A person is a prohibited from working with children under the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Act 2016 (SA) if they [s 15(1)]:

This means that a person may be prohibited from working with children even without applying for a working with children check.

It is an offence for a prohibited person to work with children. The maximum penalty for this offence is a fine of $50,000 or imprisonment for 1 year [s 15(3)].

What is a prescribed offence?

Section 5 defines prescribed offence for the purposes of the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Act 2016 (SA). It includes a range of criminal offences where the victim was a child, such as murder, manslaughter, kidnapping and unlawful child removal, rape and other sexual offences, incest, and child exploitation offences. It also includes a conspiracy or attempt to commit such offences, aiding or abetting such offences, and assault with the intent to commit such offences. For a complete list of prescribed offences, see Appendix 1 of the Working with Children Check Guidelines (July 2024) (PDF, 461KB).

Some offences are excluded from the definition of prescribed offence by regulation 5 of the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Regulations 2019 (SA). Certain sexual offences will not be prescribed offences if the victim consented to the conduct constituting the offence and either the victim was not less than:

Spent convictions are also excluded from the definition of prescribed offence, but may still form part of the assessable information for the purposes of a working with children check [Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Regulations 2019 (SA) reg 5(b)].