Blue Cards and child safety — who actually needs one

Blue Cards cause more quiet worry at croquet clubs than almost anything else in this guide. Partly because the rule sounds like it should be simple, and partly because clubs keep hearing different answers to the same question. One committee is told a coach needs a card because a fifteen-year-old sometimes plays in the Saturday social. Another is told nobody needs one because the club has no junior program at all. Both answers can be right, because the rule does not turn on who is a member of your club. It turns on what a specific person is actually doing.

The default position

For a typical Queensland croquet club, adult membership, the odd junior turning up to play, the honest answer is that nobody needs a Blue Card by default. The scheme is the Working with Children (Risk Management and Screening) Act 2000 (Qld), and it does not regulate clubs, sports, or committee positions as such. It regulates work that is directed at children. Blue Card Services put it plainly: you only need a card if your role falls inside a category of regulated employment or business, and a business or volunteer role "providing services only to adults" is not one of them.

So a coach who works with the adult membership, a treasurer who has never run a junior session, a president whose committee has never discussed a children's program: none of that is regulated work, and none of it needs a card. The trigger is the nature of the role, not the fact of being on committee or being a member at all.

The one thing worth getting right: there is no "occasional" exemption

This is the part that trips clubs up, and it is worth stating without softening it. Being occasional, unpaid, or a one-off does not exempt anyone. s.10(2) of the Act says outright that it is immaterial "whether the work is carried out voluntarily or for financial reward" and immaterial "whether the agreement provides for the other person to carry out work on 1 occasion or on an ongoing basis, whether regularly or irregularly." The Act even gives its own worked example: a person who orally agrees to coach a children's team for a single season is doing regulated work under the Act, and a single afternoon coaching children counts exactly the same way.

In plain terms, "it was only the one Come & Try session" is not a reason a card wasn't needed. If the session was genuinely for children, one afternoon of it is enough to trigger the requirement, the same as running it every week would be.

What actually triggers the requirement

A card is needed when a role is directed mainly at children, not merely touched by them. For croquet clubs, that generally means:

• Running or coaching a junior program
• Being the named coordinator of a Come & Try day or coaching clinic pitched at children
• Leading a school-visit session where your club, not the visiting teacher, is responsible for designing and delivering the activity
• Sitting on the executive committee where the committee is making decisions specifically about a children's program: approving it, overseeing it, funding it

None of these depend on how often the activity runs. They depend on whether the activity itself is built and marketed for children.

What genuinely does not need a card

Mixed-team play is worth spelling out, because it is where clubs most often talk themselves into worrying unnecessarily. Blue Card Services gives the direct example of "a child volunteering as a referee" or a person "playing in a team that includes a 16-year-old player". Neither needs a card, because the adult is not providing a service to that child. That is a different reason from "it was only occasional". The two get confused often enough that it is worth keeping them separate in your own head.

The volunteer-parent exemption is narrower than it sounds. It covers a parent helping at an activity their own child is doing. It does not extend to other people's children at the same session, overnight trips, or anything involving close personal contact with a child who is not theirs. A parent helping run a Come & Try day that includes other families' children, not just their own, sits outside the exemption.

The genuinely grey area, and who should call it

Here is the one question this page cannot answer for you: whether a specific event counts as "mainly for children." A Come & Try day advertised broadly, where a handful of kids turn up among mostly adults, sits in real ambiguity. There is no published headcount or percentage test. What actually determines it is how the club designed and promoted the event, who it was built and marketed for, not simply who shows up on the day.

Executive committee exposure works the same way. A committee member only needs a card if the committee's own decisions concern a children's program specifically. A club with no junior program captures nobody on this ground; a club that resolves to start one may capture the office-bearers who approve and oversee it.

This is exactly the kind of question that has produced conflicting advice at Queensland clubs. One club told by Blue Card Services directly that a coach didn't need a card, another hearing from a member online that everyone on committee needs one regardless. Both things get said in good faith, and neither is a safe substitute for asking. If your club is planning something that could plausibly be "mainly for children" (a school visit, a family day with junior-focused activities, a dedicated junior squad), the right move is to ring Blue Card Services on 1800 113 611 and describe the actual activity. That is a five-minute call against a decision CAQ is not placed to make for you, because it turns on facts specific to your event, not a general rule.

If your club does need cards

Where a club genuinely runs child-directed activity, the process is straightforward and, for volunteers, free:

1. Link the volunteer to your club through the Blue Card Services organisation portal before they start the role.
2. The volunteer applies for a Blue Card. There is no fee for a linked volunteer application.
3. Keep an employee register recording everyone in a regulated role, including anyone relying on an exemption, such as the volunteer-parent exemption, in a separate register.
4. Do not let the person start the regulated activity until the card is issued and linked. Blue Card Services calls this "No Card, No Link, No Start," and it is an offence to let someone continue in a regulated role once a card is suspended or cancelled.

A card, once issued, is valid for three years.

What this guide doesn't cover

Two related obligations sit outside this page and are worth checking separately if they apply to your club: Croquet Australia's own coach-accreditation rules, which are a national sporting requirement distinct from the Blue Card scheme, and the Child Safe Standards regime under the Child Safe Organisations Act 2024, a newer and broader set of governance obligations for clubs that run activities for children. Neither is answered by getting your Blue Card position right.