Safeguarding Children Services
Supporting your organisation to safeguard children and young people using their services
Why are Safeguarding Children Services so important?
We believe that the abuse and exploitation of children and young people by employees and volunteers within organisations can be prevented. It is why we have had a dedicated focus on meeting this challenge for more than a decade, well before the Parliamentary Inquiry and Royal Commission into the past institutional abuse of children.
Our Safeguarding Children Services are designed to help organisations build their capacity to keep children safe from abuse and exploitation by employees and volunteers. Our approach, tools and training have been drawn from over 10 years of research – as well as our own experience in working with:
• Children and young people who have been abused and traumatised,
• Perpetrators of sexual abuse and family violence,
• Organisations across sectors seeking to strengthen their own child-safe policies and systems.
We offer evidence-based resources and processes that can help your organisation meet its compliance obligations and strengthen your internal culture that embodies a commitment to the protection of children and young people.
Four ways we can help you
These support activities have been drawn from a decade of national and international research as well as our own collective experience in working with children and young people who have been harmed, perpetrators of abuse, and a range of organisations across a number of different sectors seeking to strengthen their child safe approach.
Certification and Accreditation Programs
Why do organisations fail to protect children and young people from abuse and exploitation?
We have developed a model for understanding the reasons that organisations fail in their duty of care to protect children and young people from abuse and exploitation. In this diagram, we have set out a summary of the factors that lead to failure to protect.
Failure to protect children starts with an ineffective organisational culture that is not resourced by the leadership of the organisation. Often effective governance structures and protocols are absent. Poor or not well-executed policies and procedures complicate and confuse decision making processes for staff, volunteers and service users. All of these factors lead to a lack of knowledge and a lack of confidence by staff to know how to respond to the risks that may occur in relation to children and young people.
How can we assist your organisation?
We have a dedicated team that works closely with key personnel in your organisation to assess the strengths and areas for development within your organisation in relation to your Safeguarding Children capacity and culture. In the diagram below, we set out the areas that organisations will need to consider and address in order to be confident that they have in place a robust and integrated framework that will result in protecting children from abuse and exploitation.
When you engage us, our Safeguarding Children Team will tailor strategies that can meet any or all of these needs within your organisation. Depending on budget and other internal imperatives, we work with you to implement any one, a collection or the whole of the strategies that will achieve the objective of your organisation in relation to child-safe organisations.
Stakeholder engagement and consultation
Program/organisational evaluation and review
Policy development and implementation support
Training and capacity building of your personnel
Supporting child safe improvement
Ready-made tools and resources
Integrating risk management and governance
Partnerships
Safeguarding Children Accreditation
We are proud to be working with a number of organisations including
