Queensland’s Reportable Conduct Scheme

Working to protect children from harm

The Reportable Conduct Scheme is part of Queensland’s new child safeguarding law – the Child Safe Organisations Act. The Act works to protect children from harm when they interact with businesses and organisations.

Around 10,000 organisations in Queensland that care for, supervise or exercise authority over children are required to comply with the Reportable Conduct Scheme. It requires organisations to report and investigate allegations of child abuse and misconduct by their workers. The scheme is an important way we can create a culture where children, parents, carers and workers feel confident to raise concerns about harm to children.

The Act also introduces Child Safe Standards, which require organisations to prioritise the safety of children in their culture, governance, policies and practices. These are already in effect for organisations working with children or providing spaces or services specifically for them.

The Child Safe Standards and the Reportable Conduct Scheme work together: the standards work to prevent harm, and the scheme enables an appropriate response if harm occurs.

The Reportable Conduct Scheme plays a critical role in identifying behaviour that could indicate a risk to children, particularly when the conduct may not reach a threshold for a police response. This provides a reporting pathway for children, parents and carers that has previously not been available for non-criminal matters. It also enables information to be shared between police, Blue Card Services, regulators and other organisations to strengthen how we identify risks to children.

The Reportable Conduct Scheme comes into effect from 1 July 2026. If your organisation is in scope for the scheme, you need to be preparing now.

This means:

• preventing reportable conduct by embedding the Child Safe Standards throughout your organisation
• educating everyone involved in your organisation about what constitutes reportable conduct and who concerns can be reported about
• putting systems in place that enable anyone to report concerns of reportable conduct to the head of your organisation and to the Queensland Family and Child Commission
• investigating reportable conduct when concerns are raised and managing risks to children throughout this process.

The responsibility to manage reports and investigations about reportable conduct belongs to the head of the organisation – usually a chief executive officer or principal officer. Failure to notify us of reportable conduct can attract a fine of $17,000.

While responsibility for your organisation’s compliance with the scheme belongs to leadership, everyone has a responsibility under the scheme to report concerns of harm to children.

Webinars

Our Child Safe Organisations team is offering webinars throughout May and June for organisations working to implement the Reportable Conduct Scheme.

These sessions are designed to help you understand your obligations and will cover:

• the types of conduct that are reportable under the scheme
• who reports can be about
• the systems your organisation will need in place from 1 July
• what happens at each stage of a matter—including reporting, investigations, and risk management.

Register to attend by clicking on the session links below.

Can’t make any of these sessions?

There’s an on-demand webinar you can watch at any time convenient to you on the website.