Following on from:

• a recommendation by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission) that all states and territories should implement and enforce mandatory child safe organisations standards for child-related organisations; and
• the adoption by all states and territories of the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (National Principles) as the benchmark for these standards,

states and territories around Australia have been progressively developing and implementing Child Safe Organisation Standards based on the National Principles and regulatory schemes to enforce compliance, including by schools.

To comply with the National Principles, or their state-based equivalent, a school must ensure that:

• a child safe culture is championed and modelled at all levels of the school; governance arrangements facilitate the implementation of child safety and wellbeing at all levels; and school leaders promote sharing good practice and learnings about child safety and wellbeing (Principle 1/Victorian Child Safe Standard 2)
• students can identify trusted adults at the school (Principle 2/Victorian Child Safe Standard 3)
• governing body members, employees and volunteers champion attitudes and behaviours that respect the human rights of students (National Principle 4/Victorian Child Safe Standard 5)
• complaints policies and systems clearly outline roles and responsibilities for managing concerns and complaints, and students know who to talk to if they are feeling unsafe (National Principle 6/Victorian Child Safe Standard 7).

In addition, each National Principle/state-based child safe standard places a number of obligations on schools to ensure that certain things occur or take certain actions, each of which would require the nomination of someone at the school to ensure that this occurs. For example:

• National Principle 3/Victorian Child Safe Standard 4 requires someone at a school to ensure that it has clear and accessible information for families and communities about the school’s child safety operations and policies, and that it seeks feedback from families and communities about child safety and wellbeing which feedback is then incorporated into the school’s policies, procedures and practices
• National Principle 4/Victorian Child Safe Standard 5 requires someone at a school to ensure that it produces child friendly material in accessible language and format that informs students of the support and complaints processes available to them
• National Principle 5/Victorian Child Safe Standard 6 requires someone at a school to ensure that all staff and volunteers receive an appropriate induction about their child safety responsibilities and understand their record keeping, information sharing and reporting obligations, and National Principle 7/Victorian Child Safe Standard 8 requires someone at a school to ensure that ongoing training for staff and volunteers includes specific topics relevant to each of the National Principles/state-based child safe standards.

Why Does My School Need Child Safety Officers?

While nothing in the above requirements specify that, to meet them, a school must have and appoint someone to a role called “Child Safety Officer”, when it made the recommendations on which the National Principles/state-based child safe standards, the Royal Commission recommended, in Appendix A to Volume 6 of its Final Report, that to meet Principle 1 an institution should set accountabilities for child safe principles at all levels of its governance structure, and appoint a Child Protection Coordinator, who would report to its executive team about the institution’s child safe performance.

Guidance from the states and territories about how to comply with their state-based child safe standards also either requires or recommends the nomination of certain staff members who can champion child safety and act as a point of contact for students and staff in relation to child safety issues. For example:

• the Victorian Commission for Children and Young People’s Guide for Creating a Child Safe Organisation requires that senior leaders at an organisation are responsible for a number of specific child safety-related issues
• Queensland’s Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy Toolkit recommends nominating a contact officer who can deal with child protection issues such as inducting new staff and volunteers, offering assistance and support when person makes or receives a disclosure of harm and reviewing and managing child safety-related policies, and its Non-State Schools Accreditation criteria require the nomination of at least two staff members to whom students can report the inappropriate conduct of another staff member.

While the National Principles/state-based child safe standards require schools to ensure that child safety and wellbeing is embedded at all levels and that everyone at a school is responsible for child safety and wellbeing, nominating specific staff members as Child Safety Officers:

• clearly identifies, for staff, students, families and relevant community members, who at the school are its child safety experts, able to provide advice and assistance about child safety and wellbeing issues
• ensures that someone at the school is responsible for holding it to its commitment to child safety and wellbeing and to following its child safety and wellbeing policies and procedures, and for ensuring that these are up to date, compliant with the law, culturally safe and meet the needs of the school’s student cohort.

What Does a Child Safety Officer Do?

While the role of a Child Safety Officer may vary between schools – and may particularly depend on their size, activities, and resources – there are a number of key responsibilities that should be included in their position description, to help the school to meet its child safe standards and, in some jurisdictions, registration requirements.

These include:

• having a good working knowledge of the school’s child safety and wellbeing policies and procedures, and being a point of contact for staff, volunteers and contractors who need advice about or assistance with following them
• acting as “Child Safety Champions” and promoting child safety issues within the school community
• being a point of contact for staff, volunteers, contractors, students, families and other members of the school community to raise child safety incidents or concerns within the school
• managing, or assisting the principal to manage, the school’s response to a child safety incident or concern, and ensuring that the incident, allegation, disclosure or suspicion is taken seriously
• proving assistance and support to students, families, staff, volunteers, and contractors who receive or make a disclosure of abuse or other harm
• communicating the school’s child safety and wellbeing policies and procedures to all stakeholders including students, parents/carers, staff, volunteers and contractors
• monitoring how the school’s child safety and wellbeing policies and procedures are being implemented, and reporting about this to the school’s leadership/executive team
• reviewing the school’s child safety and wellbeing policies and procedures
• ensuring that new staff members, and relevant volunteers and contractors, receive induction and ongoing child safety training so that they are able to identify signs of abuse and other harm, understand how to respond and know when to make a report internally and to an external agency
• providing new staff members, and relevant volunteers and contractors, with the child safety and wellbeing policy and the child safety codes of conduct
• ensuring that visitors to the school are aware of key contact details for reporting child safety incidents and concerns internally to the school and to relevant external authorities.

Note that it is not a Child Safety Officer’s role to replace individual staff member’s legal obligations to make reports to external authorities. Reporting a child safety incident or concern to a Child Safety Officer does not absolve staff members of these obligations, nor can a staff member fail to make an external report if their own concerns still rise to the required threshold for reporting despite seeking and receiving advice from a Child Safety Officer that – in the Child Safety Officer’s view - the matter does not need to be reported.

Who Should My School Appoint as Its Child Safety Officers?

To be able to fulfil the above responsibilities, a school’s Child Safety Officers will need a unique set of knowledge and skills. They should be staff members:

• with experience working with complex student and family issues
• whose personal attitudes, experiences and skills demonstrate a high degree of integrity, respect for confidentiality, willingness and ability to respond to issues personally and sensitively, and resilience
• whose role within the school provides them with a sufficient degree of seniority and authority
• who are approachable, who students and staff trust, and who are readily accessible and available to all members of the school community.

A school should think very carefully about who it appoints to these roles. To ensure that the person in the role meets all of the above requirements, a school should consider appointing particular people rather than designating certain roles at the school as Child Safety Officers. For example, while the role of Deputy Principal – Students may have sufficient authority, the person in that role may not be considered approachable by students particularly if they are responsible for, and have a reputation for meting out, student discipline.

A school should also consider appointing more than one Child Safety Officer, or at least one Child Safety Officer and at least one Senior Child Safety Officer. The above responsibilities are extensive and may not be able to be sufficiently managed by a single person, especially if they also have other teaching, counselling or administrative commitments. Appointing at least two Child Safety Officers, or one Child Safety Officer and one Senior Child Safety Officer, also ensures that someone fulfils the above responsibilities when a Child Safety Officer has a conflict of interest in a particular matter, is on leave or is otherwise unable to take on one or more of the required responsibilities.

To be able to fulfil their role, Child Safety Officers will also need funding, time and authority, and – if they are not the school’s principal – a direct line to the principal. They will also need additional training, above and beyond the standard child safety training given to all staff. This additional training may include external courses, conferences and workshops on relevant child safety-related topics, internal training provided by the school, and regular meetings of the Child Safety Officers as a group to discuss current issues at the school.