Working With Children Check (ACT)
CodesAPI credentialType WWCC_ACTSpreadsheet import wwcc with State ACTAll credential codes
The Australian Capital Territory requires a Working With Vulnerable People registration for child-related work, administered by Access Canberra. Unlike every other state and territory, the ACT has no register Oho can query — public or otherwise.
So the ACT is the one jurisdiction where Oho doesn't verify. It captures the card and a person reviews it. Everything else on this page follows from that.
Who needs it
Anyone engaged in child-related work in the ACT, employees and volunteers alike.
What Oho needs
A capture of the actual card — its registration number and, in practice, a photo or scan so a reviewer can read the details for themselves.
Access Canberra calls it a registration number. Enter it as printed on the card.
Because there's no register to check it against, the number isn't validated for shape — nothing will reject a typo. The attachment is what a reviewer actually works from, which is why it matters more here than anywhere else.
The usual route is a Recruitment Check that asks the worker to upload a photo of their card, so the details and the evidence arrive together.
Before you start
The ACT source is set up by Oho rather than self-service — contact support to have it enabled for your organisation.
You'll also want to decide who reviews ACT cards and how often, because that's a human process rather than a scheduled lookup.
How Oho verifies it
It doesn't, and the page should be read with that in mind.
There is no automated check behind an ACT registration. The card is captured, an administrator reads it and approves or rejects it, and the outcome that appears on the worker's profile reflects that human decision — not an answer from Access Canberra.
The practical consequence: an ACT card that was suspended or cancelled yesterday will still read as approved in Oho, because nothing has asked. Elsewhere Oho would have caught it. Here it depends on your review cadence.
Reviews run on the schedule you set in the Verification Sources tab, so the process is prompted rather than left to memory. There's no employer linkage.
Reading the result
The outcomes look the same as every other credential, so the whole product reads consistently — but here they record a reviewer's judgement rather than a register's answer:
| Status (as shown in the app) | Colour | What it means | API value (eligibility) |
|---|---|---|---|
| May engage | Green | Valid and current — the person is cleared for the work. | MAY_ENGAGE |
| May not engage | Red | Not valid — expired, suspended, not found, or a match on a ban register. | MAY_NOT_ENGAGE |
| Under review | Yellow | No decision yet — someone has to read the result and record one. Not a softer kind of pass: the worker counts as non-compliant until they do. | REVIEW_REQUIRED |
| In progress | Blue | Still being checked. | IN_PROGRESS |
| Couldn't verify | Grey | The source couldn't be reached; Oho will try again. | ERROR |
Validity and expiry are tracked separately from that verdict, and the badge always shows the most serious state on record — so these appear instead of one of the five above:
| Status (as shown in the app) | Colour | What it means | API value (statusDetail) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expiring soon | Yellow | Still valid, but inside your expiry lead time — 30 days by default. Time to get the renewal moving. | EXPIRING_SOON |
| Expired | Red | The expiry date has passed, so the worker is no longer covered. | EXPIRED |
| Conditions to review | Yellow | The register attached a condition or a notation that someone has to read and decide on. | CONDITIONS_TO_REVIEW |
| Pending decision | Blue | The issuing authority has yet to decide on an application. | PENDING_DECISION |
A problem the register reports outright — the clearance revoked, no matching record, a newer card superseding this one — shows under its own name in red or grey, alongside the same statusDetail value. Every one of them is listed in what a check result means.
When it doesn't verify
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| In progress and staying there | Nobody has reviewed the capture yet | This is the ACT's normal failure mode. Check who owns reviews and whether they've been prompted |
| May not engage — rejected | A reviewer couldn't read or accept the card as evidence | Ask the worker for a clearer photo of the card, front and back if needed |
| No capture to review | The worker hasn't uploaded their card | Send a Recruitment Check, or record the card on their profile with an attachment |
| Approved, but you've heard the card is void | Exactly the gap described above — nothing re-checks the register | Review it again by hand. This is why the ACT needs a tighter review cadence than other states |
| No Verify button on the credential | Expected. There's nothing to verify against | Nothing |
Renewals & monitoring
Renewals are reflected once they've been through the same manual review — a new card means a new capture and a new approval.
Monitoring is the honest weak point of the ACT, and it's worth planning around rather than assuming Oho has it covered. Two things help:
- Set a review cadence you'd actually defend. Elsewhere Oho catches a suspension within a day. In the ACT you catch it at your next review, so the interval you choose is the exposure you're accepting.
- Keep the expiry date on the record. Expiry tracking still works from the date you supply, so at least the card running out is caught automatically even though a mid-term change isn't.