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Welcome to this briefing on the refreshed PROTECT guidance.
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The PROTECT guidance helps schools to identify and respond to child abuse and support students and families to access the right support at the right time.
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I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands from which you are viewing this presentation today.
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I pay my respects to the Elders, past, present and emerging of those lands.
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I also acknowledge any Aboriginal people who may be watching today.
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The Department of Education has been working closely with the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing over the last two years to refresh the PROTECT guidance, to support schools to identify and respond to child abuse and connect students and their families to the right support at the right time.
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The service system that supports children's safety has changed significantly since PROTECT was launched in 2016.
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A key change has been the statewide roll out of The Orange Door.
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The PROTECT guidance now reflects the current family and specialist service system.
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School staff reporting obligations, including mandatory reporting and reportable conduct have not changed.
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PROTECT provides clearer advice on when to support, refer, and when to report to ensure students and their families are connected to the right support at the right time.
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It also helps support students and their families to self-refer to The Orange Door to help them get the support they need.
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The refreshed PROTECT website makes it easier for school staff to navigate and find information.
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An important new feature of the updated guidance is that it provides detailed information for schools on how to respond based on 4 sources of abuse.
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These are an adult engaged by the school - which includes all staff engaged by the school and volunteers, contractors and service providers.
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Abuse between students - which could cover a wide range of abuse types from grooming through to sexual abuse.
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Abuse in the family - includes family violence and mandatory reporting.
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It also applies when the abuse occurs in a family like relationship.
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And abuse in the community - this could include a wide range of abuse by adults from support services, employers or community organisations like sports clubs.
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The sources of abuse are really important because knowing who caused the harm will guide schools on how to respond.
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There is tailored advice for each source of abuse.
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The new 4 Critical Actions are:
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identify child abuse; support students in the school; refer students to community services; and report abuse to authorities.
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The way schools will respond to child abuse will depend on the source, and the order of the actions will also depend on the source of abuse.
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There are also actions that schools can take at any time.
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These are responding to an emergency if there is one; adapting to changing circumstances by repeating actions or changing to a different action; and documenting your actions throughout the process.
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Information on contacting parents or carers and information sharing schemes is included in each action.
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The Department consulted widely on the refreshed guidance with a range of stakeholders including the Australian Education Union, principals associations and a selection of primary, secondary and specialist schools and subject matter experts.
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Schools and stakeholders had positive feedback on the guidance and believe it will help schools provide the right support at the right time.
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The refreshed PROTECT guidance support schools to identify and respond to child abuse and connect students and their families with the right support at the right time.
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The refreshed PROTECT website makes it easier for school staff to navigate and find information and follow up pathway based on the source of abuse.
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Protect is now aligned with the family service system and the child safety policies that schools already have to follow.
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These include the Child Safe Standards, Reportable Conduct scheme, MARAM and the information sharing schemes.
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The guidance includes when to refer to The Orange Door or local sexual assault and harmful sexual behaviour services; when to report to Child Protection or Victoria Police; and when to report to your relevant school governing authority.
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Importantly, PROTECT provides more clarity on the support available from The Orange Door on when to refer and when to report to Child Protection if abuse is in the family; and on the support available from sexual assault services for harmful sexual behaviour between students.
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The Department of Education has worked with the Victorian Catholic Education Authority and Independent Schools Victoria to provide communications to non-government schools in March and April 2026 to announce the new guidance.
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We've also delivered the refreshed PROTECT website to help school staff find the information they need quickly and provide access to training tools and resources.
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There are updated templates to help schools record their actions.
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There's an updated child abuse, including grooming, identification and response policy that schools can use to establish their local reporting processes.
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The Department and Victorian Catholic Education Authority and Independent Schools Victoria have delivered weekly briefings throughout Term 2, 2026 to help schools understand the guidance.
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This is a recording of those briefings and in Term 3, 2026 we will deliver updated child safety training that will be refreshed and simplified.
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It's important that schools share the refreshed PROTECT guidance with all staff and become familiar with the PROTECT website.
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You need to replace all existing 4 Critical Actions posters with the new versions.
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You need to update the child abuse, including grooming, identification and response policy by the end of 2026.
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It's important that you review these child safety briefings to learn about how to provide the right support at the right time and complete child safety training when it becomes available in Term 3, 2026.
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Here are some of the products the Department has produced to help schools.
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You can see examples of the 4 Critical Actions
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Poster for staff reminding them to use the 4 Critical Actions and visit the PROTECT website for more information.
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Schools can display these in staff rooms or offices.
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Then we have student facing posters that remind students that they can speak up and will get help.
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These can be displayed in classrooms or anywhere else that students will see them.
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The Department has produced these for both younger and older students.
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You can download these posters from the PROTECT website.
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Here you can see examples of the 4 Critical Actions reference guides.
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There is a reference guide for each source of abuse, and these reference guides replace the previous 4 Critical Actions poster.
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Each reference guide provides a snapshot of the key actions you need to take.
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There is also a QR code and links to the detailed guidance on PROTECT.
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You can download these posters from the PROTECT website.
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We're now going to look at each source of abuse on the PROTECT website and outline some of the key steps you need to follow to provide the right support to students at the right time.
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Supporting students who experience child abuse or who have been using harmful behaviours is stressful and hard.
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I'm not going to discuss specific examples in this presentation, but it's important to make time to care for your mental health and well being.
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Seek help if you need to.
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You can step away from this presentation if necessary and return to it later.
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You can also find more information about support available to you on the PROTECT website under Wellbeing Support for School Staff.
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So let's have a look at the PROTECT website at www.vic.gov.au/protect
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The first thing you'll notice is that the guidance has been divided into two sections, one for early childhood and one for schools.
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So I'll select guidance for schools.
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On the PROTECT for Schools page.
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There's guidance on identifying and responding to child abuse; complying with the Child Safe Standards; accessing resources like posters and templates; and there's information on information sharing schemes, your legal obligations, family violence support and where to get support for victim survivors of historical abuse.
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Today we're discussing how to identify and respond to child abuse, so I'll click on that.
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Earlier in this presentation I mentioned that the sources of abuse are really important because knowing who caused the harm will guide schools on how to respond to it.
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On the PROTECT website, we're now asked to choose the source of abuse.
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We need to select the source that is the most appropriate for the circumstances.
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Don't worry if you select the wrong one, you can always come back to this page and choose again.
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To start with, choose a source of abuse.
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The top row provides guidance on when abuse is caused by an adult in the school.
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You can see that it is organised by school sector.
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The bottom row provides guidance on abuse between students in the family or in the community.
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So let's start with an example of abuse in the family.
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As a school staff member, you may be the only adult in a position to identify child abuse in the family.
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It's important that you're aware of the common types of child abuse and what to look out for, and there's guidance here to help you.
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You can see the different types of child abuse listed and they're hyperlinked to more information about the types of abuse.
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This includes common physical and behavioural signs to watch out for.
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PROTECT also outlines many ways you can identify abuse.
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You may witness an incident, receive a disclosure or observe physical or behavioural signs of abuse or family violence risk factors.
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There are links to further information if you need to better understand how to identify abuse.
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Having identified that there is a concern or abuse, the next step is to collect more information.
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PROTECT tells you that you only need to collect enough information to form a reasonable belief or inform your next steps.
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If you're confident that what has been disclosed leads you to form a reasonable belief that a student is at risk of abuse, your next step is to determine the reporting pathway and inform school leadership.
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Your school's child abuse, including grooming, Identification and response policy, will tell you who you need to inform at your school.
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This policy should be available on your school website. But... if you've not yet formed a reasonable belief, you need to collect more information.
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If you have a concern that a student is experiencing or is at risk of experiencing family violence, any school staff member can record relevant information in the Family Violence Identification Tool.
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This tool can be used to identify abuse for any concern where the source of abuse is within the family.
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Once completed, provide the tool to your school's MARAM nominated staff member.
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MARAM nominated staff can use the Family Violence Screening Tool to ask screening questions to determine if family violence is occurring and MARAM nominated staff can also use the Family Violence Basic Safety Plan to plan for the student's safety at school and have a once off conversation about safety at home.
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These tools will help the schools determine what the next steps should be.
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There are also some other actions you can take, including requesting information from other information sharing entities or checking child link for service involvement.
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In either case, by the end of completing the steps in identify, several outcomes are possible.
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You may have formed a reasonable belief that the child is in need of protection or you may have completed the Family Violence stalls which will guide the school and the MARAM nominated staff about the next steps they need to take.
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So your next step will be to determine your pathway.
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But before I click on that, I just want to note that it's also possible after collecting more information that you may no longer have any safety or well being concerns for the student.
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In this case, make sure you document your actions and keep monitoring the situation as you may need to adapt to changing circumstances if new information becomes available.
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There's always information about responding to an emergency, adapting the changing circumstances, and documenting your actions at the bottom of every page on PROTECT.
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Our next step for this demonstration is to click on Determine Your Pathway.
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The next page helps you determine the pathway you will follow to complete the 4 Critical Actions.
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The options you choose will depend on what you've learned in identify.
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You may have concerns about a family that is struggling with the care, wellbeing and development of a child, or you may have concerns about family violence.
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Both of these options will see the school supporting the student and referring to The Orange Door.
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As The Orange Door is there to help families with concerns about family violence and the wellbeing of children.
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However, the information in identify could also have helped you to form a reasonable belief that the child is at risk of abuse.
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In that situation, you could report to Child Protection, which includes a mandatory report, or you could report a crime.
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These options will see the school reporting to the relevant authorities first and then moving on to support and refer.
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Importantly, if you are not sure which pathway to take, you can contact The Orange Door for advice.
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You can contact The Orange Door and seek advice through a secondary consultation.
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Having heard your concerns,
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The Orange Door will help you decide whether a referral to the Orange Door or a report to the relevant authority is most appropriate.
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Let's briefly look at two of these pathways.
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So the first pathway we'll look at is Family Violence.
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So I'll click on the Family Violence tile so you can see that you've come to the support page.
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We've come to the support page because the response pathway for family violence is Identify - which we've done - support, refer, and report.
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You can see here that each page on PROTECT has signposts at the top of the page to help you remind you where you are and what the next steps should be.
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Support complements the actions in refer, and both actions can happen at the same time,
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if you think that's the best way to help the student, let's talk about support first.
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It's important to talk to the student about the support they want to receive.
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This can help them feel empowered and more likely to participate in the process in a positive way.
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The support page lists a range of supports that schools can take.
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Some of these are organised by sector.
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You can see here that there is specific guidance for both Catholic and independent schools.
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There are also actions that all schools can take.
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These include using information sharing and child link, engaging with parents and carers if it's safe to do so, and there's guidance here about what that means.
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It involves providing tailored support to First Nations students or students with diverse needs and seeking specialist advice if you need it.
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It's important that schools continue to provide support to students for as long as necessary.
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In doing so, you may work with the student,
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their parents and carers, any relevant authorities and your specialist support services.
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Your next step is to consider whether you need to refer or help the student or the family refer themselves to community services.
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So I will click on refer.
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As I mentioned before, refer complements support.
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Both actions can happen at the same time if that's the best way to help the student.
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There are a range of services in the community that can help you support the student.
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Because we are responding to a concern about family violence, it's really important that the school engages with The Orange Door.
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The Orange Door provides support and information for children, young people and families.
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It's an entry point to family violence support and an entry point for parenting and wellbeing support.
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Ideally, a student or their family will self-refer to The Orange Door.
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However, your school can refer a student or their family to a service.
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You could do this by making a phone call to the service with or on behalf of the student.
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Each Orange Door location across Victoria has their own phone number and email.
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You can call or email your local Orange Door to refer a student and their family.
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Before making a referral, you can seek advice from The Orange Door.
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You can discuss whether a referral to The Orange Door is appropriate; what support services are available; how to support families experiencing family violence; or how to support families struggling with the care, wellbeing and development of a student.
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Importantly, if The Orange Door determines that it's more appropriate to report rather than refer, they will tell you to make a report to the relevant authority.
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Decisions about the needs of First Nations people should be made by First Nations people.
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The Orange Door is committed to cultural safety for First Nations people.
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For support for First Nations people, you can refer families to The Orange Door or support a student or the family to refer themselves.
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If someone identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, they can choose to be supported by an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation or an ACCO.
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The Orange Door supports Aboriginal self determination by respecting First Nations People's choice of service.
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For referrals for matters involving sexual offences, schools can refer directly to local sexual assault services instead of through The Orange Door.
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This includes local centres against sexual assault and harmful sexual behaviour services.
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It may also be appropriate to refer a student or their family to a local specialist support service, especially if a student or their family are already working with that service and have built a trusted relationship throughout.
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Don't forget to document your actions; share information with other services; and continue to engage with the student and their family if it's safe to do so.
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You'll also need to continue to help the student after making the referral.
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The last step in the 4 Critical Actions may be to report.
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However, in this case, it may be that the family is now engaging with The Orange Door, so a report is not necessary.
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If the risk changes, you can go back to determine your pathway and choose a different option.
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So let's do that now.
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Let's consider a situation where you have formed a reasonable belief about physical or sexual abuse in the family.
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I've come back to the determine the source page and I'm going to click on source in the family.
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Now I'll scroll down and choose determine your pathway, and now I'll click on the report to child protection, including a mandatory report tile.
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You can see here that the response pathway is now identify, report, support and refer.
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If circumstances change, you can always revisit the order of the actions or repeat steps within an action to ensure the student and family gets the right support at the right time.
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The guidance on this page helps you understand how to report child abuse when it's a mandatory report.
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So let's take a moment to review the requirements for a mandatory report.
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If you think a child or young person may need protection from abuse, ask - have you formed a belief on reasonable grounds that the child or young person has suffered or is at risk of suffering significant harm and have the parents or carers not protected or are unlikely to protect the child or young person from that harm?
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If the parents or carers have not protected or are unlikely to protect the student from significant harm, call Child Protection.
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Make a report.
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You must report physical abuse and sexual abuse to Child Protection.
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These are mandatory reports.
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There are other things you can report to Child Protection, and these include significant harm related to emotional or intellectual development, physical development or health, abandonment or parental incapacity, and the experience of family violence.
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You can also contact Child Protection if you hold significant well being concerns for a student.
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If you are unsure about what you can report, contact The Orange Door to discuss your concerns.
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After you report, there are several things you can do.
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Catholic schools should report the incident to your relevant school governing body.
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Independent schools can contact Independent Schools Victoria to obtain advice or support, including if you're unsure and need advice on reporting.
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Once you've done that, you can also engage the students and carers if you have clearance to do so.
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You can facilitate interviews if requested and of course document your actions.
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You still need to complete the remaining 4 Critical Actions.
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Your next step is to move to support and then refer.
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The steps in support and refer are the same as I've discussed before.
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Take action to implement supports in the school or referrals to community based services based on the needs of the student and the family.
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It's important you continue providing support to the student for as long as necessary.
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Don't forget to document your actions, share information with services, and continue to engage with the student and their family if it is safe to do so.
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Let's go back and consider how to use PROTECT to respond to abuse that is caused by someone in the school.
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I've come back to the PROTECT for Schools page and I'll select identify and respond to abuse.
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For this demonstration, I'm going to choose an adult engaged by a Catholic school.
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The advice for independent schools is similar.
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However, if you're from an Independent School, it's recommended that you review the specific guidance on PROTECT relevant to your school.
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I've now landed on the identify page for child abuse by an adult engaged by a Catholic school.
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The first thing you're reminded is that any allegation, complaint, disclosure or concern of abuse, including grooming, by an adult engaged by a school may be reportable conduct under Victoria's Reportable Conduct scheme.
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It must be reported.
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You can also see that the response pathway for abuse by an adult in the school is identify, report, support and refer.
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The identify page includes information on the types of abuse that may be a reportable conduct and what to look out for.
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Sometimes grooming behaviour and other forms of reportable conduct can be difficult to see and observe.
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There's detailed information on grooming here so you can understand what grooming behaviour looks like.
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There's advice on what to look for in adults and what to look for in children.
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This page also shows you who reportable conduct applies to, and that reportable conduct can occur in the school environment and outside the school environment in everyday life.
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In the case of reportable conduct, the next step is to report.
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Once you land on the report page, there are clear steps for you to follow based on your school sector.
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If you believe a crime has been committed, contact Victoria Police.
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You must also notify your school's relevant governing body as soon as possible if your concern is against the principal.
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You should also report any allegations, complaints, disclosure or concerns to the relevant governing body.
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The school's relevant governing body is responsible for making a report to the Social Services Regulator.
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You can contact your Catholic Diocese office or Independent Schools Victoria for support and advice on child safety related matters.
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This includes if you're unsure of whether a crime has been committed and need advice on reporting to police.
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The guidance on support and refer can help you to provide support to the student or engaged community services.
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It's the same as I've discussed before. Always consult with school leadership, your school governing body or your school sector authority before taking the steps in report and refer.
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So let's go back to PROTECT for schools and consider the case of abuse between students.
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Firstly, we'll click on identify and respond to child abuse and then choose our source as student-to-student.
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The Identify page helps us identify student-to-student abuse.
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As soon as you believe that a student has been or is at risk of being abused by another student, you must act and you can see that the response pathway is identify, report, support and refer.
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On this page there is information on how to identify abuse between students.
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This is very similar to what we've discussed before.
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There's information on types of abuse and information on how to identify abuse.
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There are also other actions you can take in terms of requesting information from other information sharing entities or checking child link.
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A key difference here though is that you can ask for advice for matters involving harmful sexual behaviour.
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If you need advice about harmful sexual behaviour you can contact your local sexual assault service or harmful sexual behaviour service and they will provide advice and support to help manage incidents between students.
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They can help with supporting staff to help victims of sexual abuse and students engaging in harmful sexual behaviours and providing victim centric communication.
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Having sought advice, your next step is to report.
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We then come to the report page.
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If you believe a crime has been committed against a child, you must report it to Victoria Police.
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If there's an emergency, call police on 000. Otherwise, you can call Victoria Police on 131 444 or contact your local police station to make the report.
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Notice that the guidance does not ask you to call the Victoria Police Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team (or SOCIT) directly.
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You are directed to call your local police station or call 131 444 so that your concerns can be properly assessed before moving to investigation.
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If the matter involves harmful online communications or content, you should report it to the eSafety Commissioner.
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They may be able to work with Internet service providers or social media platforms to have the content removed.
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Catholic and independent schools should report the incident to school leadership in line with their local policies.
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For reporting incidents between students, your next steps are to support and refer.
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These steps are very similar to what I've discussed previously, but there's one key difference in refer.
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For matters involving sexual offences, schools can refer directly to local sexual assault services.
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These include harmful sexual behaviour services and the Centres against Sexual Assault (CASA) in your community.
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CASAs will help both the student who has caused the harm and the student who was harmed.
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These services will provide support for students who have experienced sexual harm and abuse.
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Support for school wellbeing staff to manage sexual abuse incidents between students.
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They can provide treatment programs for students using harmful sexual behaviour.
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They can provide support for parents and carers of students using harmful sexual behaviour.
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They can support staff to support victims of sexual offences and help you with victim centric communication.
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So let's go back to PROTECT for schools and look at one final source of abuse.
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This time when there is abuse in the community. We'll click on identify and respond to abuse and then choose as sources in the community.
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As soon as you believe a student has been or is at risk of being abused, you must act.
29:30
You can see that the actions you need to take are identify, report, support and refer on the identify page.
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The actions you need to take are very similar to what I've already discussed.
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Once you've identified abuse by someone in the community, your next step is to report.
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If you believe there has been a crime against a child committed, you must make a report to Victoria Police at any time.
29:56
You can call Victoria Police on 131 444 for non emergency situations or contact your local police station. Notice again, the guidance does not ask you to call the Victoria Police Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team (or SOCIT) directly.
30:12
You are directed to call your local police station or call 131 444 so that your concerns can be properly assessed before moving to investigation.
30:23
When abuse is in the community, there are only very specific circumstances when you would call Child Protection.
30:30
These relate to when a student is at risk of significant harm and their parents or carers have not protected them or are unlikely to protect the student from that harm.
30:39
For example, if there's been an allegation of child sexual abuse from someone in the community and the parents or carers still encourage contact with that person causing the abuse, then that would be a reason to call Child Protection.
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Some matters may not require police or Child Protection involvement because the matter does not meet the threshold for a crime,
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or Victoria Police or Child Protection have told you that the matter does not require their involvement.
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You must still act by following the 4 Critical Actions and reporting internally.
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Catholic and independent schools must report to their school leadership and school governing body in line with their local procedures.
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You can then take the remaining actions in support and refer.
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These actions that you take are very similar to what I've discussed previously.
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They include supporting all affected students, particularly those who identify as First Nations people or have diverse needs, and referring to local sexual assault services or other specialist services to ensure that students are provided with the right support at the right time.
31:49
I hope you found the walkthrough of the PROTECT website useful.
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As you can see, there's a lot of detail on the PROTECT website and I couldn't cover it all today.
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It's really important that you review the website and become familiar with all the actions you can take.
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There has been a lot to take in, so let's take a moment to go over some of the key learnings from today's presentation.
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The new PROTECT website helps school staff find the information they need quickly and provides access to training tools and resources.
32:20
You can find all the policy guidance organised by source of abuse.
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The guidance is also organised as a journey so you can work your way through the guidance to complete the 4 Critical Actions.
32:34
Let's summarise the key changes to the PROTECT guidance.
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PROTECT help schools connect students and their families with the right support at the right time.
32:43
PROTECT is organised by source of abuse.
32:46
The 4 sources are an adult engaged by the school, abuse between students, abuse in the family and abuse in the community.
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The 4critical actions are:
33:01
identify child abuse; support students through your school; refer to community services; and report abuse to authorities.
33:10
These actions guide all responses to child abuse for all sources of abuse, but the order of the four critical actions will depend on the source of abuse, circumstances and level of risk.
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The PROTECT website provides tailored advice for each action.
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There are also 'at all times' actions that you can take.
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Schools must respond to an emergency if there is one; adapt to changing circumstances by repeating a step or choosing different steps; and document your actions.
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The refreshed PROTECT website provides advice on how to identify, support, refer and report, including when and how to engage with services.
33:57
Schools and region and area teams should use the refreshed PROTECT website as the central source of guidance for identifying and responding to abuse.
34:08
Thank you for reviewing this presentation. For help and support,
34:12
Catholic schools can reach out to their school governing body.
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A list of school governing bodies is available on the Victorian Catholic Education Authority website.
34:21
Independent schools can reach out to Independent Schools Victoria who can provide support and advice on child safety related matters.
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