The NSW Children’s Guardian, Kerryn Boland, released a draft set of guidelines and principles for creating a child-safe organisation on 12 April 2017 and is seeking public comment.

The Principles for Child Safe Organisations are informed by the research and findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse regarding the characteristics of child-safe organisations.

Research tells us organisations that listen to children, and have an open culture that encourages early detection and reporting of concerns, are better equipped to keep children safe.

The guidelines have been developed to assist organisations to think about strategies, beyond Working With Children Checks. Such probity checks are important but not enough to prevent harm from occurring to children in the future. Childcare service providers must think about what other things they can do to minimise the risk of harm to children.

Click here to download the Consultation Draft of the Principles for Child Safe Organisations.

New Child Safe eLearning launched

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017, the NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian also officially launched their free online learning tool to complement their face-to-face training to help staff and volunteers in all child-related organisations to build their capacity to become child-safe. The eLearning tool forms part of the Child Safe Strategy for NSW and will reinforce the draft Child Safe Principles.