The theme of NAPCAN’s annual National Child Protection Week for 2021 (5-11 September) is “Every child, in every community, needs a fair go. To treat all of Australia’s children fairly, we need to make sure that every family and community has what kids need to thrive and be healthy.” The 2021 theme is focused on the importance of the ‘bigger picture’ in addressing child abuse and neglect.

How Does Australia Recognise the ‘Bigger Picture’ in Treating Children Fairly and Keeping Children Safe?

Australia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990. Under the Convention, children and young people, like adults, possess human rights, and also have the right to special protection because of their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse. In the more recent work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission), it was recognised that more was required of institutions who work with children to make them child safe, and 10 Child Standards were recommended to guide institutions by setting best practice to drive cultural change and guide performance.

In February 2019, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) endorsed the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (National Principles) (based on the Royal Commission’s Child Safe Standards) as the national benchmark for child safe organisation standards. All states and territories have committed to making the National Principles mandatory for all child-related organisations.

The National Principles are designed to look at the ‘bigger picture’ when it comes to child safety and wellbeing. Many of them provide guidance on how to ensure that children are treated fairly by addressing the broader needs of their families and communities. In particular, the National Principles include:

• National Principle 3 - Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing
• National Principle 4 - Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.

Several of the other National Principles also require consideration of families’ and communities’ views and diverse needs in order to implement those Principles well.

The National Principles collectively show that a child safe organisation is one that creates a culture, adopts strategies and takes action to not only prevent harm to children and young people, but to promote child wellbeing through equitable practices, including by respecting, considering and involving their families and communities.

What Can Schools Do to Treat their Students Fairly Through Addressing the Needs of their Families and Communities?

Schools, as providers of education for children of diverse backgrounds, circumstances and needs, must recognise the importance of equity in all of their policies and practices. Equity is not about treating all students equally, but about recognising and meeting their diverse needs, and those of the families and communities in which they live, to enable them to thrive.

Most jurisdictions now require schools to comply with the National Principles, or versions of them, as part of registration requirements or under other legislation. Therefore, most schools will have policies and procedures that outline how to treat children fairly and promote equity (or, if they don’t, they will need to develop these in the near future).

What this looks like in practice for schools will differ from school to school. However, the following are practical tips on how schools can put equity into practice through involving their students’ families and communities, to ensure that every student has what they need “to thrive and be healthy”:

• Start by identifying the diversity makeup (cultural, socio-economic, disability, etc) of your student body: this will involve not only developing a statistical understanding of who your students are, but will also need to go deeper to give your school an understanding of the diverse needs of the different families and communities that you discover at your school.
• When developing or reviewing your school’s child safe policies and procedures (including in particular complaints handling processes), consult with and engage families as well as representatives from and/or experts in your school’s diversity makeup and, of course, your students themselves.
• Ensure that information about who your school’s child protection officers are, what behaviours are prohibited by the child safe codes of conduct (for staff, volunteers, contractors, visitors and students) and how to raise concerns and make complaints are publicly available in a variety of platforms (and if needed even in a variety of languages/formats) and promoted to students and families in ways that take into account your school’s diversity makeup.
• Engage a diverse workforce (including volunteers and contractors) that reflects your school’s diversity make up, and provide cultural competence and cultural safety training to all staff and relevant volunteers.
• Involve children who have specific needs or cultural backgrounds, such as children with special needs, overseas students, boarders from isolated communities or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, in the school’s decision-making processes. The Queensland Government has developed a document regarding the participation of children and young people in decision-making. In the section regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, they note: “For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, Child Safety staff must promote the child’s right to self-determination, and work in genuine partnership with the child, their family and their community to ensure the child and family’s culture has been central in the decision-making process.” Equity for these children and their families means looking at alternative ways to engage them in decisions that affect them.

From a very practical perspective, schools could consider:

• providing access to technology for those students who need it (particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic): for example, lending school devices to families for remote learning or – if the school is engaged in face-to-face learning – for out-of-school projects
• reviewing the school’s processes for selecting students to participate in leadership roles. If the school is co-ed, is there an equitable mix of gender? If the school has children from a variety of cultures, is there a mix of cultures within the student leadership body that reflects similar proportions within the general student body?
• creating a welcoming physical environment for diverse students, families and communities, such as including a Welcome Wall with the words “hello” and “welcome” written in the variety of languages spoken by staff, students and families, and then teaching staff how to say these words when meeting with students and their families
• looking at ways other than through the school’s P&C (which often is a very select group of engaged parents) to involve parents, particularly those from backgrounds with a historical/cultural fear of authority, in school life: for example, holding English language classes at the school for families from non-English speaking backgrounds
• providing specific events at sports carnivals that cater for students with special needs: for example, rather than have these children involved by ‘sitting in the stands’ or assisting with timing, have events that encourage them to participate in a manner that engages them.
• providing incursions, excursions and excursion activities that reflect not only educational and safe engagement but that promote cultural awareness for both staff and students
• actively encouraging staff to participate in immersion experiences with relevant communities, by giving them the time to do so during working hours
• engaging ‘community liaisons’, particular staff or volunteers who have an understanding of specific communities relevant to your school, to build a bridge to those communities that may be hard to involve in school life.

In a previous article, we focused on Principle 3 and how schools can practically and effectively embed it within the school community. CompliSpace also joined with Bravehearts during 2019 and 2020 to host a podcast series on the National Principles: The Child Safe Organisations Podcast. For each podcast in this series, we interviewed a different expert about each of the National Principles. The podcasts for National Principle 3 (with guest Gayle Walters – P&C Queensland) and National Principle 4 (with Guest Kelly Humphrey – Diversity Consultant) have some additional ideas about how schools can promote equity, meet their students’ diverse needs and involve families and communities in decision-making at the school.

NAPCAN is hosting an extensive webinar program starting on 6 September 2021 that includes many topics that will assist schools in putting equity into practice.

Authors 

Deborah De Fina

Deborah recently completed five years working with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse where she assisted the Royal Commission to establish the Private Session process and subsequently managed its legal aspects. Prior to working with the Royal Commission, Deborah had her own successful consulting practice where she specialised in the statutory child protection system, legal issues facing children and vulnerable people, and legal aid. She also spent more than nine years at Legal Aid NSW, as a child protection solicitor, Senior Solicitor and then Solicitor in Charge, Child Protection. Deborah holds a Juris Doctorate from the Columbia University School of Law, a Master of International Affairs from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and a Diploma in Law from Sydney University.

Karen Zeev

Karen recently completed three years working at the NSW Ombudsman and the Office of the Children’s Guardian as a Senior Investigator in employment related child protection. Karen also spent three years at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as a Senior Legal and Policy Officer and was a key contributor to the “Redress and Civil Litigation” and “Criminal Justice” reports. Karen has worked as a commercial litigation lawyer both in the private and public sector and holds a bachelor’s degree in Arts/Law (Hons).