6 Aug 2026
Child Safe foundation training is now mandatory, with a 2-year refresher
Every staff member has to complete child safe foundation training and refresh it every 2 years. It sits alongside the screening card, not instead of it.
- Who it applies to
- Every staff member at an education and care service.
What changed
Child safe foundation training is now expected of every staff member, and it has to be refreshed every 2 years. It does not replace a screening card, a first aid certificate or a qualification — it is an extra record you need to be able to produce.
The trap is the two dates. A completion certificate shows the day the training was done; what an assessor cares about is whether the refresher is still current. If you file the completion date as the expiry date, the record will read as current for two years longer than it should.
New starters are the other risk. A staff member who has never done the training has no date to enter at all, so they will not appear in any date-based reminder unless the missing record itself is treated as a gap.
What to do in Ratio
- Add “Child Safe foundation training” to each staff member and enter the refresher due date, not the completion date.
- Attach the certificate or completion record from the training provider as evidence.
- Check the gaps report — anyone without the training is listed there rather than passing quietly.
- Leave alerts as they are: the 90, 30 and 7 day reminders pick up the refresher automatically.
Sources and copyright
This summary is our own wording, not a reproduction of official material. The source material remains the copyright of the body that publishes it and is generally licensed for personal or non-commercial use only, so we link to it rather than copying it. Read the official source above for the authoritative wording. Ratio is independent and is not endorsed by any regulator.
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