This week is National Child Protection Week (NCPW) and the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN) is promoting the NCPW's key messages - 'Protecting Children is Everyone’s Business' and 'Play Your Part'. NCPW officially commenced on Sunday 7th September and runs until Saturday 13th September 2014.

NCPW aims to educate Australians about the many ways in which they can share ideas to create positive change, whether it is through participating in an organised initiative, hosting an event in the local community, or simply being someone who listens to children. Schools play a crucial role in recognising and reporting incidents of abuse affecting their students and educating their community on child safety. Sadly, as our previous articles have described, it's often members of school communities who are also common perpetrators of abuse against children in their care.

We often write about the prevalence of incidents of child sexual abuse being suffered by children and how the State and Territory governments are implementing new laws to help address and mitigate the issue. As reported by the Herald Sun, the revelation this week that nearly 4,000 children in Victoria are affected by sexual assault each year is a shocking and sad statistic, which has prompted calls by the Victorian Police for the community to take proactive action to combat the abuse.

It would be wrong, however, for anyone to suggest that the Victorian Government is not doing enough to recognise and address the issue of child sexual abuse. As we have reported recently, Victoria is leading the way in introducing new legislation designed to improve child-safety including:

• the recently proposed child-safe and child protection legislation which introduces new minimum standards for creating a child-safe environment in education and community service providers; and
• its pioneering sexting laws which recognise that children can do significant harm to each other through sharing images on social media. A new offence of sending or threatening to send an intimate image, contrary to ‘community standards of acceptable conduct’ also allows action to be taken against children or adults who intentionally disseminate imagery to hurt or intimidate others.

The legislative activity in Victoria is taking place against the backdrop of the admirable work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission). The Federal Government has recently provided funding for the Royal Commission to be extended by two years to 2017.  Further information about the extended Royal Commission is available in our article below 'Child Abuse Royal Commission Extended to 2017'.

As part of NCPW, the Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews recently encouraged the 'government, politicians, families and the community to work together to address child safety in their own neighbourhood'. Mr Andrews, speaking at an earlier event, praised NAPCAN's message that 'protecting children is everyone's business' and the work it does for NCPW. Adding a philosophical perspective, Mr Andrews also described child protection as a 'unifying issue' in Parliament, being 'one of those things that should be bigger than the to-and-fro of partisan politics'.

So far, the State and Territory governments, led by Victoria, are taking steps to help address the issue. There is always more that can be done to help prevent abuse from occurring, including having best practice policies and procedures in place at schools, and using a risk management framework to address the risks of child abuse. Given that Victoria has already legislated to implement these changes, and the Royal Commission will almost certainly recommend them, there is very little reason not to be proactive in adopting the best practices for child abuse prevention. If schools look at this issue as their business, and not just an issue of compliance, they have the potential to save the futures of child abuse victims.=