Victoria’s 22-point Child Safety Reform: Strengthening Protection in Early Childhood Education

The Victorian Government commissioned an urgent review to identify immediate actions to improve child safety in August 2025, following disturbing events in early learning services across the state.

The Rapid Child Safety Review resulted in 22 comprehensive recommendations that the Victorian Government has committed to implementing with a $42 million investment.

The challenge

The review revealed significant gaps in Victoria’s child safety systems within ECEC settings. The current model, rapid sector growth, and fragmented regulatory approaches have created vulnerabilities that predators can exploit.

The review found that while the vast majority of early childhood educators are dedicated professionals committed to children’s wellbeing, systemic weaknesses have allowed concerning individuals to enter and remain in the system.

Part 1: Rethinking the System (Recommendations 1-3)

1. Safety, rights, and best interests of children: make the safety, rights and best interest of children the paramount consideration for staff across services.

2. Commonwealth Government-led rethink of the ECEC system: call for the government to lead a rethink of the ECEC system and establish processes for trusted providers to take over failing services.

3. National early childhood reform commission: establish a time-limited commission to drive national ECEC reforms, supported by a parent advisory group.

Part 2: Preventing Predators from Entering the System (Recommendations 4-8)

Worker Registration and Screening

4. National early childhood worker register: accelerating the creation of a comprehensive national register of all ECEC workers, with powers for regulators to remove unsuitable individuals.

5. Best practice recruitment: issue updated expectations to the ECEC regulator that asks for increased focus on providers’ recruitment of staff and the screening of background checks and reference checks, induction of staff, and child safe cultures across entire organisations.

Overhauling Safety Screening and Working With Children Checks

6. Working with Children Checks: change the regulatory framework to
a. allow unsubstantiated information to be considered for suspension or revocation of a WWCC
b. permit a WWCC reassessment when the authority becomes aware of new information
c. require organisations to verify or validate that they have engaged a WWCC clearance holder to provider movements across different organisations
d. create internal review processes for WWCC
e. mandate online child safety training and testing
f. fund a WWCC screening authority
g. work with government and Australian states to develop a national approach to WWCC laws

7. Change Reportable Conduct Scheme to improve information sharing: change the scheme to ensure clear power for sharing unsubstantiated allegations with relevant regulators and agencies, and fund the Reportable Conduct Scheme to keep pace with demand of notifications

8. Establish a new Shared Intelligence and Risk Assessment Capability: up-to-date information to join up the ‘breadcrumbs’ and form a consolidated approach to WWCC and Reportable Conduct functions

Part 3: Quickly Identifying and Excluding Predators within the ECEC System (Recommendations 9-22)

Regulatory Reform

9. Establish an independent ECEC regulator

10. Most rigorous inspection regime in the country: increase volume and frequency of unannounced compliance visits to services, and reduce the average time between assessment and rating visits

11. Capability review and modern risk assessment for a complex and growing sector: improve quality of assessments, work through complexity of regulations, better utilisation of technology

12. Increase penalties for offences

13. Funding for effective regulation: appropriately fund the ECEC regulator

Physical Environment Improvements

14. Improve staffing arrangements in services: national review of staffing arrangements in ECEC centres including consideration of ‘four eyes’ rule of 2 adults visible to each other while with children

15. Improve lines of sight in ECEC centres: call for the commonwealth government to fund a Child Safe Buildings Grants Program for fixtures and fittings that address physical barriers to clear lines of sight in existing ECEC centres

16. Trial the use of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV): focus on using CCTV in ECEC as a regulatory and investigative tool

Transparency and Information Sharing

17. Make accessing information about service quality ratings easier for parents: calls for government to enforce services to display quality ratings on their website, improve information about service quality and compliance, ECEC regulator to publish full scope of permitted compliance and enforcement activity information on its website

18. Support parents to raise and report concerns: work with experts to promote evidence-based advice for parents on prevention education, update and promote advice about how to make complaints or raise concerns with service

Workforce Development

19. Stronger action on poor quality training courses: stronger Australian Skills Quality Authority powers to address poor quality registered training organisations

20. Mandatory child safe training: a national approach to accelerate mandatory child safety training with local training tailored to capture specific state laws

21. Professional support program on quality, child safety and safeguarding: Department of Education should partner with Early Childhood Australia to expand its Safety and Safeguarding support programs

22. Give ECEC workers the confidence to raise concerns: provide training and clear guidance on how ECEC staff can report concerns, allegations and complaints, with a ‘speak-up’ culture.

The Path Forward 

These reforms represent the most comprehensive overhaul of child safety in Victorian ECEC history. The review emphasises the current circumstances as deeply concerning, they also represent an opportunity to create a really strong protection framework in early childhood education.

Oho’s Recommended Priority Steps for Child-Facing Organisations Right Now

1. Embed and facilitate a child-first culture
   Organisations must move beyond compliance to create a genuine safety culture where children’s rights, safety, and wellbeing are paramount in every decision.
   Steps: regularly implement a culture assessment, ensure leadership accountability for child safety outcomes, and through training, communication and transparency, ensure all staff understand their role in creating protective environments.
2. Implement robust prevention systems 
   Prevention is always better than response. Organisations should invest in comprehensive screening processes, ongoing supervision systems and proactive risk identification.
   Steps: consider your screening processes to prevent bad actors from even entering the centre and ensure your ongoing systems are set up to verify and notify you of status changes. Consider your supervision systems and note the new line of sight and staffing requirements recommended in Victoria’s review, and establish clear boundaries and expectations with both current staff and new staff, sometimes a refresher is needed.
3. Strengthen response capabilities and processes 
   When concerns arise, organisations must respond swiftly, transparently and effectively.
   Steps: ensure your incident response protocols are extensive and clear, regularly engage in training and scenario planning so staff are prepared to act decisively, and consider your commitment and processes for learning and improvement following any incident.

These principles create multiple layers of protection that significantly reduce risks and place the safety of children at the forefront of the ECEC sector.

For more information about Victoria’s Rapid Review and recommendations, visit: https://www.vic.gov.au/rapid-child-safety-review

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