Child Safety

At Community Action every child has the right to be safe and feel safe. We commit to the safety and wellbeing of every child participating in our programs.

To keep children safe, we commit to:

• Implementing the 10 Child Safe Standards
• Providing a safe and supportive environment for all children
• A zero tolerance for child abuse
• Empowering children to participate in decisions that affect them and share any concerns they may have
• Making sure children know who to approach if they feel unsafe or have any child safety concerns

As a child safe organisation, we commit to:

• Our legal and moral obligations to contact authorities when there are concerns about a child’s safety, in accordance with Community Action policies and procedures
• Robust human resources and recruitment screening practices for all staff and volunteers
• Training and educating staff and volunteers about what it means to be a child safe organisation, so that we can prevent, detect and effectively respond to child abuse
• Promoting cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, cultural safety for children from culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and providing a safe environment for children with a disability
• Considering the needs of same sex attracted and intersex children and young people, and recognise gender diversity in providing a safe environment
• Welcoming feedback to continuously improve our child safe policies, procedures and practices
• Making sure that when family and community members interact with our organisation, they are aware that child safety is everyone’s responsibility, and their behaviour aligns with our child safe practices.

Community Action requires all staff to uphold these commitments and has specific policies, procedures and training in place to achieve these commitments.