Purpose
Children are precious and ought to be cared for properly by the different organisations they come into contact with throughout their lives. For an organisation to be truly “child safe”, it must have a planned and intentional approach to safety.
This must include good practices around appointment of staff and volunteers, training of those people, and measures to keep programs and the physical location of activities safe for children and vulnerable people.
That’s why at ChildSafe, we use the phrase, “Safe People – Safe Programs – Safe Places” or SP3. Children need the organisations they come into contact with to manage all three.
Why Is It So Important For My Organisation To Be ChildSafe?
In recent times, many organisations have been shamed by revelations of child sexual abuse.
Others have been ruined by catastrophic incidents resulting in loss of life. When such things occur, organisations do well to ask:
- “How did this happen?”
- “What do I need to do to avoid this?”
- “Where do I start with a safety management process?”
- “Do we have effective mechanisms to manage safety and well-being?”
In the majority of cases, organisations don’t fail children because they lack the correct policies, but because such policies are either inadequate and/or poorly implemented. We realise that there must be good standards, policies and procedures in place, that all volunteers and staff know, understand and can carry out.
ChildSafe’s safety management program, SP3, is built on the idea that no-one is accountable to themselves when it comes to safety management around children and vulnerable people.
Benefits
ChildSafe’s Safety Management Framework is consistent with State Government guidelines on what a “child safe” organisation should look like. But we take this further by providing a series of tools that enable your organisation to transition policies into effective practice.
When you subscribe to ChildSafe, you can expect it to lead to:
- informed staff and volunteers who know how to keep the children in their care safe;
- An effective process for screening all new volunteers and staff to your organisation; and
- An effective and easy-to-use online management system that provides the tools and training you need to run a child safe organisation.
