Non-school providers - child safety and wellbeing

About the Standard

Child safety and wellbeing is embedded in organisational leadership, governance and culture.

By building an organisational culture of child safety, non-school providers can help keep children safe.

This Standard seeks to create a culture of child safety through:

This is important in an education setting where children will be learning alongside adults.

A non-school provider must ensure that they:

develop a Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy or review an existing child safety policy to ensure compliance with the new Standards
have a Child Safety Code of Conduct with clear guidelines about behavioural standards and responsibilities of staff, volunteers and visitors in relation to child safety and wellbeing
follow up on all breaches of the Child Safety Code of Conduct
develop a risk register or review existing register that identifies and manages child safety risks and the risk of child abuse, and is contextualised to the providers’:
- student cohort, including vulnerable student cohorts (refer to Non-school providers - child safety in physical and online environments(opens in a new window))
- online and onsite environments
- offsite activities (for example, excursions, sporting events, workplace training, third-party providers)
- visitors, staff and volunteers
- adult learning environment
seek parent or guardian consent for each excursion
provide evidence the governing body reviews the effectiveness of risk management strategies (for example, in agendas or minutes of meetings)
provide all staff and volunteers (as appropriate to their role) with training that covers information sharing and recordkeeping obligations
create, collect and store documents relating to child safety incidents.

A non-school provider complying with this Standard may:

publish its Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy and Child Safety Code of Conduct on its website
ensure leaders promote a culture of child safety and reporting of all incidents
ensure the governing body understands the Child Safe Standards and has appropriate, oversight of child safety at the provider
annually review their risk register and risk management strategies for their effectiveness and to identify any new risks
make sure that staff, and volunteers understand the requirements for:
- child safety information sharing
- recordkeeping.

In complying with Child Safe Standard 2, an organisation must, at a minimum, ensure:
- the organisation makes a public commitment to child safety
- a child safe culture is championed and modelled at all levels of the organisation from the top down and bottom up
- governance arrangements facilitate implementation of the Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy at all levels
- a Code of Conduct provides guidelines for staff and volunteers on expected behavioural standards and responsibilities
- risk management strategies focus on preventing, identifying and mitigating risks to children and young people
- staff and volunteers understand their obligations on information sharing and record keeping.
- The Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP)(opens in a new window) — provides tools to guide and support the implementation of this Standard including ‘Creating a Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy’ and ‘Steps to develop or update your Code of Conduct’.
- The New South Wales Office of the Children's Guardian's Codes of Conduct: a guide to developing child safe Codes of Conduct(opens in a new window) provides extensive advice on developing a Child Safety Code of Conduct.

Updated 27 October 2022