Child Safe

Child Safety Standards

All children have the right to feel safe and to be safe all of  the time. An organisation or agency that provides a child safe environment is one that has a range of strategies and policies in place to ensure children are protected from harm and abuse. 

To help keep children safe, the Victorian Government has introduced mandatory minimum Child Safe Standards (the Standards) for organisations that provide services or facilities for children.

This will assist organisations to:

• build a culture of child safety and identify and make child safety everyone's business
• apply a child safety lens to existing and new policies and practice
• set clear expectations for staff in relation to child safety
• recruit child-safe staff and volunteers
• enable staff and volunteers to feel empowered to act in the best interests of children when they have safety concerns
• prevent child abuse, encourage reporting and improve responses to any allegations of child abuse
• identify and mitigate risks to child safety
• benefit the organisation as it gains valuable information about how children experience its organisation.

* The term ‘children’ refers to children and young people.

Each fortnight we will unpack what each of these standards mean and how this affects your child at St Raphael's.