NDIS Worker Checks

Your employer will tell you if you need a NDIS worker check.

Workers who are engaged in risk-assessed roles must have a NDIS worker check. A risk-assessed role is one that:

• involves the direct delivery of specified supports or services to a person with disability
• is likely to require ‘more than incidental contact’ with people with disability, which includes:
  • physically touching a person with disability; or
  • building a rapport with a person with disability as an integral and ordinary part of the performance of normal duties; or
  • having contact with multiple people with disability as part of the direct delivery of a specialist disability support or service, or in a specialist disability accommodation setting.
• is a key personnel role (for example, a CEO or a Board Member).

Workers include:

• volunteer workers
• workers engaged through third parties such as labour hire agencies
• sole traders who for the NDIS Check are both the provider and the employee.

Registered NDIS employers are responsible for identifying which roles are risk-assessed roles.

How to identify which roles in your organisation are risk-assessed roles (NDIS Commission)

Workers of registered NDIS providers who are not engaged in a risk assessed role do not need a NDIS worker check. However, registered NDIS providers may choose to ask those workers to apply for an NDIS worker check and obtain a clearance.

Workers of unregistered NDIS providers and self-managed participants do not need a check.

In South Australia, a NDIS worker cannot work until they have a clearance.

Unregistered NDIS providers can ask workers to have a NDIS worker check, but this is not a requirement. If you and your workers do not have a NDIS worker check, an NDIS participant may choose not to use your business.

Self-managed participants may also ask their NDIS workers to have a NDIS worker check.

If you wish to apply for a NDIS worker check, or have your workers apply for one, you can apply to access the NDIS Worker Screening Database using an online form.

Before providing access to the NDIS Worker Screening Database, the NDIS Commission will need to confirm that you are engaged in delivering NDIS supports and services or are a self-managed participant.

Worker screening for unregistered NDIS providers (NDIS Commission)

Worker screening for self-managed participants (NDIS Commission)

If your role includes children with disability, you also need a Working with Children Check.

Check process

Before you apply for an NDIS worker check, confirm that you do not have an existing DHS screening that is recognised for NDIS work:

• Department of Human Services Disability Services Employment Screening
• Department of Human Services Child-related Employment Screening
• Department of Human Services Working with Children Check issued before 1 February 2021

You need to be working or intending to work in SA to apply for a NDIS worker check in SA.

You’ll need your identification documents to verify your ID online, and your employer’s NDIS number as your application needs to be verified by an NDIS employer.

Refer to the NDIS Commission worker screening webpages for workers for more information:

• NDIS Commission worker screening flowchart
• NDIS Commission worker screening fact sheet – for workers

Screening Unit checks

Fees and payment

If you have a volunteer NDIS worker check and then move into paid employment you will need to pay a fee based on the time that is left to expire on your check.

You can request to change your check from volunteer to paid employment. Email DHSScreeningUnit@sa.gov.au

See Fees and Payment for the fee.

Check how your application is progressing, the outcome, and when your check expires.

Check your application

You must advise the Screening Unit if you change your name or address, or start using an alias, within three months of the change.  A $50,000 penalty applies if you do not.

Update your details

You can ask to cancel your NDIS worker check clearance at any time. Email DHSScreeningUnit@sa.gov.au

We cannot cancel the clearance if:

• the clearance is suspended; or
• we are undertaking, or proposing to undertake, a risk assessment.

Registered NDIS providers need to keep records of workers in risk-assessed roles.

This includes evidence of a valid worker screening including:

• application/screening reference number
• outcome and expiry date
• whether the worker is subject to any decision which has the effect that the registered NDIS provider may not allow the worker to engage in a risk-assessed role (for example, interim bar, suspension, exclusion).

For workers holding a DHS screening that is recognised for NDIS work, NDIS providers can obtain this information via their Screening Unit organisational portal

NDIS self-managed participants can ask to verify a worker has a DHS screening by emailing DHSScreeningUnit@sa.gov.au.

If you cannot email, phone our Customer Services Team on 1300 321 592

You must include the following information:

• Your full name
• Your contact details (e-mail or telephone)
• The full name of the worker to be verified and their Screening Number. If the worker does not know their Screening Number, please provide their date of birth so that they can be identified in our system
• Contact details for the worker (email or telephone)
• Confirmation that you understand and agree to the Screening Unit contacting the worker and providing their name to the worker as part of the verification process.

For privacy and confidentiality reasons, we will contact the worker and ask for their permission to release their personal information, before releasing it to you. We will provide the worker with your name, as the person who is seeking their personal information.

When we have the worker's permission, we will provide you with confirmation of the DHS screening/s that the worker holds as well as the screening expiry date/s.

For workers who hold a NDIS worker check, registered NDIS providers and self-managed participants can fin the necessary information via their NDIS Worker Screening Database portal.

NDIS Worker Screening Database

The NDIS Worker Screening Database (NWSD) is held by the NDIS Commission.

The database:

• holds a register of cleared and excluded workers as determined by each state and territory’s worker screening unit
• supports national ongoing monitoring of the criminal history records of workers with NDIS worker screenings and misconduct and disciplinary records held by the NDIS Commission
• means NDIS providers across the country can use a single online portal to verify their workers’ NDIS worker screening applications, and review the NDIS worker screening clearances of prospective workers, without needing to contact individual state and territory worker screening units
• helps NDIS providers with record-keeping requirements.

The NWSD only holds information about workers who have a NDIS worker screening. It does not hold information about state-based checks that are recognised for NDIS work. Nor does it hold the personal information used by a state or territory worker screening unit to assess a worker’s NDIS worker screening.