St Thomas More Catholic Primary School

Child Safety

Child Safe Standard 3 (Ministerial Order No. 1359 clause 7) addresses the critical importance of a school culture that supports children and young people to be informed about their rights and responsibilities in an age-appropriate way, where they actively participate in building a school culture that is safe for them and their voice. This includes paying attention to the importance of peer friendships, building the awareness and capacity of staff and volunteers, and implementing child abuse prevention programs.

Children and young people are more likely to speak up when they feel respected and confident that they will be heard and be taken seriously.

 

To support establishing minimum requirements and continue to embed the Child Safe Standards, the following examples of practice may be considered:

Inform students of their rights

  • Provide age-appropriate and accessible information to students, such as information about:
  • Inform students of their rights and special protections, including the right to:
    • live and grow up healthy
    • have a say about decisions affecting them
    • get information that is important to them
    • be safe and not harmed by anyone.
  • Share information under the Child Information Sharing Scheme and Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme, and:
    • work to build trust by being open and transparent about information sharing, and keep the child and family informed each time their information is shared, if it is appropriate, safe and reasonable to do so
    • seek and consider the views of the child (or the relevant family members) about sharing their confidential information if it is appropriate, safe and reasonable to do so.
  • Provide information through the curriculum via relevant subject areas to promote:

Empower students to contribute to school life

  • Display visually engaging and easy-to-read posters promoting student voice and agency.
  • Discuss commitment to student voice at enrolment and organise orientation activities focused on activating student voice.
  • Conduct year-level meetings and form groups to discuss students’ rights and safety issues.
  • Invite students to provide feedback on school-wide decisions and take their views into account in school decision-making.
  • Document student participation in activities that contribute to the life of the school.
  • Involve students in consultation processes and inform them of their impact on decision-making.
  • Demonstrate that the school takes students seriously by acting on their concerns, noting that what might seem unimportant to an adult may be important to a young person.
  • Become a VicSRC Partner School.
  • Provide students who find it harder to speak up or be heard with multiple avenues for communicating, including writing, drawing or physical forms of communication.

Empower students to raise their concerns

  • Provide students with information about complaints processes.
  • Give students a variety of ways to raise concerns. For example:
    • provide an anonymous, year-level student suggestion box
    • distribute regular online surveys
    • display information about the adults who students can talk to if they have a concern.
  • Highlight student views in your school community or public-facing documents, including quoting students where appropriate.
  • Create opportunities for all student voices by being aware of discriminatory barriers and any overreliance on the input of student leaders.

Strengthen peer support for safety and wellbeing

  • Acknowledge sexuality and gender diversity by identifying safe spaces where students can go if they need support.
  • Implement regular whole-school wellbeing assessment surveys.
  • Establish student action teams to investigate issues of inclusion and exclusion.
  • Discuss healthy boundaries for friendships. Point out that the risk of harm can occur in child-to-child interactions, as well as adult-to-child interactions.
  • Develop or use an existing school transition program to provide support for students entering the school.
  • Provide buddying or mentoring programs for new students transitioning to the school mid‑year or outside the regular transition timeline.

Establish protective factors

  • Teach students practical protective strategies, including:
    • what to do when they feel unsafe
    • phrases they can use to raise an objection
    • pathways for raising safety concerns
    • online safety behaviours.
  • Provide contact information for independent child and youth advocacy services or helplines.
  • Provide a range of age-appropriate picture, fiction and non-fiction books that include:
    • children’s rights and empowerment themes
    • cultural and linguistic diversity
    • neurodiverse characters and people with disability
    • diversity in sexual orientation and gender.
  • Support all students to identify trusted adults and friends they can talk to about a concern at school, at home or in the community.
  • Deliver age-appropriate curriculum content about respectful relationships, sexuality and consent through the Respectful Relationships teaching and learning materials (or equivalent), within a Catholic context.
  • Empower students with the knowledge that adults are accountable and that students have a right to safety.

Communicate in a respectful and age-appropriate way

  • Educate staff to uphold Aboriginal cultural safety, and be respectful of identity and culture.
  • Train staff and volunteers to facilitate child-friendly ways for students to express their views, participate in decision-making and raise their concerns.
  • Educate staff and volunteers about children’s rights, including the four guiding principles in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Use sensitivity and build trust

  • Provide training to staff and volunteers to be attuned to signs of harm and risk factors in students.
  • Remind staff and volunteers to recognise that students might communicate in different ways, including through verbal and non-verbal cues, play, body language, facial expressions, drawings or behaviours.
  • Follow through on your commitments – show students that the leadership team and staff are trustworthy, and take their worries or concerns seriously.