Safety checks
Working with Children Check in Victoria: what babysitters and parents need to know
Who needs a Victorian WWC Check, what it costs, how to apply, and how a parent checks a babysitter's card in two minutes with Service Victoria's free checker.
Victoria runs its own Working with Children Check, the WWCC, with its own card, its own price and its own rule on which babysitting needs it. Half of this is for the babysitter getting one, half for the parent reading the card. It is not legal advice.
Who needs a Working with Children Check in Victoria
The Act lists the jobs that count as child-related work, and the line for babysitting is "babysitting or child minding services arranged by a commercial agency". A babysitter a family finds and books themselves is not on the list, paid or not. Victoria's own guidance says so plainly.
A nanny is treated as needing one. Commercial in-home care is on the list, and no government page says a nanny paid directly by a family is off it, so nannies and families work on the basis that the card is required. Anyone under 18 is exempt altogether, so a 16-year-old babysitter will not have one. And a parent who hires directly for their own child commits no offence either way: the duty to hold the card sits with the worker.
What a WWCC costs in Victoria: Employee or Volunteer
Employee
For any paid child-related work.
- $139.20 for five years, from 1 July 2026
- Renewal $105.30, replacement card $8.60
- Marked E on the card
Volunteer
For unpaid work only.
- Free, five years
- Reimbursed expenses still count as unpaid
- Marked V on the card
A babysitter who got a free Volunteer card for a sports club and then takes paid nanny work needs the Employee one. Working paid on a V card is an offence, and so is paying someone on one.
How to apply for a WWCC in Victoria
Apply online through Service Victoria. You prove who you are with two documents photographed on your phone, one from each list: a driver licence, learner permit or Medicare card, and a passport, birth certificate or citizenship certificate. You upload a passport-style photo. Without the two documents you take three to an Australia Post outlet instead, and they take the photo for free.
You get an application number, and most people may start child-related work while it is assessed. An application with no criminal history can come back within days; the rest take three to twelve weeks. The plastic card comes in the post, and a digital one appears in the Service Victoria app.
How a parent checks a WWCC card
The Service Victoria checker is free and needs no account. It does need the holder's permission: the page says "Make sure you have someone's permission if you're checking their WWCC status. Penalties may apply if you don't." So start with a message.
Ask for these in one message
- Their family name as it appears on the card
- The first eight characters of the card number, seven digits and a letter
- Their okay for you to run it
Enter both and read the sentence back. If the number ends in a hyphen and two digits, like 1234567A-01, leave that part off. The checker reads eight characters.
What each result means
May engage in child related work
A current Clearance, with the expiry date. Write the date down. This is the only result to accept.
May not engage in child related work
Expired, surrendered, suspended, an Interim Bar or an Exclusion. The checker does not say which, and the state will not tell you why. Wait for a current card.
Family name and card number do not match
Usually a typo, a married name, or the reissue suffix pasted in. Check the spelling and try again.
Do not rely on the result to tell you which card it is. For a paid nanny, read the letter off the card. The holder is also meant to add anyone who engages them to their own record within 21 days, which is what gets you told if the card is later suspended, so ask them to. A current card also says nothing about whether someone is good with children or holds the first aid certificate on their profile. Those are claims, and the questions worth asking are how you check them.
Renewing a Victorian WWCC, and what expiry means
A cardholder can renew online from six months before expiry until three months after, and after that it is a new application. It costs $105.30 for an Employee card and nothing for a Volunteer one, and a reminder comes 28 days out.
Once the card expires, child-related work is illegal until a renewal is lodged. For a privately booked babysitter nothing is illegal, but the checker says "may not engage" until the renewal goes through. A family who sees that result is not being told the babysitter did anything wrong.
Finding your card number
A Victorian number is seven digits and a letter, like 1076131A. It is on the plastic card, on the digital card in the app, and in the email that came with the card. If all three are gone, Service Victoria has a find your card number service, and a replacement card keeps the same number.
Once you have it, put it on your profile. Become a babysitter takes about three minutes, and the card is asked for after you are listed.
Moving from another state
No state recognises another's check. A babysitter who moves from Sydney to Melbourne applies for a Victorian card, and the NSW one stops counting the day they arrive. The only concession is 30 days a year for a visitor, which covers a nanny travelling with a family and nothing else. The NSW check has its own guide, and every other state's is in the state-by-state table.
What we check
A verified badge on a Victorian profile means we ran the check above with Service Victoria, with the permission the babysitter gave us, on a date the profile shows, and Didit, our identity provider, matched a government photo ID to a selfie with the same name. We check once: the badge names the month, it comes off the morning after the card expires, and the free checker is there for a family who wants today's answer.
