Pre-Employment Psychological Suitability Screening
Comprehensive Pre-Employment Psychological Screening would likely have discovered Joshua Brown, and others, limiting risk exposure for children in care.
In the wake of one of Australia’s most disturbing child abuse cases, experts are calling for urgent reforms in the way candidates for child-related work are screened. At the centre of the conversation is a growing consensus: Working With Children Checks are not enough.
The recent case of Joshua Dale Brown, a former Victorian childcare worker now charged with over 70 offences against at least eight children across multiple early learning centres, has shattered public confidence in the current system of pre-employment checks.
Despite holding a valid Working With Children Check (WWCC), Brown managed to work at over 20 childcare centres across Victoria and other states over an eight-year period. The horror of his alleged offending—meticulously concealed and devastating in scale—demonstrates the profound limitations of background checks and basic screening tools. These systems failed to detect serious risk, allowing Brown prolonged access to infants and toddlers.
Experts in forensic psychology and child safeguarding argue that what’s needed is a fundamental shift in screening philosophy—one that can reach far deeper than working with children checks, employer led interviews and even psychometric testing alone can accomplish. An approach which combines the best of psychometric testing with structured interviews with a forensic psychologist trained in assessing and identifying behavioural and personality traits indicative of increased risk factors before someone is entrusted with the care of children.
Traditional Methods Are Not Enough
Psychological pre-employment screening offers a far more comprehensive and objective assessment of a candidate’s suitability than traditional referee checks and employer-led interviews. While referee checks rely on third-party opinions—often influenced by subjective biases, legal caution, or limited observation—psychological screening evaluates candidates using standardised measures and structured interviews grounded in behavioural science. It assesses not only past performance but also psychological traits relevant to risk, resilience, emotional regulation, and interpersonal functioning, all of which are critical in roles involving vulnerable populations.
Traditional interviews, even when well-structured, are often conducted by managers or HR personnel without specific training in behavioural assessment or risk detection. These interviews tend to focus on surface-level competence, experience, and personality fit, and can be heavily influenced by a candidate’s charisma or rehearsed responses. In contrast, psychological screening—when conducted by a trained forensic psychologist—uses validated tools and forensic interviewing techniques to probe deeper. It can uncover warning signs such as poor boundaries, rigid thinking, emotional volatility, or deceptive behaviour that would not be evident in standard hiring processes.
Moreover, psychological screening integrates multiple data points—such as psychometric test results, behavioural observations, and employment history—to build a structured risk formulation. This holistic approach allows for more accurate predictions of future behaviour, particularly in high-stakes environments like child protection, healthcare, or disability. Unlike referee checks, which are backward-looking and often vague, psychological assessments provide forward-looking insights about a candidate’s potential vulnerabilities and workplace impact, leading to safer and more informed hiring decisions
The Failure of the Working With Children Check
The Working With Children Check (WWCC), the cornerstone of child safety in employment screening across Australia, has been revealed as deeply flawed. Designed to flag known offenders, the check functions largely as a criminal history screen. It does not identify emerging risks or concerning behaviours in individuals without previous convictions—precisely the type of offender Joshua Brown appears to be.
Brown passed his WWCC repeatedly. He had no prior charges, no known reports to police, and no listed concerns. Even more worryingly, he was able to change employment dozens of times, often without triggering any safeguarding flag, as past employers were not required to report internal concerns.
This mirrors the findings of multiple reviews into institutional abuse: most child sex offenders have no criminal record when first employed, and rely on institutional blind spots to remain undetected.
PsychCheck addresses this gap by evaluating psychological vulnerabilities and behavioural red flags, not just criminal history.
The Case for Deeper Screening: PsychCheck’s Dual Approach
PsychCheck is built around a two-step model: standardised psychometric testing followed by a structured 1:1 interview with a trained forensic psychologist. Unlike conventional hiring processes, where managers rely on CVs, reference checks, and often-untrained interviewers, PsychCheck integrates psychological science with forensic expertise in risk assessment.
Psychometric tests alone are fundamentally limited, but can be very useful when interpreted in the context of the individuals’ presentation. The face-to-face psychological interview conducted by a forensic psychologist is central to the model’s success. These interviews follow a structured professional judgement approach, allowing the psychologist to evaluate the psychometric profile with behavioural and personality risk factors using validated frameworks while remaining attuned to the subtleties of human behaviour.
In the case of Joshua Brown, co-workers described him as “warm and engaging” at times and “oddly cold or dismissive” at others. A skilled forensic psychologist would have explored such variability in emotional expression—known in risk literature as affective instability—and considered it in the context of safeguarding concerns.
Could PsychCheck Have Detected Joshua Brown?
While no system is foolproof, PsychCheck’s model would likely have found Psychological Unsuitability in Brown’s case.
Multiple employment changes, vague reasons for leaving, and contradictory descriptions of behaviour are all indicators that would trigger risk flags. A forensic interview would have explored his upbringing, behavioural history, relationship development, motivations for working with infants, his responses to authority, and his stress management—all areas known to be relevant in grooming behaviour and safeguarding violations.
People who engage in the behaviours perpetrated by Brown are not opportunistic. They are calculated, planned and rehearsed, with specific modalities of behaviour toward perverse outcomes. These behaviours do not just appear in an individual. There would have been markers in his history, behaviours, relationships and background which would have been uncovered through a PsychCheck evaluation.
Since 2016 PsychCheck has consistently found each year on average that 10% of candidates already interviewed by prospective employers and would have been employed, were psychologically unsuitable for working with vulnerable persons. Many of these candidates went to work in disability, aged care and childcare. The PsychCheck model identifies 64-points of risk aligned with literature around parent, care-giver, behavioural and personality factors. While certainly risk of sexualised behaviours is a focus, both genders are capable of aggression, poor emotional regulation and violence.
The Case for Reform
The Brown case has prompted calls for a national inquiry and urgent reform. Parents, regulators, and early childhood leaders agree: the current system cannot be trusted to protect the most vulnerable.
Several steps are now being proposed. These include mandatory comprehensive screening for all childcare roles, inclusion of forensic psychological interviews as a standard part of safeguarding due diligence and improved reporting obligations between employers to flag concerns even when no charges exist. Regular rescreening of staff every five years or following significant incidents is also highly recommended.
A System Designed to Protect, Not Just Comply
Safeguarding children requires more than compliance. It requires systems designed to understand and identify risk before harm occurs, not just record it.
PsychCheck represents a model of what part of that system can look like: one that integrates psychological science, forensic expertise, and professional judgement to prevent harm before it occurs by screening out individuals with high risk profiles.
We can’t wait for people to offend before we act. We need to be identifying those who are psychologically unsuitable before they ever step into a room with a child.
Joshua Brown should never have been hired. And with a comprehensive methodology like PsychCheck, he very likely wouldn’t have been.