If you work in early childhood education and care in Victoria, the past 12 months have brought more regulatory change than most services have seen in years. Child safety reforms have come from multiple directions at once and with VECRA (the Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority) now operating as Victoria’s independent ECEC regulator, compliance is being watched more closely than ever. Here’s what’s changed, what it means for your service, and what you need to do about it.
We’ve also got a FREE Webinar recording covering all that you need to know in 2026. Keep Reading!!
A New Regulatory Landscape
The reforms affecting Victorian ECEC services aren’t isolated tweaks, they represent a fundamental shift in how child safety is understood, regulated, and enforced across the sector. At the national level, the Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations have been updated with new offences, stronger penalties, and expanded obligations. At the Victorian level, the establishment of VECRA on 1 January 2026 signals that child safety compliance is no longer business as usual. The regulator is independent, it has expanded enforcement powers, and it is actively monitoring the sector.
For services that haven’t yet worked through what all of this means in practice, the window to act is narrowing.
Child Safety Is Now Everyone’s Responsibility: By Law
One of the most significant shifts in the 2026 reforms is how broadly child safety obligations now apply. The National Law requires the safety, rights, and best interests of children to be the paramount consideration for everyone involved in delivering education and care; not just educators, but approved providers, nominated supervisors, volunteers, students, and casual staff too.
This isn’t just a values statement. It has to be demonstrable. It needs to show up in your philosophy, your policies, your recruitment practices, your daily routines, and how your team talks about and responds to concerns. And with child safety now explicitly embedded into both Quality Area 2 and Quality Area 7 of the National Quality Standards, assessors will be looking for evidence of it across your entire service operation; not just in your child protection folder.
New Offences Your Service Needs to Know About
The reforms have significantly raised the stakes for non-compliance. Inappropriate conduct toward a child; or in the presence of a child, including between adults; is now a criminal offence under the National Law. Approved providers and nominated supervisors who fail to prevent it face penalties. This alone should prompt a review of your code of conduct, induction processes, and how concerns are reported and managed in your service.
Beyond that, a range of regulations have been newly classified as offences, and additional Penalty Infringement Notices have been introduced across multiple Quality Areas, covering areas including child protection awareness, transport and excursion requirements, record keeping, and the availability of legislation to staff and families. Services should also be aware that holding an insurance policy that indemnifies a provider or staff member against penalties for non-compliance with the NQF or Child Safe Standards is itself now an offence.
The compliance bar has been raised, and the consequences of falling short are more serious than they have ever been.
WWCC, Training, and the Worker Register: Getting the Practicalities Right
Alongside the legislative changes, there are several practical obligations that require immediate attention.
On Working with Children Checks, the rules are now tighter. Staff and volunteers must hold a current clearance and have it verified before they commence, not while their application is being processed. Both staff and approved providers have new notification obligations when WWCC status or VIT registration changes. If your current onboarding process doesn’t reflect this, it needs to be updated.
On training, Victorian services now have two distinct mandatory requirements to manage. The national child safety training, accessed through GECCKO, applies to all staff, volunteers, and students and must be completed within the legislated timeframe. Victorian services have an additional obligation, EC PROTECT training. for anyone working directly with children, also with a required completion deadline and ongoing renewal obligations. Both need to be embedded into your induction process with clear completion records maintained. Failure to comply is an offence.
For the National Early Childhood Worker Register, managed through NQAITS, all services must ensure details for every staff member, volunteer, student, nominated supervisor, and agency staff member are entered and kept current. In Victoria, this replaces the previous Arrival update requirement, but does not replace WWCC checks or qualification verification.
Don’t Overlook Personal Devices
It’s easy to focus on the bigger legislative changes and miss this one, but personal device restrictions are now a compliance area in their own right, with financial penalties attached. Personal devices: including phones, smart watches, tablets, and portable storage, are not permitted while working directly with children in centre-based services. Only service-supplied devices may be used to capture, store, or transmit images of children, and only for the purposes of providing education and care.
The restrictions apply broadly, to educators, volunteers, students, allied health professionals, and anyone delivering incursion activities. If your device policy hasn’t been updated to reflect this, it needs to be. along with your induction processes and any records for approved exceptions.
A Lot to Take In: Here’s Where to Go Next
Reading through all of this, it’s clear that these reforms touch virtually every part of how a service operates. Understanding what’s changed is one thing; knowing how to implement it practically, in the context of your specific service, is another.
That’s exactly what ACA Victoria’s recent Child Safety Workshop was designed to help with. Early childhood consultant Darlene Wadham; Managing Director of Absolute Support Training and Resources, with over 35 years of experience in the sector, walked Victorian ECEC providers through each of these reforms in plain language, with practical implementation strategies, real-world examples, and a full suite of resources to take away.
The one-hour recording is now available, and it’s one of the most practical investments of time you can make for your service right now.
Watch the Recording
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For more details on everything Child Safety in ECEC check out our dedicated webpage.
