SA Government Immunisation Tracking Legislation

The SA State Governments No Jab No Play legislation comes into force from 1st January 2020. The new legislation places significant additional administration burden for immunisation tracking on childcare operators. The following information is provided to members to act upon to ensure your centre complies.

What is Required?

 Early learning service providers from 1st January 2020, need to collect, store and provide immunisation records on request to the Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) in the event of an outbreak of a vaccine preventable disease.

• The CPHO will require this information to be provided by the Centre in summarised digital form including parent contact details within a 24 hour window to ensure measures are taken to prevent further spread of the disease.
• Vulnerable children (too young to vaccinate, not vaccinated or medically at risk) or children whose parents have not provided up to date immunisation record at the required intervals will be excluded from services in the event of an outbreak.
• The service provider needs to have demonstrated reasonable attempts to have collected each child’s immunisation records and these attempts need to be recorded for auditing purposes.
• The Education Standards Board’s validation checks will include a review of the centre’s immunisation tracking and follow up system and records.
• This Bill requires parents and guardians to provide immunisation records to their child’s early childhood service and gives the Chief Public Health Officer the power to request those records.
• Children are already required to be fully vaccinated for parents to be eligible to receive Commonwealth family assistance payments including child care subsidy under the Federal No Jab, No Pay policy so this reinforces compliance from parents.
• Phase 2 legislation requiring unvaccinated children to be excluded is not yet legislated so doesn’t yet apply.

What You Need to Do In your Centre

Each centre will need to have in place a procedure to Comply with the Legislation covering the following:

• Obtaining Initial Records from new children enrolling
• Scanning all Immunisation Records into your CCMS System
• CCMS System Notification of subsequent vaccination dates falling due for enrolled children
• Follow Up Emails (say up to 3) to Families and keeping a log of evidence of these follow-ups to satisfy the legislation and the Education Standards Board
• Have in place a digitised record including up to date vaccination records linked to each parent’s contact details and be able to supply this to the Chief Public Health Officer within 24 hours of a request.
• Your CCMS software program should be able to assist you in achieving these requirements

Contact our President, Kerry Mahony on 0419 819 754 if you wish to discuss