The safety, health and wellbeing of children in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is paramount. The Australian Government maintains an ongoing commitment to enhancing child safety practices.
On this page:
Strengthening quality and safety through the Child Care Subsidy
The Australian Government is exploring measures to strengthen Commonwealth regulatory and enforcement powers. The future policies will target providers that:
- put profit over quality and child safety
- persistently fail to meet minimum standards and repeatedly breach the National Law.
The policies under consideration are:
- preventing providers from opening new services when they:
- persistently fail to meet minimum standards
- repeatedly breach the National Law
- taking compliance action against providers with unacceptable and continued breaches
- cutting CCS funding from providers with unacceptable and continued breaches
- strengthening regulatory powers to deal with providers that pose an integrity risk
- preventing people who have breached safety and quality standards from operating in other parts of the care economy.
2024 Regulatory project for out-of-scope services
The regulatory project was established in July 2024 for services not in scope of the NQF or state and territory residual legislation. The project’s aim is to ensure quality and safety of these services.
Regulatory activities started in March 2025.
The project builds on the work of the:
- ACECQA Quality and Safety Project
- Northern Territory Regulatory Project
- South Australia Regulatory Project.
2023 Child Safety Review
The Australian Government instructed ACECQA to review the NQF child safety arrangements.
- more about the review
- its recommendations
- the final report.
Outcomes include:
- The National Model Code and Guidelines were released in July 2024. The guidelines describe child-safe practices when taking images or videos of children.
- The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership released new materials on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. These materials support ECEC workers to apply the standards in non-school settings.
- Public consultation seeking feedback on options to address remaining recommendations.
In June 2025, ACECQA will release guidance material about new regulatory changes.
The September 2025 regulatory changes include:
- notification timeframes for reporting physical or sexual abuse reduce from 7 days to 24 hours
- service environments must be free from vaping
- services must have policies and procedures around the safe use of digital devices.
2021 National Workforce Strategy
In 2021 ACECQA developed the National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy. It aims to foster a sustainable and high-quality ECEC workforce.
Actions under the strategy that support child safety include:
- implementing early childhood teacher registration in every state and territory
- developing options for a national registration system for educators who are not teachers
- improving access to core professional development for educators and teachers
- reviewing staffing and qualification requirements under the NQF
- reviewing requirements for early childhood teaching programs under the NQF
- developing options for a live national workforce database
- reviewing and strengthening the quality of vocational education and training packages.
2019 National Quality Framework review
In 2019, there was a review of the National Quality Framework (NQF). The review aimed to ensure the NQF continued to meet its objectives under National Law.
The review resulted in a range of changes to the NQF, summarised below. Details are on the Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) website.
Summary of the 2023 NQF review outcomes
New children's health and safety requirements, including:
- responsibilities around children’s transportation for Centre-Based Day Care (CBDC), including:
- improved record keeping
- accounting for children requirements
- policies, procedures and risk requirements to ensure services provide safe transport of children
- policies, procedures and risk assessment requirements around sleep and rest
- requirements for emergency and evacuation policies, procedures and risk plans for multistorey buildings.
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse changes, including:
- expanded record keeping requirements
- new requirements under the National Child Safe Principles.
New requirements for Family Day Care (FDC), including:
- notifying ‘exceptional circumstances’ for FDC educators
- services with pools and other water hazards ensuring:
- information about the venue and hazards are clearly displayed
- fencing is compliant
- monthly inspection reports are conducted
- ensuring all glass accessible to children is safety glass
- mandatory child protection training for FDC coordinators.
New workforce requirements, including:
- ensuring educators ‘actively working towards’ a qualification are making satisfactory progress
- Family Day Care (FDC) educators must:
- hold an approved certificate III level (or higher) qualification before starting their role
- not be ‘actively working towards’ a qualification.
Oversight and governance of services and providers, including:
- expanded definition of persons with management or control
- new grounds for suspending or cancelling a provider approval under the NQF and increased timeframe requirements to transfer a service to another provider
- increased timeframe requirements to notify families of a service transfer
- CBDC providers must notify the state or territory regulatory authority within 7 days when there are changes to:
- ages of children
- nature of care provided.
Technical amendments, including:
- new mandatory requirements to notify state/territory regulator about regular service-arranged transportation
- to ensure FDC residences and venues display essential service information
- all Tasmanian services must meet all NQF physical environment requirements.
Other amendments to the National Law and Regulations, including:
- clarification on the calculation of FDC coordinator-to-educator ratios so educators have appropriate support to ensure educators have appropriate support
- bassinets prohibited
- increased maximum penalties for offences under the NQF
- updated requirements to maintain the currency of:
- first aid certificates
- anaphylaxis management training
- asthma management training
- allowance for a FDC educator assistant to walk a child between an FDC service and:
- a school
- another early childhood education and care (ECEC) service
- the child’s home.