Frequently Asked
Questions

Oho is a software platform that helps to strengthen the framework of protecting children and vulnerable people in our communities. The application provides greater safeguards with the automation and verification of mandatory accreditation checks such as the Working with Children Check, Working with Vulnerable People Check, and other professional accreditation screening including those required by teachers and allied health providers.

It does this in the following ways:

Proactive prevention

Accreditations are checked for validity and expiry on a frequent ongoing basis. Accreditation is only valid at a point in time and our regular checking ensures you know immediately of a status change for any of your employees, volunteers, or contractors.

Secure, independent audit-proof trail

Oho ensures secure and auditable digital records of continuous verification are maintained indefinitely and can be used to demonstrate compliance to auditors and other external parties.

Compliance reporting

Proactive risk management through real-time reports delivered to management and boards.

Organisations working with vulnerable people have legal responsibilities to ensure they protect the safety of every individual in their care. This legal responsibility cannot be delegated as the board and directors remain legally culpable.

Are you certain that right now, you could prove with absolute confidence that all your volunteers and staff currently hold valid accreditations, where a license has not expired or been revoked due to a criminal charge that you were not notified of?

Can you provide management with a report that proves this on a monthly basis?

In 5 years’ time, could you provide the same proof that all your volunteers and staff had valid accreditations?

In 45 years’ time, could you provide the same proof that all your volunteers and staff had valid accreditations?

Can you confidently answer yes to all of the above questions? If not, Oho can help you protect the vulnerable and assist the board and management in demonstrating they have discharged the legal responsibilities to protect those in your care.

Fines, imprisonment, and reputational losses are some of the high costs an organisation could face if it fails to meet its legal obligations to protect the people in its care.

Employing a person in child-related work without a valid Working with Children Check could cost a penalty of up from $10,000s to $100,000s. And in several states, the failure of senior executives and members of governing bodies to hold a valid Working with Children Check could result in jail time.

• NSW Working with Children Check
• Victorian Working with Children Check
• Victorian Institute of Teaching
• AHPRA Medical Registration Number
• Northern Territory Working with Children Check*
• Northern Territory Teachers Registration
• Queensland College of Teachers
• Queensland Blue Card
• Queensland Blue Card Exemption
• South Australian Working with Children Check*
• South Australian Teachers Registration
• Tasmanian Teachers Registration
• Tasmanian Working with Children Check
• Western Australian Teachers Registration
• Western Australian Working with Children Check
• ACT Working with Vulnerable People Check (Expiry Management only)

* Expiry management only until 30/07/2021 when integration will be completed.

Registering on Oho is simple, quick and affordable. All you need to start using the system is your name, your organisation’s name, and your organisation’s email address. There is no need to enter your credit card details and it takes less than 2 minutes to sign-up. Using the application is easy and we have a range of topics available in our Help Library to guide you.

No, there is no commitment period when you register to use Oho.

There is no limit on the number of users that can access your Oho account. You may add as many users as you like to help manage your organisation. Our tiered pricing model is based on the number of people requiring accreditation checks in your organisation.

Oho provides a bulk upload feature for you to upload all of your data easily and seamlessly from a CSV file. The time it takes to display the uploaded data is immediate unless you have many accreditations.

Alternatively, you can speak to our team about integrating the Oho platform with your existing IT infrastructure to reduce the number of unique systems your team needs to access.

Many accreditations cannot be verified against a register, however, they still need to be managed. We provide an Expiry Only Package for these.

And you can also create your own.

The operational dashboard will show you the number of accreditations that are:

• Compliant
• Expiring Soon (6 weeks)
• Have a New Card Available (for renewals)*
• Application is Processing (for renewals)*
• Expired
• Invalid

*for Victorian Working With Children Check.

For paid subscriptions, you can also have access to a Board Report which shows your organisation’s compliance.

The simple answer is data integrity and record management. Human error is common when it comes to mistyped names and numbers in HR systems, which leads to the system not checking the validity of the record.

Oho’s proactive prevention immediately informs you that the data has not been entered correctly so it is impossible to store ‘bad data’ in your HR system with Oho. The continuous screening  of the accreditation strengthens the current child safe framework by ensuring that if a person’s accreditation is revoked you will be notified by Oho in many cases faster than the relevant authority. In addition, we will check agnostic whether the linking has been correctly established in the government registries.

Common failure points that Oho mitigates are:

• your organisation failing to register your staff and volunteers.
• your staff or volunteers disassociating themselves from your organisation.

Oho has continuous regular re-verification with real-time alerts on the status change of accreditations and a secure, independent audit trail of your continuous screening.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended that organisations keep records for up to 45 years post-engagement with child-related work. Spreadsheets are not feasible to be kept for 45 years  no matter how well you think you are doing this. Data entry errors are likely, and constantly monitoring expiry dates by chasing employees is extremely time-consuming.

Oho alerts you or your employee 6 weeks before accreditation is due to expire giving enough time to collect the new records. Even if you only have a small number of accreditations to maintain, Oho is cost-effective for the  protection  it offers your organisation.

View our pricing options to get the subscription relevant to you.