What Australia's Aged Care worker register might look like: lessons from childcare
An informed look at the proposed Aged Care worker screening check and registration scheme, and what the childcare worker register tells us about how they might work.
Two reforms are reshaping how Australia screens and registers Aged Care workers, and they are easy to confuse. This guide separates them, sets out what is actually decided versus what is still being designed, and uses the childcare worker register as the closest live example of what might be coming. It is informed analysis, not settled fact: where the detail is unresolved, we say so.
Two reforms, often confused
There are two distinct things in play, on different timelines:
- A worker screening check, a criminal-history clearance, which is being aligned with the NDIS Worker Screening Check.
- A registration scheme for personal care workers, a register that could carry training and scope-of-practice requirements.
They are not the same reform, and conflating them leads to confusion about what is required and when. We keep them separate throughout.
What is locked in today
From 1 November 2025, under the Aged Care Act 2024 and the Aged Care Rules 2025, every Aged Care worker and responsible person must hold either a police certificate under three years old (with no precluding offences) or an NDIS Worker Screening Clearance, valid five years. Those are the only two options, and AHPRA registration is not one of them.
The scope is broad: contractors, labour-hire and digital-platform workers, support staff and responsible persons are all covered. Workers can start under interim arrangements only with a pending application, supervision and a statutory declaration. This is the current state, and it is covered in full in the Aged Care worker screening requirements guide.
What is proposed: a national, NDIS-aligned screening check
The Australian Government is developing a national worker screening check for the whole care and support economy, spanning Aged Care, disability and veterans' care. It is being designed by a Care Workers Screening Taskforce within the Department of Finance, and is intended to mirror the NDIS Worker Screening Check and be mutually recognised across Aged Care and disability.
Two things are worth noting:
- It needs state and territory legislation, because worker screening operates under state and territory law. That makes it subject to inter-governmental agreement, and it is expected no earlier than mid-2026.
- The Department's guidance on new ways of working describes a future NDIS-aligned check at a high level but does not set out detailed future screening requirements, which signals that the specifics, including how a future check would replace or sit alongside today's police-certificate option, are not yet settled.
In short: the direction is clear, the detail is not.
What is still speculative: a personal care worker registration scheme
Separately, the Government has been designing a national registration scheme for personal care workers, a Royal Commission recommendation. Consultation on the design closed in April 2025 and a summary report followed in September 2025, reporting support for a register, harmonisation with disability support work, a defined scope of practice and training pathways.
This is the least settled of the reforms. No model has been finalised and no commencement date published. Likely features, based on the Royal Commission origin, include a minimum Certificate III, ongoing training, and a defined scope of practice, with grandfathering of existing workers unresolved. An electronic passport to carry registration and skills information between employers was raised only as a consultation question, not a decision.
Where Koora sits, honestly
A portable, worker-held Career Passport is positioned for exactly the kind of cross-sector mobility these reforms point towards. That is the direction of travel, not a government-chosen mechanism, and we are careful not to claim otherwise.
What the childcare register already teaches us
The childcare sector has a live worker register, the National Early Childhood Worker Register run by ACECQA, and it is the closest example of how an Aged Care register might work in practice. The National Early Childhood Worker Register guide covers it in full; the lessons that transfer are:
- Registers record details, not documents. The childcare register stores identity, role, qualifications, training and check validity, not uploaded files.
- The sighting duty stays with the provider. The approved provider or nominated supervisor sights each credential and records who sighted it and when. The provider keeps the document copies.
- Lodgement is central and national, in this case ACECQA's NQA IT System, not state portals.
- There is no legacy migration. Providers had to re-enter their entire current workforce, a significant one-off burden, worst for small or lightly documented services.
- Update windows are tight. Changes must be recorded within 14 days.
- A register is not continuous monitoring. A register existing does not mean real-time checking exists; that capability is being built separately and is years from full coverage.
The transfer thesis is simple: the predictable pains of any care register are re-keying the workforce, the sighting burden falling on the provider, a currency obligation, and the gap between a register and live monitoring.
How providers can get ready now
You cannot prepare for detail that is not decided, but you can prepare for the shape of it. The most useful steps a provider can take today:
- Audit your workforce records. Know what you hold, for whom, and whether it is current.
- Structure the data. Clean, consistent credential records re-key far more easily than scattered ones if a register arrives.
- Track currency now. Expiry tracking will matter under any future scheme.
- Understand the sighting duty. If Aged Care follows childcare, the legal sighting obligation will sit with you, so build the habit now.
The provider screening and record-keeping checklist is a practical starting point.
Where a portable Career Passport fits
A worker-held Career Passport addresses the part of any register that is hardest: getting a worker's credentials reviewed, organised and current before they are recorded. Koora acts as the pre-clearance layer. It reviews credentials, and verifies the ones that can be checked at an authoritative source such as a state Working With Children Check register, AHPRA or a government ban register, while police checks and qualifications are reviewed rather than verified at source. It tracks currency so nothing lapses unnoticed, and it reflects compliance at the time it is checked.
What it does not do is take on the provider's obligations. If an Aged Care register follows the childcare model, the sighting and record-keeping duties stay with the provider. Koora makes meeting them less work; it does not replace them.
This is general information, not compliance advice. Always confirm requirements with the relevant regulator, and remember that providers keep the legal responsibility to sight credentials and decide who can work.
We work hard to keep it accurate, but the rules change and we will not always get every detail right. If you think something here needs updating, email us at resources@koora.care. We would genuinely rather know, because we all do better when we help each other get it right.
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