Health and Wellbeing

Child Safety

Solway Primary School is committed to child safety.  As a community we want children to be safe, happy and empowered. We support and respect all children, as well as our staff and volunteers.  We are committed to the safety, participation and empowerment of all children. There is zero tolerance of child abuse, and all allegations and safety concerns will be treated very seriously and consistently with our robust policies and procedures. We meet our legal and moral obligations to contact authorities when we are worried about a child’s safety, which we follow rigorously.

Solway Primary School is committed to preventing child abuse and identifying risks early, and removing and reducing these risks. We have robust human resources and recruitment practices for all staff and volunteers. Our school is committed to regularly training and educating our staff and volunteers on child abuse risks. As a community we support and respect all students, as well as our staff and volunteers. We are committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the cultural safety of students from a culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, to providing a safe environment for vulnerable students and students with a disability. Solway Primary School has specific policies, procedures and training in places that support our leadership team, staff and volunteers to achieve these commitments.

At Solway Primary School:

• Everyone connected to our school can help students be safe.
• We have zero tolerance for any abuse of students.
• We already have policies and processes in place to protect the care, safety and welfare of students. These are being strengthened to ensure a zero tolerance approach to child abuse. As policies are ratified at school council, they will be made available to your through the newsletter and on our web page.
• There will be clear boundaries about how adults in our school community may interact with the students here set out in our school’s Child Safe Code of Conduct. This will be made available when school council ratifies it at school council
• The child safe standards apply to school staff (including volunteers and contractors), visitors and students’ family members.
• Keeping students safe is everyone’s responsibility. Different people at our school have different roles and responsibilities for ensuring student’s safety
• Things you need to know about: what ‘zero tolerance’ means to us, what roles and responsibilities adults have for child safety, our new procedures to respond to and report complaints of any form of child abuse.
• We want to ensure you know how we are keeping your students safe at school, and how we’d like you to support us (for families).
• Staff members (including volunteers) will receive training and support to understand and carry out their responsibilities under the standards.
• Unsupervised contractors will be asked about their child safety arrangements as a condition of working with us if they work with students enrolled in the school (or students can reasonably be expected to be present while they are at the school).
• Other people using our school facilities will be asked about their child safety arrangements as a condition of using our facilities if they involve students enrolled at the school (or students can reasonably be expected to be present while their staff or other adults are at the school).

Our Code of Conduct for staff and volunteers around Child Safety Standards is available on our website.

Kate Nancarrow

Assistant Principal

Kate Nancarrow

Assistant Principal