This guide will support early childhood providers to gain access to Child Link. To be eligible, providers must offer funded kindergarten programs for 3- and/or 4-year old children.
What is Child Link?
Child Link is a digital tool that displays information about a child to authorised key professionals who have responsibility for child wellbeing and safety. Child Link shows limited but critical information, such as a child’s participation in key early childhood and education services.
Why do I need Child Link at my service?
Child Link is a key enabler of the Child Information Sharing Scheme (CISS), with the complementary aim of improving wellbeing and safety outcomes for children and young people. Child Link and CISS can support you to:
- make more informed decisions about the wellbeing, safety and support needs of a child in your service
- better identify risks and vulnerabilities and provide the necessary support to prevent any escalation of harm
- encourage cross-service collaboration to facilitate more holistic support around a child
- provide support earlier by linking together information from across schools and services
- facilitate smoother transitions between early childhood and education services by responding to gaps in participation.
Both Child Link and CISS are designed to enhance the valuable work early childhood providers already do to promote children’s wellbeing and safety by supporting professionals to see the full picture. For more information on information sharing, see Information Sharing and Family Violence Reforms: Guidance and Tools.
Who can access the information on Child Link?
Security and privacy are core to the design of Child Link and strict safeguards are in place to protect information. There is an auditing and monitoring framework in place which protects access to children’s information.
Only early childhood providers operating a service with a funded kindergarten program for 3- and/or 4-year-old children will be able to gain access to Child Link.
Providers with services that only provide outside of school hours or family day care or who operate a long day care service, but who do not offer a funded kindergarten program, are not able to access Child Link.
Services that provide integrated long day care and kindergarten programs will only be able to access Child Link to see information about the children in their funded kindergarten program.
Child Link Authorisers
Every provider will need to nominate one or more Authoriser(s) to manage who has access to the information on Child Link for their services. This is a crucial role that is key to the security of Child Link.
Authorisers are responsible for creating and managing the accounts of their provider’s Child Link Users. In early childhood settings, Child Link Users must be Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) registered teachers.
Authorisers cannot view information about the children on Child Link. They can only view information about the Child Link Users that they manage.
Child Link Users
Early childhood providers can nominate up to 3 VIT registered teachers as Child Link Users for each service.
Child Link Users can access information relating to the children attending their service, and those children’s siblings.
How to get started with Child Link
Step 1: Identify the Child Link Authoriser
Your provider will need to identify one or more Authoriser(s) to manage the Users who have access to the information on Child Link for your service or services.
By law, the approved provider of an early childhood education and care service should be the Authoriser. This role can be delegated in writing to roles that have management responsibilities within the organisation and oversight in relation to the selected Child Link Users in the participating service or services.
For example, appropriate Authoriser roles may include:
- coordinators
- managers
- team leaders
- president of the parent committee (for not-for-profit providers).
Important note: Authorisers cannot authorise themselves to be a Child Link User. Authorisers and Users must be separate people with separate email addresses. For example, if you are an early childhood service manager, coordinator or team leader who also has a VIT teaching registration, you can be a Child Link User. However, someone else in an appropriate role will need to be the Authoriser for your service.
Refer to the following diagrams for examples of how private providers and not-for-profit providers should delegate Authoriser and User roles.
Private service providers
In private service providers, coordinators, managers and team leaders are suitable roles to be Child Link Authorisers. Authorisers can create and manage up to 3 User accounts per service. Child Link Users must be VIT-registered teachers.
Not-for-profit service providers
In not-for-profit service providers, the president of the parent committee is a suitable role to be a Child Link Authoriser. Authorisers can create and manage up to 3 User accounts per service. Child Link Users must be VIT-registered teachers.
Council-based services
If you are a council-based service, please refer to the factsheet approved by the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) for examples of how to delegate Authoriser and User roles in your service.
Step 2: Check Authoriser and Users have a compliant email address
For security reasons, Child Link Authorisers and Users must have an email address that includes:
- their name, and
- a professional service-based or provider email domain.
For example, tilly.smith@kindergartenname.edu.au.
Shared or personal email accounts are not permitted for security reasons, for example, tillysmith@gmail.com and coordinator@service.com.au.
What is a compliant email address?
Child Link Authorisers and Users need to have email addresses that meet the following requirements:
- a username that identifies the specific user by their name or initials. The name of the kindergarten can also be included in the username.
- a private domain name, for example @kindergarten.vic.gov.au or the name of your service or service provider or organisation. Service providers that are council-based or school-based often have private domain names that are the name of the council or school. Public domain names are not complaint, for example Hotmail, Outlook, Bigpond.
- the last part of an email address, for example vic.gov.au, is called a top-level domain. All top-level domains are compliant, for example com.au, net, net.au, org, org.au, vic.gov.au and edu.au.
Note: Compliant email addresses are also required for Arrival, the kindergarten attendance system being introduced from early 2025. For more information, see Arrival.
Community-based service providers can register for up to 20 free annual @kindergarten.vic.gov.au email addresses for staff via the Kindergarten IT Program. The program is operated by State Library Victoria on behalf of the department.
To register for @kindergarten.vic.gov.au email addresses, complete and submit an application form on the program’s website to become a member of the Kindergarten IT Program. If you have any further questions, you can reach out to the Kindergarten IT Program at info@kindergarten.vic.gov.au or on 03 8664 7001 between 9 am and 5 pm Monday to Friday.
Alternatively, if providers would like their own private domain name, edu.au domain licences are available to recognised Australian education and training providers, projects and programs, including childcare centres and preschools, and government and non-government schools. Contact the Domain Register for more information.
Step 3: Email Child Link to confirm Authoriser and service details
Email the Child Link team at childlink@education.vic.gov.au to confirm the person who will act as the Authoriser for your service or services. You will need to provide their email address and details of their role.
You will also be required to confirm service details such as:
- centre name
- address
- provider number and
- service number.
The Child Link team will set up the Authoriser account so you may proceed to Step 4.
Step 4: Nominate Child Link Users and add them to Child Link
Child Link Authorisers can nominate up to 3 VIT-registered teachers in each service to become a Child Link User.
Authorisers should add their nominated Users to Child Link.
For detailed instructions, see Section 4: How do I add Child Link Users? of the Child Link Authoriser Induction Guide.
Step 5: Support Child Link Users to complete training and registration
To become a Child Link User, teachers must first complete a 2.5-hour Information Sharing and Child Link training session. Funding is available to support early childhood teachers to attend training.
For more information on how to enrol in training and complete the registration process, nominated Child Link Users should refer to Accessing Child Link.
All Child Link training is accessed via the Information Sharing and MARAM Online Learning System. This is a different system to Child Link. For more information, see Child Link training.
You can view upcoming Child Link training dates at Child Link User Training Schedule for Education Workforces.
Nominated Users should notify Authorisers once they have completed training. The Authoriser should see each Users’ training Certificate of Completion, which contains their unique training receipt number. Users will need their unique training receipt number to join Child Link.
Once Users have completed their training, they should log on to Child Link and follow the prompts to complete the registration process. Once they have completed this process, they will be ready to use Child Link.
Next steps
Authorisers are responsible for managing the User accounts for their service or services on an ongoing basis. Authorisers can refer to our online Authoriser Induction Guide or Child Link Authoriser eLearn for more information on their roles and responsibilities: see Child Link Authoriser Induction Guide.
Logging in to Child Link
If you have completed all the steps required to activate your Child Link access, you can click on the following link to log in to Child Link.
For more information
For more information on how early childhood services can access Child Link contact childlink@education.vic.gov.au.
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