The short answer
In short: a support worker's clearances and their training are different objects on different clocks, held by different parties. Clearances are issued and renewed outside your organisation. Training is delivered and recorded inside it. Running them as one list is the most common record keeping mistake we see.
This page sets out each clearance a support worker commonly needs, how long it lasts, who renews it, and what the provider is responsible for in between.
The clearances, one by one
NDIS Worker Screening Check. Required for workers in risk assessed roles. Valid five years, and this is the one with a property providers under-appreciate: it is continuously monitored. A clearance can be suspended or excluded during employment, without the worker mentioning it. The provider must not permit an excluded person to work in a risk assessed role, which means the obligation is live rather than annual.
Working with Children Check. State and territory administered, with different names, validity periods and processes in each jurisdiction. Required where a worker supports people under 18. Check the rule for the state the work happens in, not the state the worker lives in.
National Police Check. A point in time document. It says what the record showed on the day it was issued and nothing about the day after, which is why it is a weaker instrument than worker screening and why the two are not interchangeable.
First aid and CPR. Commonly three years and one year respectively. Those intervals come from the training product and the resuscitation guidance behind it rather than from the NDIS, and we have written separately about which intervals the NDIS actually sets, which is none.
Driver licence. Where transport is part of the support. Easy to forget because it feels personal rather than occupational, and it expires like anything else.
Right to work. Visa status and work entitlement. The document goes in the worker file; the expiry needs tracking somewhere that will warn you before it lapses.
Professional registration, where a role requires it. Held by the practitioner and verifiable at source.
Why clearances and training should not share a list
Four differences, and each one bites in a different way.
- Who holds the clock. You set when training is due. You do not set when a clearance expires, and you cannot extend one.
- What failure looks like. Overdue training is a gap to close. An expired or suspended clearance can mean a person must not be working in that role today.
- Where the truth lives. A training record is yours. A clearance is a fact held by an external authority, and your copy is a copy.
- What evidence means. A completion certificate shows a course was finished. A clearance shows a check was passed. Neither shows competence, which is a third thing again.
Providers who run one combined spreadsheet usually discover the difference at the worst moment, when something has lapsed and nobody is sure whether the person should be on shift.
The four things providers miss most
Nobody linked the worker to the provider in the Commission's portal. That link is what causes the Commission to notify you when a screening status changes. Without it you can be holding a clearance that is no longer valid and have no way of knowing.
Which roles are risk assessed was never written down. The obligation attaches to the role. If nobody has recorded which of your roles are risk assessed, you cannot show you applied the rule.
Right to work has a document but no expiry. The copy sits in the file and nothing is watching the date.
The warning window is too short. A seven day warning on a clearance that takes six weeks to renew is not a warning, it is a notification of a problem. Set the window to the renewal time, not to a round number.
What this needs from a platform, and why providers pick CORA for it
If this is the problem you came here with
Every failure above is the same failure: a date nobody was watching. That is what the credential register is for, and it is the part of CORA providers mention first.
Clearances live on the worker record, distinct from training. Worker screening, WWCC, police checks, first aid, CPR, driver licences, right to work and tickets, each with its own expiry and its own warning window at 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days, set by you to match the real renewal time rather than a round number.
The chasing is automatic. Reminders go out without anyone remembering. Upload a certificate and CORA reads the dates printed on it, so nobody types an expiry and nobody mistypes one.
Credential packs stop the list being somebody’s memory. A role carries its whole required set, so a new starter in a risk assessed role inherits the right clearances on day one instead of inheriting whatever the last person remembered.
And it is all on one record with the training, the policies, the onboarding and the supervision. That is the difference between answering an auditor with a filter and answering with a fortnight of collation, and it is why providers consolidating several subscriptions land on CORA rather than on a training platform that only holds courses.
See it against your own worker list, or read the pricing, published in full from a 15 seat band. If you would rather have the structure without the platform, the credential register template is free.
Sources
- NDIS Worker Screening, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- NDIS Practice Standards, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- Tracking credential expiry across a workforce, CORA
- What an NDIS auditor samples, CORA
General information for NDIS providers, not legal or compliance advice. Clearance rules differ by state and territory and change over time; check current detail with the issuing authority and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.