Code of Conduct

Draft. Not yet adopted by the Board. Applies to members, directors, staff, contractors, and Parents & Friends.

1. Purpose and scope

Our mission is learning through play and connection. This Code applies to everyone connected to the Alliance — members, directors, staff, contractors, and Parents & Friends supporters — wherever you're engaging with us: in person, online, on social media, or in a digital meeting.

2. Speak and listen in good faith

• Bring your own experience. When you post or reply, you're adding to what the community knows and can act on — that's worth doing properly.
• Anonymity has a place: if you'd rather not put your name to something, ask a moderator to re-share it as a general discussion, with identifying details removed, where it would genuinely help the community. A formal complaint under Section 8 can't be handled this way — the person it concerns is entitled to know what's been raised.
• Don't disparage an individual, a provider, or the Alliance — inside the community or outside it.

3. Professional integrity and ethics

• Act honestly and fairly in all your dealings, and uphold the law.
• Make the child's best interests the first consideration in every professional decision.
• Protect the sector's reputation — avoid conduct that undermines public trust in family day care.

4. Legal, safety and regulatory compliance

• Comply with the law that applies to your work, and hold any licence or certification it requires.
• Child safety comes first. Build a culture of social and emotional safety, and make room for minority and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and needs.
• Work to minimise risk to children — and recognise the cost of shielding them from all of it. Healthy, age-appropriate, supervised risk is part of how children learn; the Alliance advocates for regulation that reflects this, and expects members to bring the same judgement to their own practice.

5. Child safety concerns, and when someone's wellbeing is at risk

The Alliance is not a regulator, and doesn't investigate or license anyone's Family Day Care service — that's the role of the relevant state regulator (in Victoria, the Department and VECRA) and, for suspected harm to a child, Victoria Police and Child Protection. Nothing in this Code, or in the Alliance's complaints process, is a substitute for reporting directly to them.

If you're worried about a child's safety — including a concern about how another member is behaving toward children in their care — report it directly and without delay:

• Immediate danger: call 000.
• A concern that isn't an emergency: contact Victoria Police or the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) Child Protection (or the equivalent authority in your state), and, where it concerns an approved service, the regulator.
• If you're a mandatory reporter under your own state's law — this covers most Educators, approved providers, and nominated supervisors in Victoria — that obligation is yours personally, and applies whether or not you also tell the Alliance. Being an Alliance member never changes or delays it.

You're also welcome to tell the Alliance — contact the Executive Officer, or, if the concern involves the Executive Officer, the Chair — and we'll treat it seriously. Telling us is in addition to reporting to the people above, never instead of it.

If someone tells you they're thinking about harming themselves, or harming someone else — including in a community post, a message, or a conversation — don't try to manage it alone, and don't promise confidentiality you can't actually keep:

• If there's immediate danger, call 000.
• Encourage them to contact Lifeline (13 11 14) or the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467), and help them do it if you're able to.
• Tell the Executive Officer (or the Chair, if it involves the Executive Officer) as soon as practicable, so the Alliance can follow up and make sure the person isn't left without support.

Raising a concern in good faith is protected. No one faces any adverse consequence under this Code for reporting a genuine safety concern, even if it later turns out to be unfounded. Only a report made maliciously, or one you knew to be false, is treated as misconduct in its own right.

What the Alliance does with a report. We may pass safety information to police, Child Protection, or a regulator without the discloser's or the subject's consent, where that's reasonably necessary to prevent serious harm — see our Privacy Policy for how this works. Separately, a report about a member's conduct may also be progressed as a complaint under Section 8; that process runs independently of, and doesn't wait on, any external report or investigation. In an urgent situation, the Chair can act immediately under clause 25(c) of the constitution — including an interim suspension of a member's standing — without waiting for the full complaints process to run.

6. Fair competition — trust and mutual benefit, not restriction

The Alliance exists to strengthen the bond between Educators and Approved Providers — built on trust, mutual benefit, and a shared sense of purpose, not on restricting how members deal with one another. That only works if competition across the sector stays genuinely fair, so members must not:

• Fix prices, divide up the market, or agree with other members to shut out competitors.
• Make false or disparaging claims about another member's service.

Keep Alliance discussion, and the way members deal with each other, focused on strengthening the sector together.

7. Conflicts of interest and confidentiality

• Disclose any personal or financial interest that could influence your conduct in the Alliance — including a competitive relationship with a nearby Educator or Provider. Once disclosed, keep your profile updated so other members can see it.
• Directors and staff carry additional, constitutional disclosure duties (clauses 16 and 16A) — this Code sits alongside those, not in place of them.
• Keep confidential or personal information you learn through the Alliance to yourself, and respect other members' intellectual property.
• No self-promotion in member spaces, and no public naming or shaming of an individual or a provider — raise it through Section 8 instead, or, for a safety concern, through Section 5.

8. Reporting, investigation and enforcement

• Report it. Flag a post for moderator review, or write to the Company directly. For a child safety concern or a risk to someone's wellbeing, see Section 5 first — some of these need to go straight to emergency services or the relevant authority, not through this process.
• In-the-moment conduct. A moderator or meeting Chair can mute, restrict, or remove someone from a discussion or meeting to keep it safe and on track. That's a live, temporary step — separate from, and no substitute for, the process below.
• Formal process. Complaints are handled under clause 25 of the constitution: written notice, a genuine opportunity to respond, a decision made by someone not involved in the matter, and a right of appeal. We aim to acknowledge every complaint within 2 business days; the constitution's target for resolving the matter itself is 20 business days, though a complex case may take longer.
• Outcomes, in rough order of seriousness: a written warning; a period of pre-approval on your posts; suspension; expulsion — or, for Parents & Friends supporters, removal from the supporter list. What applies depends on the conduct and whether it's repeated.
• Urgent, safety-related matters can be actioned immediately by the Chair under clause 25(c), with a fast review right within 5 business days.

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Draft constitution · Privacy Policy