What is Duty of Care?

Duty of care is a legal principle that requires you to take all reasonable steps to ensure the safety, health, and wellbeing of the children who attend your activities. From the moment a child is signed in until the moment they are collected by an authorised person, you hold a duty of care for that child. This duty extends to your premises, your equipment, your staff's behaviour, and the activities themselves.

In practice, duty of care means conducting regular risk assessments for every activity and venue, maintaining appropriate staff-to-child ratios, ensuring staff are suitably qualified and vetted, having first aid provision available, maintaining a safe physical environment, and following your safeguarding procedures at all times. Negligence — a failure to exercise reasonable care — can result in civil liability, regulatory action, or criminal prosecution in serious cases.

A common question is where duty of care begins and ends. If a parent drops off a child five minutes early before your session officially starts, you still have a duty of care if you have accepted that child into your space. Similarly, if a child is not collected at the end of a session, your duty continues until the child is safely handed to an authorised adult. Having clear policies on drop-off, collection, and late collection helps define and manage these boundaries.