ACM20121 Certificate II in Animal Care (Online)

Many of our Animal Care students, unless employed at a suitable workplace, complete their required hours in a voluntary position, such as volunteering at an animal or wildlife shelter or an animal-related business.

Prior to commencing your work placement, your prospective supervisor will need to submit a Work Placement Approval Kit. Once received, our Student Liaison Officer will assess the organisation to ensure it meets the workplace criteria for your course, including access to tasks, systems and processes, equipment and even species of animals.

For our Certificate II in Animal Care, you have flexibility in how you structure your work placement. You should plan to complete around 100 hours of practical training – approximately one day a week for 3-4 months, or 12-15 full work days. This may vary depending on your prior experience working with animals, and the skills and knowledge you already have.

Your placement can be completed:

• Weekly: for example, one day each week
• In blocks: such as several consecutive days or during school holidays
• As a combination: using both block and weekly placement

Your course is organised into two study blocks, so it’s a good idea to review your Assessment Schedule and practical requirements before committing all of your placement hours. Some practical activities may only be completed once you have covered the relevant theory or when a suitable opportunity arises in your workplace.

Meet Cassie: planning her placement (Case Study)

Cassie is completing her placement at Trudy’s Dog Resort. She starts with a two-week block during the school holidays, giving her plenty of time to work on practical activities from her first study block.

Looking ahead at Block 2, Cassie notices that one assessment requires her to demonstrate a specific skill. She knows finding the right animal and opportunity during a short placement block could be difficult.

Cassie saves her remaining placement hours and attends one day per week during Block 2, giving her more opportunities to complete this and her other practical assessments.

What’s important is that your placement gives you enough opportunities to complete the practical activities and assessments required for your course. You should continue attending your workplace until all required Practical Task Worksheets and Workplace Assignments are completed, even if you have already completed around 100 hours of placement.

Self-organised work placements are only required for selected courses and delivery methods. As a general rule, our intensive, on-campus or on-site courses do not require you to organise a work placement. For more information, please refer to the relevant Work Placement information, located in the Course Outline section of the corresponding course page.

Special note for ACM40418 Certificate IV in Veterinary Nursing students: Only regional WA (non-funded) and non-WA students are required to organise their own work placement.

If you are required to organise your own placement, you will be required to:

• Submit a signed “Student Workplace Form” (for Animal Care students)
• Request your prospective supervisor to complete a “Workplace Approval Form”, BEFORE your placement starts
• Wait to receive confirmation from us that your work placement has been approved before beginning your placement

If your work placement is not approved by AVT, and it is unsuitable for the purposes of this course, then any hours already completed there will not contribute to the completion of this qualification or any of the units of competency. That’s why, it’s important to receive written confirmation from us before you get started! 👍

Commonly asked questions about Workplace Practical Training

• • What is workplace practical training?
  • Can I complete my workplace practical training in a private, non-business environment? Or with my pet?
  • Can I volunteer in an organisation to meet the required work placement hours?
  • Can I do my Veterinary Nursing practical work placement on weekends?
  • Can I be exempt from the Workplace Practical Training if I have previous experience in a Veterinary Practice?
  • Do I need to do the work placement with the same veterinary clinic or can I work in more than one workplace?
  • Can I choose more than one workplace for my Animal Care work placement?
  • How am I assessed during my practical placement?

As part of the ACM20121 Certificate II in Animal Care, you must have practical access to:

• At least two different animal species
• Animals at different life stages (for example, juvenile and adult)

This is a requirement of the national training package to ensure students develop well-rounded skills that reflect real-world workplaces.

What this means for your placement

If you are completing one of our online animal care courses, your placement must have access to two companion animal species (such as dogs, cats or any animal that is individually handled and cared for such as a pony, or chickens kept at an educational farm), and two life stages can be represented across the two species. For example, you could work with a juvenile cat and an adult pony.

Why is this required?

Animal care professionals often work in environments where they encounter a wide variety of animals. Working with more than one species and different life stages helps prepare you for real-world animal care environments, where no two days, or animals, are the same.

By meeting this requirement, you will:

• Build adaptable, job-ready skills across different animal types
• Learn to recognise and respond to varying behaviour, health, and welfare needs
• Develop safe handling techniques for animals of different ages and temperaments
• Increase your confidence and employability across a range of animal care settings

Need help?

If you’re unsure whether your placement meets the two species and life stage requirement, our Student Support Team can guide you before you begin.

Different RTOs may list lower workplace hours because they may choose different units or structure their work placement differently. For example, in ACM30122 Certificate III in Animal Care Services (Online), our 250‑hour guideline reflects the type and volume of units we deliver, which involve a strong emphasis on animal contact, handling, care and safety.

This recommendation is especially beneficial for students who are new to the industry or have limited animal experience. The actual time you need will depend on your existing skills, knowledge and confidence. Some students become work-ready more quickly, while others need the maximum hours (or even more) to feel truly competent.

Our guideline is intended to support you –  not create a barrier. It ensures you have enough real experience to be genuinely work ready, confident and safe in an animal‑related workplace. It also helps you develop the hands-on skills you need to reinforce and apply your theoretical learning.

What does the national training package require?

The training package outlines the skills and knowledge you must demonstrate but does not specify how many hours you should spend in a workplace. This gives RTOs flexibility to design their courses differently.

Why some RTO’s and training organisations set lower hours

• They rely more heavily on simulated training in classrooms rather than real life scenarios
• They tightly interpret the minimum evidence requirements (meaning they adopt the bare minimum approach)

How do I know if a course has enough practical training?

Look for information about:

• how many hours are spent in a real workplace
• how practical assessments are carried out
• whether on-campus practical days or workshops are included
• the type of animals and environments you will work with and how they correspond to your course material
  

Why AVT’s approach for online students stands out (and why hours matter for students)

Our higher placement hours for online courses mean:

• You will graduate with more confidence
• Practical tasks are assessed over a longer, more realistic timeline and are consistent with industry standards
• You will get more meaningful exposure to animal handling, welfare, client and team interactions, and daily routines
• Employers perceive AVT graduates as more job-ready

All of our courses are vocational, which means that they are specifically designed to provide students with the skills, experience and knowledge to enter the animal care workplace. Working in an animal care facility, where you are responsible for a number of different animals and sometimes a range of different species on a daily basis is very different to caring for your own pets at home.

Therefore to successfully complete your qualification you will need to secure a formal workplace practical training placement in a animal related business or organisation. If you are completing our veterinary nursing qualification, you will need to complete your placement in a veterinary practice.  

Below are just a few examples of the types of skills and knowledge that must be covered in all of our courses, which cannot be learned from caring for your own animals –

• Being able to understand and interpret the behaviour of animals that you are not familiar with.  This is an essential skill in order to ensure that the animal is approached and handled in the most appropriate and safest way so as to minimise stress to the animal and reduce the risk of injury to the handler.
• The ability to accurately assess the health of an animal that you are not familiar with. As we know our own animals so well, we can often pick up on the early signs that something is wrong. However, being able to do this with animals that you do not know particularly well and may be in an unfamiliar environment such as boarding facility, rescue shelter or vet clinic requires a completely different set of skills and knowledge.
• Understanding of hygiene and infection control practices. In a facility where numerous animals are housed, it is vital to have a good understanding of the correct hygiene practices to ensure that all animals are kept healthy and to minimise the risk of the spread of disease and cross-contamination.
• Health and safety practices. Working with animals can present a very unique set of risks and therefore it is vital that students are aware of not only the possible risks but also how to ensure they can minimise these risks at all times.

Commonly asked questions about Workplace Practical Training

• • What is workplace practical training?
  • How do I know if the workplace I have chosen is acceptable?
  • Can I volunteer in an organisation to meet the required work placement hours?
  • Can I do my Veterinary Nursing practical work placement on weekends?
  • Can I be exempt from the Workplace Practical Training if I have previous experience in a Veterinary Practice?
  • Do I need to do the work placement with the same veterinary clinic or can I work in more than one workplace?
  • Can I choose more than one workplace for my Animal Studies work placement?
  • How am I assessed during my practical placement?

Yes, you can complete your practical training at more than one workplace if the opportunity arises. While it’s not required, gaining experience at two different organisations can be really beneficial and give you a broader range of skills. We recommend keeping it to a maximum of two workplaces so you can get the most out of each experience.

Finally, we require a ‘Workplace Approval Form’ for each placement to ensure the suitability of the placement for your studies. 

You will receive a Practical Task Workbook containing a logbook and all the practical assessments you must complete during your placement.

Practical assessments include ‘Workplace Assignments’ that include activities such as case studies, photographs, written descriptions of workplace procedures and video evidence of practical tasks. These assessments are designed to see how well you can apply the information covered in the theory component of each unit.

Each unit also includes ‘Practical Task Worksheets’ outlining various tasks that you are expected to complete during your placement, with each task signed off by a supervisor once successfully completed. All practical assessments must be submitted to us via our online learning platform for assessment by one of our tutors.

A student attendance record is also included in the Workbook and your supervisor must sign this to confirm that you have completed the required number of hours during a placement.

During your placement, we will contact your supervisor to obtain feedback on your performance. This feedback will then be relayed to you.

Commonly asked questions about Workplace Practical Training

• • What is workplace practical training?
  • Can I complete my workplace practical training in a private, non-business environment? Or with my pet?
  • How do I know if the workplace I have chosen is acceptable?
  • Can I volunteer in an organisation to meet the required work placement hours?
  • Can I do my Veterinary Nursing practical work placement on weekends?
  • Can I be exempt from the Workplace Practical Training if I have previous experience in a Veterinary Practice?
  • Do I need to do the work placement with the same veterinary clinic or can I work in more than one workplace?
  • Can I choose more than one workplace for my Animal Care work placement?

If you live in Australia and your work placement is also based in Australia, you’ll be covered under AVT’s Voluntary Workers Policy. This insurance applies if you’re injured during your placement and includes accident-related costs that exceed any applicable Medicare benefits.

If you’re injured and require medical treatment, you’ll need to visit a General Practitioner or hospital as a general public patient. It’s important to let the doctor know that you’re a volunteer and that the injury is not covered under Workers’ Compensation. If you have any out-of-pocket expenses that aren’t covered by Medicare, you can make a claim through AVT.

Quick Example
While completing her logged hours at ABC Dog Boarding Kennels, Mia strained her lower back while lifting a dog into a grooming tub. She attended a GP as a public patient and let them know she was a volunteer, so Workers’ Compensation does not apply. Medicare covered part of the treatment, and any additional out-of-pocket GP or therapy costs, such as physiotherapy, could be claimed under AVT’s Voluntary Workers Policy.

AVT also provides public liability insurance of up to $20,000,000, which covers third-party injury or property damage you may accidentally cause during your placement. 

Certificate of Insurance: AVT’s Certificate of Currency

Important note for ACM20121 Certificate II in Animal Care (Internship: Vet Nurse Program) students: If you are completing your work placement with Greencross Vets, you will be insured under Greencross Vets’ insurance policy. This means AVT’s insurance does not apply to your placement with Greencross.

Your training pack is included as part of your course and contains the key materials you need for your studies and practical training.

This may include:

• Practical Skills Workbook
• Supervisor Practical Training Guide
• AVT shirt or scrub top (depending on your course)
• Training accessories (as required)
• Name badge
• Pens and notebooks

When you receive your pack depends on your study mode:

• Online students: Your workbook and materials are provided once your work placement has been approved
• On-campus students: Your training pack is issued when you attend on-campus training or your placement commences.

This ensures you receive your materials at the right time to support your practical learning.