A long record nearly blocked him from child-related work - until the tribunal looked closer
A Victorian tribunal has cleared a man with a long criminal history to work with children, finding that his past no longer made him a risk.
The ruling in UFJ v Social Services Regulator [2026] VCAT 393, handed down on May 28, 2026, is worth a look for anyone who hires into child-related roles. It lays out, in plain terms, how Victoria's worker-screening system weighs an old record against signs that someone has turned their life around.
The man, identified only as UFJ to protect his privacy, had been handed a "WWC Exclusion" - a decision that blocks someone from holding a Working With Children Clearance. In Victoria, that clearance is a legal must for paid or volunteer work involving direct contact with children. No clearance, no job in those settings.
His record was long. According to the decision, it began when he was about 13 and homeless, and the most recent offences came in July 2024, when he was around 20. In his own statement, he said that as a teenager he had sometimes got himself arrested on purpose just to get a meal and a bed. None of his offending was against children.
He wanted the clearance so he could help raise his young brother, who had been placed in his partner's care. Without it, he could not be alone with the boy or be recognised as a kinship carer. His partner had quit her job because she could not juggle full-time work with the boy's appointments and school pickups on her own.
The regulator pushed back. In closing submissions dated February 26, 2026, it argued he had not yet reached "a sufficiently stable life," and raised concerns about his anger management and unresolved trauma. It placed particular emphasis on one episode: corrections records described him becoming "argumentative, aggressive" with a corrections officer in April 2025, slamming the table and using profanities during a dispute over treatment.
The Tribunal set that against a much larger body of evidence - statements from his partner, his aunt and a grandmother figure, departmental records, and an independent report from clinical psychologist Courtney Steffens. Steffens rated him "a low to moderate risk of future physical violence" and found "no evidence of any active risk of violence specifically towards children."
Senior Member A. Dea set the Exclusion aside and ordered a Clearance. A few findings drove the result: none of his offending targeted children; the Tribunal regarded his most serious offending as "one-off" and tied to a specific trigger; and his circumstances had shifted markedly over the previous two to three years.
So why should HR care? Because the case shows how a serious record is actually tested for child-related work. The question is not whether someone has a record. It is whether granting clearance would pose an "unjustifiable risk to the safety of children." That word - unjustifiable - does the heavy lifting. As the Tribunal observed, drawing on earlier case law, the scheme was never meant to shield children from every possible hazard, no matter how slight.
For employers, the takeaway is practical. Recency, context and evidence of rehabilitation all matter. When offences happened, what has changed since, what the experts say, and whether the conduct ever involved children can all move the needle. A record, on its own, does not decide it.
