Early Learning Victoria are committed to creating and keeping full, accurate and reliable records of our activities. Effective records management supports the provision of excellent service to the Victorian community and enhances trust in government services. We understand that accurate recordkeeping assists in the management of Early Learning Victoria, helps ensure the safety of children and supports transparency and accountability for Early Learning Victoria and families.
1. Scope
This policy applies to all Early Learning Victoria staff and Department of Education (department) staff in their support of Early Learning Victoria. This includes volunteers, students on placement and contractors or labour hire employees of Early Learning Victoria.
Early Learning Victoria central office and department staff must also comply with the department’s Corporate records management policy.
2. Policy statement
The purpose of this policy is to assist staff to understand and meet requirements for creating, managing, storing, and disposing of Early Learning Victoria records.
Good recordkeeping provides accessible and reliable information that supports service delivery, accountability and helps ensure the safety, development and well-being of children.
Early Learning Victoria centres will manage their records in compliance with the department’s legal obligations, which include requirements to:
- create, keep, manage and maintain certain records
- ensure confidentiality and secure storage of records
- have records available for inspection by an authorised officer and, in some cases, parents of enrolled children.
Everything Early Learning Victoria staff create, send, or receive that provides evidence of child learning and care, centre decisions and activities is a record. Records can be information in digital or physical form including:
- documents
- emails
- correspondence
- invoices
- photographs
- videos
- notes.
This policy must be read in conjunction with the policies listed in related policies below.
2.1 Requirements
- Early Learning Victoria is required to comply with the:
- the department’s recordkeeping obligations under the Public Records Act 1973 and the associated standards issued by the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), and
- specific recordkeeping requirements for approved providers of education and care services under the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 (the National Law) and Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011 (the Regulations).
- This dual compliance ensures that the department meets its public sector recordkeeping obligations and the specialised needs of the education and care sector.
- Full and accurate records of activities and decisions must be created and captured.
- Early Learning Victoria centres are required to maintain specific records under the National Law and Regulations, refer to section 3 for further information.
- Early Learning Victoria centres must have policies and procedures in place in relation to the governance and management of the centre, including how they manage the confidentiality of records.
- Early Learning Victoria will only dispose of records in accordance with the requirements of this policy.
- When processes are being determined, recordkeeping requirements must be considered and designed into the process.
- Early Learning Victoria staff must complete records management training.
3. Actions and procedures
Record creation
All Early Learning Victoria centre staff must create and manage full and accurate records of Early Learning Victoria centre functions and activities in the course of their daily work.
This includes records relating to:
- A child's
- enrolment, including medical information, emergency contact details and authorised persons
- attendance
- incidents, injury, trauma and illness, including the response and outcome
- health and wellbeing
- medication record and health plans
- excursions and transportation of children authorisations
- educational programs, including learning goals, activities and evaluations
- communication and involvement with families
- parent consent for sharing information with third parties concerning Child Care Subsidy administration.
- Early Learning Victoria centre operations
- qualifications, training, background checks and Working with Children Checks of staff, volunteers, contractors and students
- governance
- operations and compliance
- visitors
- emergency and evacuation drills, including participant lists and evaluations of the drill’s effectiveness
- detailed financial records related to the Child Care Subsidy including invoicing, payment records and accounts receivable
- complaints and investigations.
Early Learning Victoria staff must:
- create, capture, manage and store records in digital formats, where practicable
- apply meaningful titles to records so they can be easily found and used.
Confidentiality of records
Records, including those that are collected for the purpose of complying with the National Quality Framework, must not be divulged or communicated through direct or indirect means to any person, other than:
- the extent necessary for the education, care or medical treatment of the child to whom the information relates
- a parent of the child to whom the information relates, except in the case of information kept in a staff record
- the Regulatory Authority or an authorised officer of the Regulatory Authority
- as expressly authorised, permitted or required to be given by or under any Act or law (such as Child Information Sharing Scheme (CISS)/Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM) - Victorian Services or similar)
- with the written consent of the person who provided the information.
Right to access, correct or add information to records
- Early Learning Victoria centres must take reasonable steps to ensure that the information they hold is accurate, complete and up to date.
- Early Learning Victoria centres may make routine or administrative amendments to records when required or requested, for example when a family notifies of a change in contact details.
- Early Learning Victoria centres must uphold the rights of families to access, update and correct records containing their child’s personal or health information, where it is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, or where it would give a misleading impression.
- Family requests to make substantive changes to a record by adding or removing information (for example, a request to change details of an incident report) must be formally requested under section 39 of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act) and must be referred to the Freedom of Information (FOI) unit at foi@education.vic.gov.au.
- Requests for documentation, other than information that directly relates to and refers to the child, must be requested under section 17 of the FOI Act via foi@education.vic.gov.au.
The following types of records about their child must be made available to parents on request unless restricted by a court order:
- documentation of child assessments or evaluations
- an incident, injury, trauma or illness record
- a medication record
- a child’s attendance record
- child enrolment records.
If the above records contain the personal information (e.g. home address and phone number) of another person including, another parent, an emergency contact or authorised nominee for the child, their written consent must be obtained before the record is made available to the requester.
Early Learning Victoria centres must ensure that any information kept in a record under the National Regulations is readily accessible for inspection by the Regulatory Authority or authorised officer on request.
Early Learning Victoria centres must ensure that a record of the service’s compliance with the National Law is able to be accessed on request by any person.
Access and information security
Early Learning Victoria centres must keep records safe and secure to safeguard personal and organisational information. Access and security controls must be applied to processes and systems to ensure records are protected from unauthorised access, amendment, use, release or destruction.
These controls include:
- hardcopy records stored in a safe and secure location
- digital records stored in approved systems where access controls are applied and actively managed
- procedures that ensure information is only released or shared when authorised via policy or legislation
- using password-protected systems to store sensitive data.
Records storage and preservation
Early Learning Victoria centres must store all digital and hardcopy records in the correct place:
- authorised Early Learning Victoria systems for example, SharePoint and Kidsoft
- designated storage locations that protect records from misuse (including unauthorised access, sharing, alteration, destruction or theft), damage, deterioration or loss
- using processes that enable them to be efficiently accessed by authorised staff for the timely processing of requests for information. For example, assigning meaningful titles to documents and files, labelling binders and boxes containing records
- using formats that enable records to remain readable and accessible for their minimum required retention periods e.g. Microsoft Word and PDF.
In the event that records are lost, stolen or damaged, centres must contact Records and Mail Services on 1800 359 140 or archives.records@education.vic.gov.au.
Scanning hardcopy records
- Hardcopy records scanned using centre multi-functional devices and uploaded to Kidsoft and other authorised Early Learning Victoria systems can be securely destroyed after the digital copy has been:
- checked to ensure the scan is a complete and readable copy of the original.
- given a title that captures essential information (e.g. child’s name and a description of the record).
- stored for a minimum of three months.
- Early Learning Victoria centre staff must refer to the record scanning checklist to ensure compliance with this policy.
Records disposal
The only information that can be routinely destroyed at Early Learning Victoria centres is information that is not an official record, examples include:
- working documents used only to assist in the preparation of other records for example, handwritten attendance rolls subsequently captured in Kidsoft
- additional copies of documents, emails and publications maintained for reference purposes for example, duplicate copies of meeting papers or hardcopy printouts of digital records.
Prior to destroying any official records, the following process must be completed:
- consider whether the records are still required for current work
- determine whether the records have met the mandatory retention period under PROV standards and/or the National Quality Framework
- contact Records and Mail Services at archives.records@education.vic.gov.au to advise of the intention to dispose of records
- complete the Records Destruction list describing the records you wish to destroy and send the list to Records and Mail Services
- on receipt of the listing Records and Mail Services will:
- review the records
- ensure the records are eligible for destruction.
Records in both digital and hardcopy formats must be destroyed in a way that ensures:
- personal, confidential, or sensitive information is not released
- permanent deletion, where possible backups on servers and storage devices must also be deleted
- secure, irreversible destruction e.g. using shredders and not regular waste bins for hardcopy records
- the records are irretrievable and cannot be reconstructed or their content extracted or read.
3.1 Responsibilities of staff
4. Resources
Legislation and standards
- Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005
- Child Wellbeing and Safety (Information Sharing) Regulations 2018
- Children, Youth and Families Act 2005
- Crimes Act 1958
- Education and Care Services National Victoria Act 2010
- Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011
- Education and Training Reform Act 2006
- Evidence Act 2008
- Fair Work Act 2009
- Family Violence Protection Act 2008
- Family Violence Protection (Information Sharing and Risk Management) Regulations 2018 (Vic)
- Financial Management Act 1994
- Freedom of Information Act 1982
- Health Records Act 2001
- National Quality Standard, Quality area 2: Children’s health and safety and Quality area 7: Governance and leadership
- New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999
- Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014
- Privacy Act 1988
- PROS 19/05 Create, Capture and Control Standard
- PROS 19/06 Access Standard
- PROS 20/02 Storage Standard
- PROS 20/04 Disposal Standard
- PROS 23/01 Strategic Management Standard
- PROS 24/01 Operations Management Standard
- Public Administration Act 2004
- Public Records Act 1973
Related policies
- Corporate records management policy
- Administering medication policy and procedure
- Governance and management policy
- Enrolment and orientation policy
- Incident, injury, trauma and illness policy
- Privacy policy
- Visitors, volunteers and students on placement policy
Definitions
Authorised officer: A person authorised to be an authorised officer under Part 9 (National Law). Authorised officers are appointed by the regulatory authority under the provisions of the National Law to carry out the functions of monitoring, assessing and rating licensed approved education and care services in their jurisdiction.
Record: Everything staff create, send or receive that provides evidence of work decisions, directions and activities is a record. Records can be formal and informal information in both digital and physical format.
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