The Resilience Project

TRP@HOME Spotlight

I am Safe Acknowledgement Week - Term 4 Week 8 2023 

In alignment with our commitment to implement the Child Safety Standards (Ministerial Order 1359) this week’s focus for explicit teaching in Ready to Learn is Protective Behaviours.

Our Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy states: 

● We commit to teaching children and young people the necessary skills and knowledge to understand and maintain their personal safety and wellbeing. 

We encourage families to have regular conversations with your children to support their developing understanding of age appropriate protective behaviours.  Supporting children to practise identifying at least 5 key trusted adults they can turn to for help, to recognise body and emotion cues that signal an unsafe situation and how to say ‘No,’ ‘I don’t want to’ or ‘That’s not OK’ goes a long way to promote confidence in establishing boundaries and teaches your child strategies to use when out and about.

These strategies may include: 

•  establishing a family warning/code word that only you and your child know to signal when your child feels unsafe 
• creating habits of establishing landmark meeting places when in busy public places in the event of being separated in crowds
• developing language to describe emotions and body cues to support your child to communicate their discomfort
• normalising regular conversations about personal body awareness and safety that promotes empowerment rather than worry or fear. 

Some free resources can be found at  Educate2Empower to support you in having conversations with your child.  Using videos, posters and story books to prompt conversations is a great way to engage your child in this learning.  

We ALWAYS encourage families to view videos and read picture book texts about this subject matter before sharing them with your child. It is important as a family that you are comfortable with the way that this sensitive content is delivered and the language that is used. 

Please be aware that this kind of learning can elicit wonderings, questions and sometimes, disclosures by children.  If you have any concerns or require any support with this, please reach out to Karen at kdodemaide@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

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