Review of child safety practices

All references to 'schools' in this guidance include school boarding premises.

Overview

This standard focuses on continuous improvement of child-safe policies, procedures and practices.

Schools must:

regularly review and evaluate policies, procedures and practices after any significant child safety incident or at least every 2 years
improve policies, procedures and practices where needed
analyse child safety incidents, concerns and complaints to identify systemic issues and inform continuous improvement
share relevant review findings with the school community.

Benefits of reviewing child safety practices

Being a child-safe organisation requires ongoing effort.

Child safe organisations have an open and transparent culture. They create opportunities to reflect on child safety risks and mitigation practices and put the interests of children first.

Regular review of policies, procedures and practices:

ensures they are adequate, up-to-date and effective
helps maintain the best approach to child safety and wellbeing
ensure school staff are familiar with child safety requirements
minimises the risk of harm to children, wherever possible.

Actions schools must take

To comply with this standard, at minimum, schools must:

review and evaluate their child safety and wellbeing policies, procedures and practices after any significant child safety incident, or at least every 2 years and improve where applicable
analyse complaints, concerns and safety incidents to identify causes and systemic failures and to inform continuous improvement
report on the outcomes of relevant reviews to staff, volunteers, the community, families and students.

Relevant Standards

Ministerial Order 1359 – Implementing the Child Safe Standards – managing the risk of child abuse in schools and school boarding premises (PDF, 363KB).
Child Safe Standard 10 – Implementation of the Child Safe Standards is regularly reviewed and improved.

Implementing the Standard

Schools must review their child safety and wellbeing policies, procedures and practices:
- after any significant child safety incident
- at least once every 2 years.
Guidance and an optional template review and Child Safety Post-Incident Review and Action Plan is available to support schools to undertake a post child safety incident review.
Visit Undertaking child safety reviews for more information.
The template and Child Safety Post-Incident Review and Action Plan have been developed for government schools. Non-government schools can adapt them to suit their needs.
Schools must analyse child safety complaints, concerns and incidents. This helps schools to:
- consider any underlying causes
- identify child safety risks
- improve child safety practices, policies and procedures.
A Child Safety Issues Log and Action Plan is available for schools to use. This optional document helps schools to record:
- child safety issues and risks arising from incidents, concerns or complaints
- actions the school plans to take to address those issues and risks.
This document can inform the school's:
- annual review of their child safety risk register
- two-yearly review of child safety policies and procedures.
Further resources are available to support schools comply with Ministerial Order 1359 including:
- Government schools: Child Safety Action List (DOCX, 110KB)
- Non-government schools: Child Safety Action List (DOCX, 385KB).

Examples of actions to support the review of child safety practices

- Develop a register of existing child safety policies. Include approval dates and schedule a review every 2 years. For government schools, an optional resource schools may choose to use for this purpose is available on the School Policy Templates Portal
- Develop a work plan to review and update policies and procedures. A working group or your child safety champion could lead this.
- Monitor and manage child safety risks using a child safety risk register.
- Considers risks that may have contributed to child safety incidents, complaints or concerns. Monitor for repeat issues or systemic failures.
- Use complaints and incidents as a learning opportunity to inform continuous improvement.
- Involve staff, volunteers, students, families and community members in review processes. Refer to Child Safe Standard 4 for actions on how to engage families and communities.
- Keep documentation (e.g. records of meetings or decisions) to show how child safe practices were improved and implemented.
- Keep a complaints and concerns log that demonstrates how issues were addressed (which may be the optional Child Safety Issues Log and Action Plan). Ensure the log is secure and has version control.
- Review complaints received and incidents reported for gaps, weaknesses or failures in policies.
- Make review findings and recommendations easy to access and understand.
- Inform staff of changes to child safety practices, policies or procedures following reviews
- Communicate review outcomes to students in age-appropriate ways.
- Inform the broader school community about changes to child safety policies and practices.
- Discuss child-safe policies and procedures with students, families, staff and volunteers.

Resources

Training resources

- Mandatory Reporting and Other Obligations eLearning Module: Protecting Children (government schools)
- Mandatory Reporting and Other Obligations eLearning Module: Protecting Children (non-government schools)

Support

For further help to meet Child Safe Standard 10 and Ministerial Order 1359, contact child.safe.schools@education.vic.gov.au

Possible next steps

Use this checklist to make sure your school is doing everything required to comply with this standard:

Government schools: Child Safety Action List (DOCX, 110KB)
Non-government schools: Child Safety Action List (DOCX, 385KB)

Read more about implementing all the Child Safe Standards in schools.