The change. The Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 (NSW) commenced on 22 August 2025 and requires psychosocial risks to be managed in accordance with the hierarchy of control measures. Under the previous regulation, psychosocial risk sat outside that hierarchy. And since 1 July 2026, s 26A of the WHS Act 2011 (NSW) requires a business to follow an approved code of practice or manage the risk to an equivalent or higher standard — the psychosocial code SafeWork NSW issued in May 2021 is an approved code.
Why that sentence matters more than it sounds
The hierarchy prioritises eliminating the hazard, then substituting, isolating or engineering it out, and only then relies on administrative controls. A policy and an employee assistance program are administrative controls at the bottom of the hierarchy. They are no longer a defensible control set on their own.
For a service, higher-order controls look like work design: how rooms are staffed at the hardest hour of the day, how a difficult family interaction is handled so one educator is not alone with it, how a serious incident is debriefed, how programming time is actually protected.
What SafeWork NSW has published about this sector
In March 2026 SafeWork NSW released research on work health and safety hazards in early childhood education and care — a review of 17,953 workers compensation claims from January 2015 to June 2025 across roughly 6,000 NSW services and around 78,000 workers. It estimated 34.7 claims per million hours worked in 2024, approximately 2.5 times the 2015 rate. Of psychosocial causes: being assaulted 48%, bullying and harassment 24%, work pressure 14%. The report notes regulator records may be “the tip of the iceberg” because of under-reporting.
To be precise about what that is and is not: it is research, not an enforcement campaign. But a duty that changed in August 2025, a claims rate running at 2.5 times a decade ago, and a regulator that has just published a sector-specific evidence base is not a combination to leave unassessed.
What a defensible psychosocial risk assessment contains
- The hazards, named specifically for a service — occupational violence from children and from adults, high emotional demand, exposure to trauma, role conflict between educator and administrator, low control over interruptions, poor support during ratio pressure, bullying
- Who is exposed, and when
- The existing controls, honestly stated
- The risk rating with the existing controls in place
- New controls, ranked by the hierarchy, with elimination and substitution considered first and the reason recorded if they are rejected
- Who is responsible, by when
- A review date, and evidence the review happened
The part the code actually asks for
Most services have done a psychosocial risk assessment by now. Far fewer can show the consultation behind it, the controls chosen against the hierarchy, and the review cycle. That is the difference between a document and a system — and it is the part an inspector or an insurer looks for.
Free, editable, no card: the psychosocial hazards risk assessment →
Members get the full ten-document system around it — hazard register, quarterly consultation check-in, wellbeing pulse check, support record, psychological injury response guide and the 12-Week Educator Wellbeing Plan. $249 for your first year →
General information for NSW education and care services, not legal advice. Verify current provisions against the primary sources linked above.