NSW
Proposed National Working with Children Check (WWCC)
On 17 August, the Royal Commission (RC) into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released its Working With Children Checks Report.
The Report recommended that a national WWCC model be implemented within 12 months of the publication of the report. The RC argued that a standardised approach would allow WWCC’s to be portable across jurisdictions, deal with key aspects of screening in the same way and eliminate the opportunity for persons to work in locations with less rigorous checks.
While the Union is not unsympathetic to the call for a national approach to child protection matters, we are not convinced that it requires a uniform system of employment screening. There are problems with some of the current systems and we would not like to see the worst feature of each regime merged into one federal regime. Not all elements of current systems are necessary to achieve child protection objectives.
An overly zealous approach could compromise employees’ rights without gaining improvements in child protection.
The Union is responding to the Report.