Every aged care worker in Australia must pass a criminal history check before they can set foot in a client’s home. Under the Aged Care Act 2024, which came into effect six months ago, that obligation has been strengthened further. All workers must now hold a valid police certificate no older than three years, or a current NDIS Worker Screening Clearance. The rules are strict, the obligations non-negotiable, and non-compliance can result in regulatory action.
The people those workers visit? No equivalent check required.
It is a disparity that has long simmered in the aged care sector, and one that frontline home care workers say is placing them in genuinely dangerous situations. Alone, in private residences, with clients whose histories they know nothing about.
“We can be in a home alone showering, cleaning or doing anything with someone who has been imprisoned for rape, murder, or domestic violence,” one experienced community care worker says. “We have no idea of a client’s background or the safety risks, and it seems like this industry doesn’t care about worker safety at all.”
A one-sided safety system
The asymmetry is stark. Workers are legally required to submit to background screening as a condition of employment. The offences that can bar someone from working in aged care under the current framework include murder, sexual assault, and, for Commonwealth Home Support Program providers, any conviction involving the death of a person or a sex-related offence carrying a sentence of one year or more.
The stated purpose is clear: to protect vulnerable older Australians from people who might harm them.
But the protective logic does not run in both directions. There is no equivalent requirement for aged care clients, whether receiving in-home support through Support at Home or any other program, to disclose criminal histories to providers. Nor is there any obligation on providers to conduct such checks.
This means a support worker can be dispatched alone to a client’s home with no information about whether that person has a history of violence, sexual offending, or other serious criminal conduct.
“We have to trust the system we work in,” one worker reflects, though she notes that trust was severely tested when she discovered, through a separate service rather than her employer or coordinator, that a client she had been supporting through the NDIS was a registered sex offender. “I didn’t change my attitude towards them, but I was more careful about taking them places,” she says. “I sought more information from the authorities because the coordinator didn’t have any more information.”
Another worker describes a facility-based incident that illustrates what can happen when a client’s background is not disclosed. A new resident with a history of domestic violence was placed without that information being shared with staff. Within months, the aggression began to surface. “One morning he was on top of another client, punching into him and threatening to kill him,” the worker recounts. “Nothing was disclosed.”
The Support at Home Program Manual (Version 4.2, December 2025) and the Aged Care Act 2024 do place obligations on providers in relation to worker safety, but they are framed around risk management processes rather than any specific screening requirement for clients.
Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, aged care employers, like all Australian employers, are required to identify hazards and take all reasonably practicable steps to protect their workers. When work is conducted in someone’s home, that home is considered a workplace. SafeWork NSW guidelines make clear that providers should conduct home safety risk assessments and consult with workers about identified hazards before services begin.
The Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, which apply to Support at Home providers in categories 4 and 5 from 1 November 2025, require providers to have governance systems in place that identify and manage risk. Standard 2 places responsibility squarely on providers’ leadership to ensure safe service delivery environments.
At the same time, the same framework enshrines the principle of dignity of risk: the right of older Australians to make their own decisions about how they live, including decisions that carry some element of risk. The Support at Home Program Manual explicitly states that providers must support participants to exercise dignity of risk to maintain their independence and quality of life.
It is in the tension between these two principles, a provider’s WHS duty of care to workers and a participant’s right to autonomy, that the question of client background disclosure becomes genuinely complex.
But workers on the ground say the balance has tipped too far in one direction.
“It’s not about judging anyone,” says one experienced support worker who has worked across both aged care and NDIS settings. “It’s about being aware, so workers can be as safe as possible.”
The daily reality
The violence problem in Australian aged care is not a hypothetical. Research published in 2025 in the journal Human Resource Management found that over 70 per cent of aged care workers have experienced some form of workplace violence. In 2019-20, Australian residential aged care services alone reported 5,718 resident-on-worker assaults, a figure researchers note is likely an undercount given known under-reporting in the sector.
The home care environment, where workers operate in isolation without colleagues or supervisors nearby, arguably presents even greater risk.
“Support workers get thrown into services without proper training, without understanding of mental health, without understanding of drug and alcohol abuse,” says one worker with fifteen years in the industry. “I don’t get paid enough to be beaten or verbally abused. So each time I’ve walked out. But I do give every client a chance.”
That phrase, I walked out, recurs constantly among workers discussing safety. It is, effectively, the industry’s primary risk-management tool at the individual level: if you don’t feel safe, leave. Call your office. Refuse to go back.
Workers and advocates are increasingly asking whether this is adequate.
“Workers must have police checks, so why not clients?” says one worker. “Is sending workers into unsafe situations not a WHS consideration? Is client privacy more important than worker privacy and safety?”
The case for disclosure
Some workers are careful to distinguish between disclosure and discrimination. The argument is not that clients with criminal histories should be denied care. That would almost certainly conflict with anti-discrimination principles and, as some workers note, a criminal history is not a reliable predictor of behaviour in a care context. People change. Dementia and cognitive decline can cause aggression in people with no history of violence whatsoever, while some clients with significant criminal records may be entirely cooperative.
“I have assisted someone who went to jail for manslaughter,” says one worker. “He regretted what happened. It did not change the way I did my work, but was I more aware of my surroundings and exits? Yes.”
The argument workers are making is more targeted: that relevant risk information should be available to providers so they can conduct proper risk assessments, deploy appropriate staffing arrangements, and prepare workers before they walk into an unknown situation.
“I believe their past should be a mandatory report to the organisation that is caring for them,” says one worker who describes discovering a facility client’s sex offence history only through a news article a colleague happened to read. “It’s not about judging. It’s a heads up.”
Others point to existing precedent. Many providers already deploy two workers for clients flagged as presenting elevated risk, restrict certain activities during service hours, or brief staff on known behavioural patterns. The problem, workers say, is that this only works when the risk is known.
A Glaring hole
Since the rollout of aged care reforms late last year, the new system has drawn sustained criticism from older people, their families, disability advocates, and aged care providers alike. It has been widely characterised as more complex, less flexible, and in many practical respects a step backwards from the Home Care Packages model it replaced.
Providers have flagged funding shortfalls, administrative burdens, and confusion over service categories. Clients have reported reductions in the support they receive. The sector that spent years calling for meaningful reform largely feels it got bureaucratic churn instead.
Against that backdrop, the question of worker safety and client background disclosure sits in particularly uncomfortable territory. The Support at Home Program Manual, now in its fourth revision since launch, devotes section 3.5 to worker screening, covering police certificates and NDIS clearances in detail. The participant-facing provisions, by contrast, emphasise rights, dignity, and choice.
There is no requirement anywhere in the framework for any background check, disclosure, or risk assessment process relating to a client’s criminal history before in-home services commence.
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will audit providers against the Strengthened Quality Standards, but those standards are silent on any obligation to proactively gather or share information about a participant’s criminal background. The Serious Incident Response Scheme requires providers to report incidents after they occur. It does nothing to prevent them.
For a sector that endured a Royal Commission because the previous system failed to keep people safe, the absence of any mechanism to protect the workers now delivering that care is a striking omission, and one that the new legislation, for all its stated ambition, has done nothing to address.
“It’s not about judgement,” one worker says. “It’s about making sure we come home safe at the end of the shift.”
Caring can be difficult dangerous work. I remember being offered two hour shifts during the last recession “we had to have”. The nursing home was offering three hour split shifts 0700 to 1000 and then 1500 to 1800. Safety isn’t even on the agenda when you are skipping meals to pay the mortgage. Looks like what comes around goes around. A big thank-you to Albo and the gang for putting working people back in poverty.
There has been growing discussion about whether support workers should have access to an older person’s criminal history because workers themselves are required to undergo police checks and, where relevant, Working With Children Checks.
My view is simple: NO.
Police checks are an employment screening tool. They assess whether a person is suitable to work in a position of trust. They do not create a reciprocal right for workers to access the personal histories of those receiving care and support.
The real issue is risk, and risk should be assessed on current behaviour, current circumstances, and current evidence—not on historical information that may be decades old and entirely irrelevant to the support being provided today.
Support workers already have significant workplace protections. Where risks are identified, providers can undertake assessments, implement safety plans, arrange joint visits, allocate alternative staff, or cease services where safety cannot be maintained. Workers are not required to remain in situations they reasonably believe are unsafe.
Requiring older people to disclose criminal histories simply shifts the conversation from managing actual risk to judging people on past events. It also raises serious concerns about privacy, confidentiality, discrimination, and equitable access to services.
If we accept that principle, where does it end? Do we also require disclosure of past mental health admissions, family violence experiences, addiction histories, or other deeply personal information? The precedent is both unnecessary and concerning.
A person’s eligibility for support should be determined by their needs. A worker’s safety should be determined by appropriate risk assessment and workplace safety measures. The two are not the same thing.
Good systems manage risk. They do not rely on labelling people by their past. The focus should remain where it belongs—on current behaviour, current risk, and ensuring both the worker and the older person are treated with dignity and respect.