Quick summary
- Garda vetting disclosure must be received before someone starts work with children. Build this into your timeline early.
- Confirm qualification level and equivalence (where relevant) before the first day, not after.
- Day-one induction should cover emergency procedures, safeguarding reporting lines, and key policies.
- Regulation 9 requires specific staff records to be held. Onboarding is when most of these get created.
- A written checklist protects against the step that gets missed when things are busy.
What has to happen before day one
Two things need to be fully in place before a new staff member works directly with children, not just requested or "in progress": Garda vetting disclosure, and confirmation of their qualification level. Both are covered in more detail elsewhere in this Knowledge Centre, but the practical implication for onboarding is the same: your recruitment timeline needs to work backward from these, not treat them as parallel paperwork to finish once someone has already started.
What a written checklist should cover
- Vetting, application submitted, disclosure received and reviewed, before any unsupervised contact with children.
- Qualifications, certificate sighted and copied, equivalence confirmed for overseas qualifications, correct level verified against the specific role (general staff, room leader, preschool leader).
- References, checked and recorded, not just requested.
- Contract and role details, signed, with rota expectations and probation terms clear from the outset.
- Policy sign-off, child protection, health and safety, and any service-specific policies acknowledged in writing.
- Day-one induction, covered below.
Day-one induction: what actually needs covering
A new staff member's first day is not the time to introduce every policy in the folder. It's the time to cover what they need immediately: how to raise a child protection concern and who to go to, what to do in a fire or emergency evacuation, where records for the children in their room are kept, and who's supervising them while they settle in. Everything else can follow over the first weeks, but these can't wait.
What Regulation 9 expects you to have on file
Regulation 9 of the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016 requires services to hold specific records relating to staff, including evidence of qualifications and vetting. Onboarding is, in practice, when most of this record gets created, which is another reason a written checklist matters: it's both a hiring process and the beginning of your compliance record for that staff member.
Practical advice
- Start vetting applications as early as possible in the recruitment process, not after an offer is accepted.
- Use the same written checklist for every hire. Consistency here is what protects you if a gap is ever questioned.
- Keep day-one induction short and focused on immediate safety and reporting needs; save the rest for the following weeks.
- Review the checklist periodically against current Tusla and Regulation 9 guidance, since requirements are occasionally updated.
How Tot Tracker helps
Tot Tracker tracks each staff member's vetting and qualification status against a simple checklist, with alerts if a step is outstanding, so it's visible at a glance whether someone is fully cleared to start, rather than relying on someone remembering to chase it down.