Social Services Regulation

What we do

We are an independent service in the ACT Government’s Health and Community Services Directorate. We regulate ACT organisations and individuals that provide:

• care and protection services for children and young people
• services for people with disability
• community housing.

We make sure these community service providers:

• give quality services to Canberrans who need them
• are continuously improving
• follow national and ACT standards and laws.

We also review unresolved complaints about these organisations and the Health and Community Services Directorate.

Our services are handled by our:

• ACT Social Services Registrar
• Health and Community Services Directorate complaints team.

ACT Social Services Registrar

We help care and protection providers, disability service providers and community housing providers understand and follow national and ACT laws.

For Care and Protection Providers we:

• assess organisations who apply to become providers and monitor them to make sure they follow the standards.
• maintain the Care and Protection Organisations Register: a list of organisations we have approved to be care and protection organisations.

For specialist disability services we:

• review critical incident reports from specialist disability service providers
• investigate complaints about disability service providers who are not registered with the NDIS.
• maintain the Visitable Places Register for the Official Visitor for Disability: a record of contact details for specialist disability accommodation and those who provide services at a visitable place. It helps safeguard people who live in visitable places.

For Community Housing Providers we:

• assess ACT community housing providers for registration under the National Regulatory System for Community Housing.
• monitor providers to make sure they continue to meet the National Regulatory Code and the National Law.
• investigate complaints about community housing providers by following the National Regulatory System for Community Housing investigation policy.
• maintain a list of community Housing Providers on the National Register of Community Housing Providers.

Community Services Directorate complaints

We welcome complaints and feedback. It helps the Health and Community Services Directorate fix problems and improve services.

Handling and review of complaints tells you about:

• how we respond to complaints about us, the services we provide or services by organisations we fund.
• the process we follow if someone is not happy with our review of their unresolved complaint.

Committee support

We support:

• Children and Young People Death Review Committee: an independent committee working to reduce preventable deaths of children and young people in the ACT.
• Child and Youth Protection Quality Assurance and Improvement Committee: an internal ACT Government committee to strengthen and improve the quality of child protection policy and practice in the ACT.
• Our Booris Our Way Implementation Oversight Committee: an independent committee to monitor and evaluate the government's implementation of recommendations made in the Our Booris, Our Way review.

Contact us