Keeping Children & Young People Safe: A Disability Support Worker's Guide

A disability or aged care worker can go a whole career without ever being funded to support a child, and still meet one on shift. A participant's own daughter. A young person at the day program down the hall. A neighbour's child, met once, in passing. This course is about what a worker's job is in exactly those situations, not about becoming a children's services worker.

Does this course apply to me if I don't support children?

Yes, more often than the job title suggests. Any of the following puts a worker in scope: the person they support is under 18, there are children in the home, siblings are around including during personal care, the work happens in a shared space such as a day program or group home, or children simply visit. The course works through a child who is a participant's own daughter, a young person who attends a day program, a young person who lives in a group home, and a child a worker has never met before, encountered only because they happen to be a neighbour's son. In several of these the child is not the worker's NDIS participant at all, and the duty does not wait for that to be true. Children with disability are also harmed at higher rates than other children, for practical reasons: more adults have access, personal care is routine, communication can be harder, and a child may be less believed. The one a worker can do something about is the last one. Take a child seriously the first time.

What is a support worker's job when something doesn't look right?

Notice, listen if a child tells you something, record it, and report it to someone with the authority to act. That is the whole of it, and the course is built around keeping a worker inside that role. Across every scenario in the course, the wrong answers share a pattern: questioning the child directly to find out more, deciding to raise it with a parent first instead of reporting it, or working out alone whether something has actually happened. Each of those is a version of investigating, and investigating a concern is not a support worker's job. It belongs to the people trained and authorised to do it. A support worker does not need proof, only a reasonable concern, and a bruise that fits an ordinary explanation with nothing else wrong is recorded rather than escalated. The course draws that line because reporting every mark on every child would swamp the system that protects the children who actually need it.

What counts as harm, and what does grooming look like?

The course works through four recognised forms of harm, plus a fifth. Physical harm is deliberate injury, or rough handling during care, marks in unusual places or that do not fit the explanation given. Sexual harm covers any sexual act or exposure involving a child, including images and online contact, and consent is never possible. Emotional harm, constant criticism, threats, rejection or humiliation, leaves no mark and does lasting damage. Neglect, failing to provide food, shelter, hygiene, supervision, medical care or safety, is the most commonly reported form and the easiest for a worker to talk themselves out of. The fifth is exposure to family violence: a child does not have to be hit to be harmed by violence in the home, and seeing or hearing it counts.

Grooming is a pattern, not a single event, and each step can look harmless by itself: singling a child out for special attention, gifts and favours given quietly, creating time alone through lifts or extra shifts, "this is just between us" about anything at all, touch that tests a little further each time, and contact outside work on a private number or social media. It targets the adults around a child as much as the child, so a colleague being charming about a special bond with one child is the thing to notice, not something to admire.

What should a worker say if a child discloses something?

Stay calm, because a child reads a worker's face first. Listen and let them finish without filling the silence. Believe them, and say so: "I believe you. I'm glad you told me." Tell them plainly that it is not their fault. And be honest about what happens next: "I have to tell someone whose job it is to help." Write down what they said, in their own words, as soon as possible afterwards.

Four things do real damage in that moment. Do not promise secrecy, because it cannot be kept and breaking it later is worse than never promising it. Do not ask leading questions such as "did he touch you?", because it can damage a case later; open prompts like "can you tell me about that?" are safe, anything that suggests an answer is not. Do not investigate: no gathering evidence, no asking others, no checking the story. And do not confront the person named, because it warns them and can put the child in more danger.

Am I a mandated notifier, and does that even matter?

Every state and territory has a law requiring certain workers to report suspected abuse or neglect, but who is covered is narrower than most workers assume. In South Australia, for example, two things must both be true before the mandatory reporting law applies to a worker: the organisation provides services for children, and the worker provides those services to children directly. A worker in an adult participant's home usually meets neither test, and nor does most aged care work. Where the duty does apply, it requires a suspicion, not proof, reported as soon as practicable, and telling a manager does not discharge it. A notifier who reports in good faith is protected by law, and their identity is kept confidential.

A second duty exists regardless of mandated notifier status. If the provider is a registered NDIS provider, abuse, neglect, unlawful sexual or physical contact, and sexual misconduct including grooming are reportable incidents that must reach the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, usually within 24 hours. It applies whoever the child is, it runs alongside the state reporting line rather than replacing it, and it starts with a worker telling their provider the same day.

Does the course tell me exactly who to call?

One of its scenarios is set in South Australia and uses the Child Abuse Report Line, 13 14 78, open at all hours, as the service a worker in that situation would contact. Reporting lines, thresholds and the law behind them differ by state and territory, and change over time, so the table below is a guide to ask your provider to confirm, not a substitute for their current policy.

In an immediate danger, call 000 first, always, before anything else. These numbers are provided as the course states them, change from time to time, and should be confirmed against your own provider's current policy before you rely on one.

What about screening checks, and writing it down?

Two different checks exist and one does not replace the other: a state-based Working with Children Check, and a separate national NDIS Worker Screening Check for NDIS risk-assessed roles. Both expire, and working past an expiry is the provider's problem and the worker's. A check is a floor, not a guarantee: it screens out known risk, it does not make a place safe on its own. A record that holds up needs the child's own words, quoted as closely as possible, not a summary; the date, time, setting and who else was present; and what the worker said back and who they told, with the time. "Appropriate action taken in line with policy" tells a reader nothing they can act on. If a report goes nowhere internally, the duty is still the worker's, and a worker can and should report externally themselves rather than wait.

What doesn't this course cover?

It does not make a worker an investigator, an interviewer, or the person who decides whether abuse occurred. It does not cover every state's law in full, only the structure that is common to all of them and the detail for South Australia. And it does not teach a model of supporting a child to advocate for themselves in the moment, because the worker's job here is to pass a concern on, not to manage how the child chooses to handle it. Those boundaries are deliberate. A course that blurred any of them would be teaching a worker to do a job that belongs to someone else, trained and authorised for it.

How CORA's course fits into this

CORA's course Keeping Children & Young People Safe, part of the Compliance Foundations stream in the course library, is built on the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and works through recognising harm, responding to a disclosure, and a worker's own reporting duty. It complements, rather than replaces, state-endorsed Child Safe Environments training, and it sits alongside course 1.4, Abuse, Neglect & Incident Reporting, rather than repeating it: this course's ground is children specifically, including children who are not themselves using the service.

If you're mapping this alongside the rest of Compliance Foundations for your team, try the Free tools, free and no sign-up required, or enquire.

Sources and further reading

• National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, Australian Human Rights Commission
• NDIS Code of Conduct, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
• Reportable incidents, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
• Reporting child abuse or neglect, Department for Child Protection, South Australia

This page is general information for support workers and providers, not legal advice. This course complements, rather than replaces, state-endorsed Child Safe Environments training. Reporting obligations, reporting lines and screening checks differ between states and territories. Always follow your organisation's specific child safety and reporting policies.