Working With Children Check (NSW)
A Working With Children Check (WWC) is the clearance required to do child-related work in New South Wales, administered by the Office of the Children's Guardian (OCG). Oho confirms it against the OCG employer portal.
NSW is the state where monitoring works best, and also the one with the most set-up. Both come from the same thing: the OCG records your organisation against each worker you verify.
Who needs it
Anyone in child-related work in NSW. The check distinguishes paid employees from volunteers, and the identifier says which: an E suffix for an employee, a V suffix for a volunteer.
What Oho needs
The clearance number, the holder's name, and their date of birth — NSW won't match a worker without one.
WWC1234567E — the letters WWC, seven digits, then E for an employee or V for a volunteer.
A worker who has applied but isn't cleared yet has an application number instead: APP1234567 — APP and seven digits, no suffix. Oho accepts either, and works out which portal field to use from the prefix.
Case doesn't matter. Don't add spaces or hyphens — those aren't stripped.
The E/V suffix is part of the number, not decoration. A worker who moves from volunteering to paid work gets a new number ending E, and the old V number stops being the right one to hold.
Most registers match on name and card number. NSW matches on date of birth too, and a worker without one on their record can't be checked at all — the result sits unverified rather than coming back as a failure you'd notice. If you're importing, fill in Date of Birth; see Spreadsheet columns.
Before you start
NSW needs a login for your organisation's OCG employer portal account, configured once as a Verification Source. Unlike the public registers, there's no way to check a NSW clearance anonymously — the OCG portal is the only route, and it's tied to the employer.
Oho signs in on your behalf using credentials you provide, which are stored encrypted. Until that's set up, NSW checks sit in progress rather than returning a result.
How Oho verifies it
Oho signs in to the OCG employer portal and looks each worker up. It isn't a real-time API — results come back within hours rather than seconds, as part of a batch run rather than the moment you press a button.
Verifying through Oho also links your organisation to the worker in the OCG system. That linkage is what makes NSW different: the OCG then notifies your account directly when a worker's status changes, so a suspension can reach you between scheduled checks instead of waiting for the next one.
Reading the result
Every check resolves to one of these outcomes:
| Status (as shown in the app) | Colour | What it means | API value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | Cleared, but worth a closer look — for example a condition on the clearance, a possible match, or an expiry coming up. | REVIEW_REQUIRED |
| In progress | Grey | Still being checked. | IN_PROGRESS |
| Error | Grey | The source couldn't be reached; Oho will try again. | ERROR |
NSW returns its own status wording, which Oho maps as follows:
| What the register says | What Oho shows | Why |
|---|---|---|
Cleared, Not barred, Valid | May engage | Current clearance |
Barred, Prohibited, Refused | May not engage | An active bar on child-related work |
Interim bar | May not engage | Barred while under assessment — treated as not clear |
Expired | May not engage | The clearance has run out |
Application, Pending | In progress | Applied for, not yet decided |
Not found, No record, no result | May not engage | Nothing on the register matched these details |
| Anything else | Under review | Wording Oho doesn't recognise — worth a person reading it |
NSW distinguishes the two, and so should you. Not found usually means the details didn't match — a typo, a name change, or a wrong date of birth. Barred, prohibited or refused is an active problem with the clearance itself. Both show red, but only the first is likely to be your data.
When it doesn't verify
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| May not engage — not found | Number, name or date of birth didn't match the OCG's record | Check all three. A missing or wrong date of birth is the most common cause |
| May not engage — not found, after a name change | The OCG may still hold the previous surname | NSW has no alternate-name retry, so update the worker's name to match the register and re-run |
| In progress that doesn't resolve | Either the worker holds an APP number and hasn't been decided yet, or the portal login isn't set up | Check the number — APP means an application. Otherwise check the Verification Source has valid credentials |
| Interim bar | The worker is barred while the OCG assesses them | Treat as not clear. This isn't a data problem |
| Under review | The portal returned wording Oho doesn't recognise | Open the check and read the raw status; raise it with support if it looks like a new OCG status |
| Every NSW check fails at once | The portal login has expired or the password changed | Update the credentials on the Verification Source |
Renewals & monitoring
Renewals flow through on their own — a renewed clearance keeps its number, so nothing needs re-entering.
Because of the employer linkage, NSW gives you two overlapping safety nets: Oho's scheduled re-checks, and the OCG's own notifications to your linked account. It's the one state where a change can reach you without Oho having asked.
Note that a change of clearance type does need attention: a volunteer moving to paid work is issued a new number ending E, and the V number on file will start coming back as not found. That's a data update, not a compliance failure.
Related
- Credentials overview
- How monitoring works
- Working With Children Check (VIC) — for comparison, a public-register state