Law Compliance Report - current edition - Report - Page 6
New South Wales Update
Children (Education and Care Services National Law Application)
Amendment Act 2025 (NSW)
On 24 April 2026, the Children (Education and Care Services National
Law Application) Amendment Act 2025 (NSW) (the Amending Act)
commenced. The Amending Act amended the Children (Education
and Care Services National Law Application) Act 2010 (NSW) (the
NSW Act), which applies the Education and Care Services National
Regulations (the Regulations) in New South Wales.
What's new?
What you should do
The key changes made by the Amending Act are to introduce
new policies and procedure requirements for education and
care service providers.
Organisations should:
Further Information
Under the new section 300E of the NSW Act, approved
providers and approved education and care services must:
have a protected disclosures policy; and
provide regular training and awareness sessions to the
staff about the importance of, and protections provided to,
persons making protected disclosures.
The Regulations prescribe mandatory policies and procedures
for education and care services. Amendments to regulation
168 introduce additional prescribed matters. Policies and
procedures must now address, among other matters:
in relation to child safety and wellbeing in the service:
a clear commitment that the safety, welfare and wellbeing
of the child is paramount in every action or decision;
compliance with NSW speci昀椀c child protection training
requirements;
maintenance of a register for child protection concerns;
use of a reporting decision tree, which must be kept
accessible to staff;
child protection risk assessments; and
practices (including day-to-day attendance records) to
ensure children are accounted throughout the day.
in relation to staf昀椀ng:
child-safe recruitment and ongoing employment practices,
including a requirement to make reasonable enquiries as
to whether prospective staff are subject to:
y suspension, supervision or prohibition notices; or
y enforceable undertakings.
6
Update existing policies or processes.
Circulate the updated policies to relevant personnel
and ensure the policies are accessible to staff and,
where appropriate, families
Draft a Code of Conduct and ensure that a copy is
signed during the employment onboarding process.
Require relevant staff, including supervisors and
persons with management or control to assess
whether any proposed decision, action or omission
could con昀氀ict with a child’s safety, wellbeing or best
interests.
Assign responsibility to a nominated role or team
for maintaining the register of child protection
concerns, training records, risk assessments and
reporting guidance.
Provide training and awareness sessions to
educators, coordinators, managers and relevant
support staff on the new requirements and
reporting pathways.
Update recruitment, screening, onboarding
and ongoing employment processes to include
the additional reasonable enquiry steps and
documentation requirements (including managing
con昀氀icts of interest).
Review attendance, handover, transition and childaccountability processes to ensure children are
accounted for throughout the day.
Update templates, forms, registers and record
keeping systems to support consistent
implementation and con昀椀dentiality controls.
August 2026 Edition | Law Compliance Report
