participants. Each state and territory runs its own scheme, with its own name, validity period and duties for the organisations that engage workers.

Getting the check is the coach's responsibility. Verifying it, recording it and making sure nobody coaches on an expired one falls to the club. This guide covers what each scheme is called, what to record for every coach, how to track renewals, how volunteers and cross-border coaches fit in, and how to stop an unchecked coach ever reaching the roster.

Does a coach need a Working With Children Check in Australia?

Yes, in almost every case. A coach, instructor or volunteer who works directly with children under 18 in a sport or activity program needs a valid check for the state or territory where the work happens, and needs it before starting.

The NSW Office of the Children's Guardian lists extracurricular coaches, instructors, dance teachers and tutors among the roles that need a check, and defines child-related work to include voluntary work. The other jurisdictions take a similar approach to coaching. What counts is the role and its contact with children. Job title and pay make no difference.

Exemptions exist but they are narrow and they differ between states. In NSW, for example, people under 18 are exempt, and parents volunteering at their own child's usual activities are generally exempt, with exceptions such as overnight camps. NSW also notes that referees and officials may not need a check where they do not have extended contact with children. These rules do not carry across borders, so a club should read the exemption list for its own state.

The consequences sit with both parties. NSW states it is against the law to engage anyone in child-related work without a check. Western Australia makes it an offence for an organisation to engage someone without a current card or a pending application. Victoria says an organisation breaks the law if it lets someone start child-related work before they have applied. Queensland requires organisations to link a worker's blue card or application to the organisation before that person starts, according to the Queensland Government.

A check is a screening tool. It confirms a person has not been barred on the information available. It does not replace supervision, codes of conduct or safe drop-off and collection. Those controls are covered separately in our guide to child safety check-in and pickup procedures.

What is the check called in each state and territory?

Each jurisdiction runs its own scheme: the NSW WWCC, Victoria's WWC Check, Queensland's blue card, WA's WWC Check, South Australia's WWCC, Tasmania's RWVP, the ACT's WWVP registration and the Northern Territory's Ochre Card.

New South Wales. The Working with Children Check is run by the Office of the Children's Guardian and a clearance lasts five years. Employers must verify the worker's application or clearance number online and keep a record. Holders can renew up to three months before expiry, and the employer verifies the renewed check.

Victoria. The Working with Children Check is valid for five years unless it is suspended, cancelled or surrendered. Holders must show their physical or digital card to each organisation before starting, and digital cards can be scanned through the Service Victoria app. Volunteer checks are free, while paid child-related work needs an employee check, according to the Victorian Government.

Queensland. The blue card is managed by Blue Card Services and is valid for three years unless cancelled or suspended. Organisations must link each worker's card or application before they start, keep an employee register, and can check whether a card is valid online.

Western Australia. The WA Working with Children Check is valid for three years and covers all categories of child-related work in the state. It can be renewed up to three months before expiry. A WA check cannot be used in other states and territories.

South Australia. The Working with Children Check is conducted by the Department of Human Services Screening Unit, is valid for five years and is portable across roles and organisations within the state. Organisations can no longer run their own screening for child-related roles.

Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory. Tasmania uses Registration to Work with Vulnerable People, valid for five years, and a person whose registration has expired cannot work or volunteer with children. The ACT uses Working with Vulnerable People registration through Access Canberra, issued for up to five years. The Northern Territory issues a working with children clearance, known as the Ochre Card, valid for two years from issue.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Rules, fees and exemptions change, so confirm the current requirements with your state or territory screening body before relying on any detail here.

What should a club record for each coach's check?

Record the check number, the state or territory, the card type, the expiry date, the date you verified it, the outcome, and who verified it. Without the verified date and the verifier's name, the record proves very little.

NSW gives the most explicit list. The Office of the Children's Guardian asks organisations to keep, for each worker, their full name, date of birth, check number, verification date, verification outcome, expiry date, and whether the person is paid or a volunteer. Even outside NSW, that list makes a sound baseline for any club.

Two extra fields earn their place. The first is the verifier, meaning the staff member who checked the register. NSW says employers cannot verify themselves and that anyone verifying numbers must have their own check verified by someone else in the organisation. The second is the state, because a coach can hold more than one check and each one has its own number and expiry.

Sighting a card is a start, but where a scheme offers an online check, use it. A card in a wallet does not show whether the clearance was suspended last week. In NSW, verifying online also matters for notifications: if a verified worker is later barred, the Office of the Children's Guardian tells the employer, and removing that person from child-related work is the employer's job.

Treat these records as sensitive personal information. Store them in one place with restricted access, not in a shared drive, a group chat or a folder of photographed cards. Fewer copies mean fewer out-of-date versions and less personal data sitting where it should not.

How should a club track expiry dates and renewals?

Keep every check in one list sorted by expiry date, with reminders at 90, 60 and 30 days and a firm stop on the expiry date. Renewal is the coach's responsibility, but following it up is the club's.

Ninety days is a practical first reminder because NSW and WA both allow renewal up to three months before expiry. It gives a coach time to apply and gives the club time to verify the renewed check before the old one lapses. Thirty days out, a reminder becomes a direct conversation with the coach and their program manager.

The renewal is not finished when the coach says they have applied. Look up the new status, record the new expiry date, and log the verification as a fresh entry with the date and your name. Keep the old entry. A history of verifications is what shows a club has been checking all along.

Worked example. Consider a hypothetical multi-sport academy running junior programs on both sides of the Murray at Albury and Wodonga. It has 22 coaches: 14 paid and 8 volunteers. Six of them coach at both venues, so they hold a NSW WWCC and a Victorian WWC Check. That makes 28 check records to track.

Both checks run for five years, so on average five or six records reach expiry each year. In practice they bunch together, because a club tends to onboard a wave of coaches before a season. If ten coaches joined in the same February five years ago, ten records expire within weeks of each other. A fortnightly review of everything expiring in the next 90 days spreads that work out and catches the coach whose Victorian check is current but whose NSW check lapsed in March.

Now picture the same academy in a state with a shorter term. With three-year checks, the same 28 records would produce around nine expiries a year. Under the Northern Territory's two-year Ochre Card, it would be around fourteen. The process stays the same. The cadence just gets faster.

Why it matters

An expired check is rarely a sign of a dangerous coach. It is usually a busy person who missed a reminder. The legal exposure is the same either way, for the coach and for the club that rostered them. A simple expiry list turns a serious breach into a routine phone call.

Do volunteers and coaches working across states need different checks?

Volunteers generally need a check just as paid staff do, though fees and some exemptions differ. A coach working in more than one state usually needs each state's check, unless a short-term visitor exemption applies there.

Most schemes treat volunteer coaching as child-related work. What changes is the cost and sometimes the card type. In Victoria, a volunteer check is free but only covers unpaid work, and a volunteer who starts paid child-related work must upgrade to an employee check. This catches clubs out when a long-serving volunteer becomes a paid assistant coach. Record paid or volunteer status against every check and review it whenever someone's role changes.

Interstate work is where records most often go wrong. WA states plainly that its check cannot be used in other states and territories. NSW says an interstate check does not satisfy NSW requirements, though it lists an exemption for visitors from interstate working with children for fewer than 30 days, and leaves it to the organisation to decide whether a check is needed for occasional visitors. Other jurisdictions set their own visitor rules.

For clubs near a border, or teams travelling to carnivals and tournaments, the safe approach is simple. Record each state's check as a separate row with its own number and expiry. Before any interstate trip, confirm with the host state's screening body whether your coaches need a local check or fall within a visitor exemption, and keep that confirmation with the trip paperwork.

How do you stop a coach being rostered without a valid check?

Make a valid, verified check a condition of being rostered. When the roster can only draw from coaches whose check is current for the state where the session runs, an expired check blocks the shift before it starts instead of being discovered afterwards.

Most lapses happen at the edges. A casual fills in on Saturday morning. A coach swaps a session at another venue. A volunteer helps out for one term. The person building the roster is rarely the person who verified the checks, and if the two lists live in different places, nobody joins them up until something goes wrong.

The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, endorsed by all Australian governments through COAG in February 2019, set out ten principles. Principle 5 says people working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice. Guidance from the WA Department of Communities places screening alongside recruitment, induction, supervision and training under that principle. A current check is the minimum that Principle 5 expects.

The same rule should apply to award and pay decisions, which are covered in rostering coaches under the Fitness Industry Award. Intrac, an Australian class & facility management system for sports facilities, schools and academies, keeps staff rostering and payroll next to staff records, which keeps the compliance list and the roster in the same place.

How Intrac handles it

Staff records and rosters, one system

Intrac keeps staff management, rostering and the staff portal together, so the people checking coach records and the people building the roster work from the same list of coaches.

 

Staff management

Coach and instructor details held in one place, not scattered across spreadsheets.

 

Rostering and payroll

Coaches assigned to scheduled classes, with rosters feeding payroll.

 

Staff portal

Coaches see their shifts and mark rolls on their phone. A+ security (OWASP).

   

See staff management

What are the next steps for tracking coach checks?

Start with an audit. List every coach, instructor and regular volunteer, the state or states they work in, and their check number and expiry for each. Then verify every one on the official register, record the date and the verifier, and fix any gaps before next week's roster goes out.

Next, nominate two people who can verify checks and verify each other. Write a one-page procedure covering collection before the first shift, verification, the 90-day expiry review and what happens when a check lapses. Put it in the coach handbook so nobody is surprised when an expired check pulls them off a session.

Finally, link the check list to the roster. If they live in separate spreadsheets, someone has to compare them by hand every week. Systems built for sports facilities keep staff records and rosters in one place, which makes the weekly check a short routine. Bring your coach list to a demo and see how it would work with your own team.