A leading tech company specialising in child safety has discovered more than 500 workers and volunteers across Australia with invalid or revoked Working With Children Checks (WWCC), sparking fresh concern about flaws in the nation’s child protection system.
Oho, a digital screening firm established after the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse, monitors the credentials of over 250,000 individuals working in 138 organisations — including major sporting bodies such as the AFL, Tennis Australia, and Gymnastics Australia.
Since 2021, Oho has flagged 510 individuals whose WWCCs had been suspended, revoked, or expired — most of them based in Victoria. On average, the company identifies one such case per week.
The revelations come amid public outrage over allegations involving Joshua Dale Brown, a former childcare worker now charged with sexually abusing eight children while employed at 24 centres in Victoria.
Oho CEO Liv Whitty criticised state-based systems, particularly Victoria’s, for their delays and lack of employer-linking. She described the current system as outdated, relying on mailed notifications that can take up to six weeks to arrive — and are sometimes sent to the very person whose clearance has been revoked.
“In states like NSW, checks are better linked to employers. But in others, like Victoria, the system fails to notify workplaces in real time,” Whitty said.
Sporting organisations have turned to Oho for real-time, continuous online monitoring of employee credentials, replacing patchy or volunteer-based compliance methods.
Ms Whitty stressed the need for a national WWCC database, integrated with data on reportable conduct and prior undisclosed work history. She argued that the increasing rate of red flags shows that while government registers are acting, the system remains fragmented and vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the Victorian government has denied reports that a child at one of the centres where Brown worked had contracted an STI, saying all test results so far were negative, according to the Royal Children’s Hospital.
