Assistant Principal

Child Safety and Wellbeing at Eltham High School: Information for Families and the School Community

Link: Child Safety and Wellbeing at Eltham High School

Eltham High School is committed to providing an environment where students are safe and feel safe.

Our child safety framework https://www.elthamhs.vic.edu.au/policies-child-safety/ explains how we support and maintain child safety and wellbeing at Eltham High School. It includes our:

• Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy
• Child Safety Reporting and Responding Obligations Procedures, and
• Child Safety Code of Conduct, which outlines acceptable and unacceptable behaviours for all staff and volunteers at our school.

Our students and families are important partners in providing a child safe environment. These regular newsletter reminders are one of the ways we ensure our school community is aware of:

• our commitment to child safety, and
• how to provide feedback or raise child safety concerns.

If you have any concerns about child safety at any time, please contact Darren Squire on Darren.squires@education.vic.gov.au. Any child safety complaints or concerns are treated seriously. For more information about our school’s complaints process, see our Complaints policy available at https://www.elthamhs.vic.edu.au/policies-child-safety/

We also welcome your ideas on ways we can improve our approach to child safety and wellbeing. If you have any suggestions or comments please contact Fran Mullins at fran.mullins@education.vic.gov.au/

Visitors to School

 Link: Visitors to the School Policy

Eltham High School strives to create an open and inclusive school community and encourages parents and carers to be actively involved in their child’s development and education. We aim to provide a safe and secure learning and teaching environment for students and staff by establishing processes to monitor and manage visitors to the school. Our policy outlines requirements for visitors to the school, such as visiting during the school’s hours of instruction, sign-in procedures and requirements for Working with Children Check cards.

We further encourage all visitors to familiarise themselves with our school’s Statement of Values, Child Safe Policy, Statement of Commitment to Child Safety, and Child Safe Code of Conduct.

Volunteers Policy

 Link: Volunteers Policy

Eltham High School recognises the valuable contribution that volunteers provide to our school community and the work that we do. The Volunteers policy outlines the processes that Eltham High School will follow to recruit, screen, supervise and manage volunteers to provide a child safe environment, and to explain the legal rights of volunteers. To ensure that we are meeting our legal obligations under the Working With Children Act 2005 (Vic) and the Child Safe Standards, Eltham High School is required to undertake suitability checks which in most cases will involve asking for evidence of a Working with Children (WWC) Clearance and may also involve undertaking reference, proof of identity, qualification and work history involving children checks.

FRAN MULLINS, Assistant Principal