Safety checks
How to check a babysitter's WWCC (NSW parent's guide)
Anyone can verify a NSW Working With Children Check for free in about two minutes. What you need before you start, and what each result means.
Most parents have heard of the Working With Children Check. Far fewer have run one. Checking someone else's costs nothing and takes about two minutes, and in NSW nobody does it for you: the system assumes the parent will.
What the Check is
The Working With Children Check is a clearance issued by the NSW Office of the Children's Guardian. To get one, a person goes through a national police check and a review of any reportable workplace misconduct findings held about them.
There is no physical card. A cleared person holds a number that starts with WWC. Clearances come in two kinds, paid worker and volunteer, and a volunteer one does not cover paid work, so ask which they hold.
The number on its own proves nothing. Anyone can read one off a screenshot, or off somebody else's screen. It only becomes useful once you type it into the government's form and see the status that comes back, which is the part most people skip.
What you need before you start
Three things, and the check will not run without all three:
Ask for all three in one message
- Their family name, spelled as it appears on their Check
- Their date of birth
- Their WWC number
This is a routine request, and a babysitter who holds a current Check will have been asked before, so the answer usually comes back quickly. A long pause is worth noticing.
Where to check
Go to the Service NSW page for checking a Working With Children Check status. It links through to the Office of the Children's Guardian verification form. It is free, and you do not need an account.
Enter the three details exactly as they were given to you. Spelling matters. A hyphenated or double family name entered differently from how it was registered comes back as not found, which looks alarming and usually is not.
Running the check once also puts you on the Office of the Children's Guardian's list: if that person's status changes later, they contact you, with nothing to sign up for. The check you ran in March is still working for you in November.
What each result means
The form returns one of these results, and they are not equally negotiable:
Cleared
A current, valid clearance. The only result you should accept.
Application in progress
They have applied and the check has not finished. They may legally work while it processes, but you are not obliged to engage them, and for a babysitter you have no reason to. Ask them to come back when it clears.
Expired
The clearance has run out, so it is not current. Treat it as no Check at all and ask them to renew, which they have to do in person at a Service NSW centre once it has expired.
Barred or interim barred
Prohibited from child-related work, outright or while an assessment runs. Do not engage them, and do not negotiate about it.
Closed
The application was closed and is not being progressed. One reason is a bar in another state or territory; others are administrative, like a duplicate application. Ask whether they hold another number, and if this is the only one, treat it as Barred.
Not found
The three details do not match a record. Check the spelling and date of birth first, because that is usually the cause. If it still comes back not found, the number is wrong or it is not theirs.
How long does a WWCC take?
If a babysitter is still applying, how long the WWCC takes is counted from the identity check, not from the online form. Once they have proved their identity at a Service NSW centre, the Office of the Children's Guardian says the national police history results can take up to four weeks to come back. Until the identity check is done, the clock has not started.
If those results raise something that needs a risk assessment, it takes longer again, and the Office of the Children's Guardian does not publish a range for it.
Most applicants may work with children while the application runs. Teachers and early childhood workers may not. A nanny can start on "Application in progress" if the rest of the hiring stacks up, but the Check proves nothing until it clears, so check it yourself and see Cleared before you rely on it.
How much does a WWCC cost in NSW?
$112 for a paid worker, and it runs five years, so about $22 a year. A volunteer Check is free but does not cover paid work, so a babysitter who is paid, even now and then, needs the $112 one. Renewing costs the same as applying.
The applicant pays it at the Service NSW centre, when they prove their identity. A family never pays for a babysitter's Check. Victoria prices it differently, and what a WWCC costs in Victoria is in that guide.
How to renew a WWCC in NSW
A babysitter can renew a WWCC from three months before it expires, and gets a reminder email at that point. It runs another five years from there.
Most people renew online without going anywhere: a MyServiceNSW account, three identity documents including a NSW driver licence or photo card, and a face check against them. Two situations still need a Service NSW centre in person. One is a clearance that has already expired. The other is a name that has changed since the last renewal.
A lapsed Check does not always stop work. An employer must not keep someone in child-related work until they can verify a current application or clearance, so a nanny whose check comes back "Application in progress" keeps working on that number, and one whose check comes back Expired or Not found is off the job until it does. Renewing in the week the reminder email arrives avoids all of this.
How to find your WWCC number
This part is for the babysitter, or for a parent whose babysitter has said "I have one but I cannot find the number".
A NSW WWC number is three letters and seven digits followed by E or V, like WWC1234567E, and the letter is the kind of clearance: E for paid work, V for volunteer. There is no card to lose. The number is in the clearance email the Office of the Children's Guardian sent when the application was approved, and it shows in the Service NSW app once the Check is added there, which is also where the QR code above comes from.
If the email is gone, Service NSW has an online find your Working with Children Check number service. It asks for one of two things: your NSW driver licence number, or the application number from when you applied. The application number starts with APP and is not the WWC number, which is what the form gives back. With neither, you contact the Office of the Children's Guardian directly.
Outside NSW the number lives somewhere different in every state. Victoria issues a plastic card, with a digital one in the Service Victoria app, and Service Victoria has its own find your card number service; the whole Victorian scheme, who needs it and how a parent checks a card, is in our Working with Children Check in Victoria guide. Queensland's blue card, Western Australia's WWC card, the ACT's and Tasmania's registration cards and the Northern Territory's Ochre Card all carry the number on the card. Among those, Queensland requires a paid babysitter to hold the card even when a family arranges the booking, and the blue card has its own guide. South Australia issues no card at all: the number is in the holder's Screening SA account and outcome email. Which check each state runs, and from what age, is in babysitter requirements in Australia.
Once you have it, a profile is the place for it. A babysitter listed here enters the number on their profile, we verify it against the state's register wherever we can search one, and the profile carries a badge that a parent can filter for. Become a babysitter takes about three minutes.
What a WWCC does not tell you
A cleared Check means the state looked at a specific set of records and found nothing that disqualifies this person from working with children. That is worth having. It is also narrower than most parents assume.
It says nothing about whether someone is good with children, turns up on time, or can handle a toddler who will not settle. It says nothing about a first aid certificate, a driver's licence, or the years of experience on a profile. Those are claims, and you check a claim by asking to see the certificate and ringing someone who has used them.
Run the Check, then do the rest. Meet them before the first booking. Ask for two families you can call, and then call them. Have a short trial while you are still in the house. The Office of the Children's Guardian publishes its own guidance for parents and carers, which is worth ten minutes of reading.
Does a babysitter even need one?
Not always, and this trips up a lot of people. A privately arranged babysitter working in your own home is not legally required to hold a WWCC in NSW. A nanny, au pair, or tutor is, and you as the parent are the one expected to verify it. We have written that up separately in babysitter vs nanny: what NSW law actually requires.
A low legal requirement is not a reason to ask for less. Plenty of casual babysitters hold a Check because it makes them easier to hire, and asking for one is reasonable whether or not the law compels it.
What we do about this on AusBabysitters
A verified badge on this site means we ran the process above ourselves. We checked the babysitter's WWCC status with the Office of the Children's Guardian on a date we record and display. Separately, Didit, our identity provider, confirmed a government photo ID against a matching selfie. The name and date of birth on that ID have to match the WWCC details, or the badge does not go on.
Because we ran the verification, the Office of the Children's Guardian notifies us if a status changes. A barred notification takes the profile down the same day.
We do not check references, first aid certificates, or how many years someone has been sitting. Those appear on profiles as the babysitter's own claims, labelled as claims. A profile without a badge is one where at least one of those two checks is not confirmed, and the profile says which one in the place the badge would otherwise sit.
