Child Safety

Child Safe Standard 5 (Ministerial Order No. 1359 clause 9) focuses on recognising and responding to children and young people’s diverse circumstances, and understanding that some children are more vulnerable to abuse than others. Schools are required to attend to any adjustments to provide equitable protection for all children and young people. This includes creating safe and welcoming environments, ensuring accessibility to information and support, and implementing complaints processes that are child-friendly, culturally safe and easy to understand.

Upholding equity and respecting diverse needs are relevant considerations in implementing all of the Child Safe Standards.

To comply with this standard, at a minimum, MACS schools must:

• contextualise the 'Diversity and equity – strategies and actions' section of the MACS School Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy, describing what the school will do to uphold equity and respect diverse needs. This should include documenting strategies to:
  • support staff and volunteers to understand the diverse circumstances of children and students, and provide support and respond to vulnerable children and students
  • make sure children, students, staff, volunteers and the school community have access to information, support and complaints processes that are culturally safe, accessible and easy to understand
  • pay particular attention to the needs of:
    • students with disability
    • students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
    • students who are unable to live at home
    • international students
    • lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) students
  • pay particular attention to the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and provide and promote a culturally safe environment for them
• publish the policy and make this known to the school community
• ensure the strategies and actions outlined in the policy are implemented.

Actions

Schools can use the following guide to assist with embedding this standard:

• Embedding the Child Safe Standards

Policies

MACS schools are required to use the provided policy templates, contextualised to their school community where possible:

Required policy

Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy

Supporting policies

• MACS Pastoral Care of Students Policy
• Anti-bullying Policy (including cyberbullying)
  • Anti-bullying Action Plan
  • Anti-bullying Policy Checklist for Schools 
  • Anti-bullying Response Pathway
  • Bullying Record Keeping and Investigation Tool
• Student Behaviour Policy
• Identity and Growth: A perspective for Catholic schools 

Resources

Further resources to support implementation of this standard are available in the ‘Resources’ section below.

Considerations

To ensure policies and procedures effectively support diversity and equity, refer to the ‘Examples of practice’ section below.

Families and students should be consulted in the development of certain school practices. In addition to the suggested examples in the next section, refer to Child Safe Standard 4 for guidance on supporting family and community involvement in the development of these practices and processes.

Review

Being a strong, child safe organisation is an ongoing process of continual review and refinement, which is significantly dependent upon strong leadership and culture, policies and procedures, staff education and training, and the active participation of children, young people and their families.Schools must review their child safety and wellbeing policies and practices:

• after any significant child safety incident
• at least once every two years.