If your volunteer work is with children (under 18 years), you are a mandated notifier. This means you need to understand how to notify and report suspected child abuse.

All ongoing volunteers must do mandatory notification training and keep it current. This includes people on a governing council. (You can find details about ongoing and once-off volunteers on this page.)

The training is called Responding to Risks of Harm, Abuse and Neglect – Education and Care. We call it RRHAN-EC for short.

As a volunteer, you only need to do the RRHAN-EC fundamentals course, which is free for you.

Online course for everyone

The fundamentals course is done online, on a system called plink. You need to create a plink account.

You can ask your site leader for help getting set up. They could help you to:

• set up your plink account
• get access to a computer
• download your certificate in plink
• troubleshoot any problems you have with the course.

On this page, when we say ‘site leader’ we mean someone like a:

• school principal
• preschool director.

In-person option for department volunteers, if needed

For some volunteers the online course might not be the best choice.

Your site leader can contact Education.rrhanec@sa.gov.au to find out about other delivery options.

The site leader can also ask the SA Association of School Parent Communities (SAASPC) to deliver this session for volunteers. A member of the site leadership team must be at the SAASPC session. To share the load, a site leader can facilitate joint sessions with other sites.

Certificates and record keeping

If you did the course in person, your training will be recorded in plink.

You will get an email from plink with a link to your certificate. You need to give the site leader a copy of your certificate.

You can use the certificate at any education site in South Australia.

You can log in to plink at any time to download a copy of your certificate. Go to the ‘My Sessions’ menu in the navigation bar, then select the ‘Completed’ tab.

Department sites can access record keeping instructions and information about responsibilities for RRHAN-EC training for volunteers (staff login required) on the intranet.

When to update your RRHAN-EC certificate

You must keep your RRHAN-EC current.

Ongoing and once-off volunteers at department sites

When we say ‘ongoing volunteer’, we mean people who help out more than once at any of the department’s sites.

This includes if you volunteer either:

• regularly
• only now and then.

Specific role needs – once-off volunteers

We know that people who volunteer one time enjoy the experience. This means you might want to do it again. Our department recommends these volunteers still do RRHAN-EC training.

Site leaders could decide a volunteer might not need the training if they are only going to help once. For example, someone who helps once at a fundraising event.

This is a site leader’s decision.