Child Safe Standards

The Victorian Government has announced new Child Safe Standards to further strengthen child safety across organisations, including schools. The new standards recognise the critical importance of families and the broader school community in maintaining and promoting child safety and wellbeing. The new Child Safe Standards build on the current Standards, with changes and new requirements for organisations, including schools, to:

Involve families and communities in efforts to keep children and young people safe
Have a greater focus on cultural safety for Aboriginal children and young people
Better manage the risk of child abuse in online environments.

There are 11 Child Safe Standards:

Standard 1: Culturally safe environments – Establish a culturally safe environment in which the diverse and unique identities and experiences of Aboriginal children and young people are respected and valued.
Standard 2: Leadership, governance, and culture – Ensure that child safety and wellbeing are embedded in school leadership, governance and culture.
Standard 3: Child and student empowerment – Children and young people are empowered about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously.
Standard 4: Family engagement – Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing.
Standard 5: Diversity and equity – Equity is upheld and diverse needs are respected in policy and practice.
Standard 6: Suitable staff and volunteers – People working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.
Standard 7: Child-focused complaints processes – Ensure that processes for complaints and concerns are child focused.
Standard 8: Child safety knowledge, skills and awareness – Staff and volunteers are equipped with the knowledge, skills and awareness to keep children and young people safe through ongoing education and training.
Standard 9: Physical and online environments – Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.
Standard 10: Review of child safety practices - Implementation of the Child Safe Standards is regularly reviewed and improved.
Standard 11: Implementation of child safety practices – Policies and procedures that document how schools are safe for children, young people and students.

Hampton 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.

Hampton 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 children, as well as our staff and volunteers. We are committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal children, the cultural safety of children from a culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and to providing a safe environment for children with a disability. Hampton Primary has specific policies, procedures and training in place that support our leadership team, staff and volunteers to achieve these commitments.

At Hampton Primary:

Everyone connected to our school can help children be safe.
We have zero tolerance for any abuse of children.
We already have policies and processes in place to protect the care, safety and welfare of children. 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 you on our web page.
Our Child Safe Code of Conduct sets out clear boundaries about how adults in our school community may interact with the children here at Hampton Primary.

All policies relating to Child Safety can be found on our school website:

https://hamptonps.vic.edu.au/community/policies/

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