Can you reuse a police check or WWCC between care jobs?
Which care-sector checks travel with you between employers, which expire, and how a Career Passport lets you share reviewed credentials with each new provider.
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If you work in Aged Care, disability or childcare, you have probably built up a small stack of checks: a National Police Check (Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check), maybe a Working With Children Check, maybe an NDIS Worker Screening Clearance. When you start a new job, the obvious question is whether you have to do all of that again. The short answer is that some checks travel with you and some do not, and knowing the difference saves you time and money.
This guide explains which care-sector checks are portable between employers, why a current check still gets re-confirmed at each job, and how a Career Passport lets you share your checked credentials with every new provider.
What "portable" actually means
A portable check is one that attaches to you as a person, not to a single job. It stays valid for its set period no matter how many employers you work for in that time. The opposite is a point-in-time check, which is only ever a snapshot of a single day and starts ageing the moment it is issued.
The care sector mixes both kinds, which is why the rules feel confusing. Here is how the three most common checks behave.
NDIS Worker Screening Clearance: portable nationally for five years
An NDIS Worker Screening Check clearance is the strongest example of portability in the sector.
- It is nationally recognised. A clearance issued by any state or territory screening unit must be accepted by NDIS providers anywhere in Australia.
- It is valid for up to five years.
- You do not reapply when you change employers or move interstate. Instead, each provider you work for is linked to your clearance.
- It is continuously monitored across that whole period, so relevant new information can flow through during the five years, not just at application.
Because a national police history check is built into the NDIS Worker Screening Check, you should not be asked for a separate standalone National Police Check on top of it for disability work. The screening check already covers that ground.
One clearance, many employers
An NDIS Worker Screening Clearance is designed to be shared. When you join a new NDIS provider, they link themselves to your existing clearance rather than sending you off to start again. You only renew it once, in one jurisdiction, up to 90 days before it expires.
Working With Children Check: portable across employers, not across borders
A Working With Children Check (WWCC) sits with you as an individual too, but with two important limits.
- It is portable across employers and roles within the state or territory that issued it. Once you hold a valid check, you can move between childcare services without applying again.
- It is not transferable between states and territories. If you work across a border, you need the right check for each jurisdiction. National Working With Children Check reform is underway to improve consistency between jurisdictions, but the checks remain state based for now.
- Validity periods differ by state: typically five years in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT, and shorter in some others. Check your own state's expiry date.
- It is subject to ongoing monitoring. If relevant information arises during the validity period, the issuing authority can alter or withdraw your clearance and notify employers.
As with NDIS screening, a police history is already bundled into the WWCC, so in childcare you should not be listing a separate police check as its own item.
The National Police Check: a snapshot that ages out
A National Police Check behaves differently from the two checks above. It is a point-in-time document. It tells an employer what your disclosable history looked like on the day it was printed, and nothing after that.
- It does not "transfer" in the way a clearance does. It simply gets older.
- There is no single national rule for how old is too old. Many Aged Care employers look for a check issued within the last three years, but each organisation sets its own currency expectation.
- In Aged Care, worker screening from 1 November 2025 means a National Police Check issued under three years ago OR an NDIS Worker Screening Clearance. Those are the two screening options. AHPRA registration, where you hold it, is a professional registration and is never a substitute for worker screening.
So a National Police Check can be reused while it is still considered current, but it is not monitored and it does not refresh itself. That is the core reason employers keep re-checking. As best practice, Koora recommends a fresh check obtained for the role you are starting rather than relying on an older one that happens to still be within the limit. We explain the difference between a valid check and a current one in do you need a new police check for a new care job.
Why employers re-confirm a check that is "still valid"
Even when your check is genuinely portable, a new employer will usually re-confirm it. This is not red tape for its own sake. The provider, not you and not any platform, keeps the legal responsibility for who they engage. That duty does not disappear just because you arrive with paperwork.
Employers re-confirm because they need to:
- Confirm the check is still current today, not merely valid when you were last hired.
- Make sure they are correctly linked to your NDIS clearance so monitoring alerts reach them.
- Keep their own records audit ready for a regulator.
The practical pain for workers is repetition: digging out certificates, emailing scans, and chasing expiry dates across several jobs at once. That is the gap a Career Passport is built to close.
How a Career Passport helps you reuse your checks
A Career Passport is a single, portable record of your care-sector credentials that you control and can share with each new employer. Instead of re-sending documents to every provider, you share one profile that is kept current.
- Your qualifications, training and screening records sit in one place, checked against what your roles require, so you stop re-uploading the same files.
- Authoritative checks are verified by Koora where that is possible: AHPRA registration against the AHPRA register, and Working With Children Checks against the public state lookup in Victoria, Queensland, WA, Tasmania and the NT. NSW and SA Working With Children Checks, National Police Checks, qualifications, training records and NDIS Worker Screening Clearances are reviewed by a person once you share your passport with a provider or a provider asks for access, with source verification on the roadmap.
- Each new provider sees current-state status when the report is run. Koora shows where things stand at that moment; it does not reconstruct a history.
- Sharing your Passport speeds up onboarding, but it does not remove the provider's job of checking evidence and deciding who can work. Convenience for you sits alongside the provider keeping full responsibility.
Authoritative sources
- NDIS Worker Screening Check, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- Screening requirements for the Aged Care workforce, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
- Working With Children Check reform, National Office for Child Safety
If you work across more than one provider, see working across multiple care providers for how a shared profile fits multiple jobs. For a plain explainer of the product itself, read what is a Career Passport. And for the detail on the most portable check in the sector, see the NDIS Worker Screening Check state by state guide.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a new police check for every care job I take?
Not always. A National Police Check is a snapshot taken on the day it was issued, so it ages out rather than transferring. Many employers accept a recent check, but in disability and childcare roles a police history is already bundled into the NDIS Worker Screening Check or your Working With Children Check, so a standalone check is usually not the relevant item.
Is my NDIS Worker Screening Clearance valid across different employers?
Yes. An NDIS Worker Screening Clearance is nationally recognised and valid for up to five years. You do not reapply when you move to another NDIS provider or to another state or territory. Your employers are linked to your clearance, and it is subject to ongoing monitoring across that whole period.
Can I use the same Working With Children Check for two childcare centres?
Yes, within the same state or territory. A Working With Children Check attaches to you as an individual, not to one job, so it is portable across employers for its validity period. It is not transferable between states, so working across borders means holding the right check for each jurisdiction.
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 everything accurate, and our compliance engine keeps up with the rules as they change. Even so, we might get a detail slightly wrong or miss something. No one's perfect. 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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