24/02/2026
There is a lot of discussion about the news regarding the “sacking “ of volunteers who haven’t completed child safety training. If you have any concerns please read this and be assured that our brigade has not lost any active members as a result.
As a Tasmanian Government Agency, the Department of Police Fire and Emergency Management and its service arms, including TFS, are required to comply with the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Act 2023.
The Act includes the 10 Child and Youth Safe Standards, one of which requires organisations to ensure that their staff and volunteers have the knowledge, skills and awareness to prevent, identify and respond to child safety concerns (Standard 7).
To achieve this, two learning modules were created. One provides an overview of the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Framework and one focuses on identifying and responding to reportable conduct.
When these modules were released all DPFEM workers, including TFS volunteers, were informed that completion of both modules was mandatory, with a completion date of 30 May 2025.
For TFS members (employees and volunteers), these modules were made available online and could be done on a station computer (for brigades connected to the DPFEM network) or a personal device.
Staff were made available to provide advice and support to help volunteers to access the online modules, and to address any digital literacy or other challenges, face-to-face sessions have also been offered for groups and individuals.
There was no cost to volunteers to complete the training, which takes less than 2 hours to complete.
TFS has continued to work with volunteer brigades to support all volunteers to complete the training either through self-directed online learning, virtual face to face sessions and in person sessions.
We have had staff members and volunteers running sessions, with as many as 50 people attending in some cases.
The vast majority of our volunteers completed the training, and we thank them for doing so.
We would also like to thank our staff and volunteers who have been working hard to facilitate these sessions, and support our volunteers.
Despite this ongoing support and extended deadlines, approximately 336 volunteers have not completed the mandatory training by the extended deadline.
A significant number of these are Social Members and are not directly involved in frontline fire activities.
These members will have their volunteer membership terminated.
Wellbeing support will be made available.
This training is essential to avoid placing Junior and Cadet Members of the TFS at risk, as well as those children and young people in the community that we serve.
Operational needs across all Brigades will continue to be met.
Jeremy Smith
Commissioner, Fire and Emergency Services
