The Child and Youth Safe Organisations Framework

The Child and Youth Safe Organisations Act 2023 gives power to key recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The idea of child safe standards has been around for a long time, as has that of a reportable conduct scheme.

These ideas became more prominent during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that ran from 2012-2015.

The Royal Commission found:

• Many organisations failed to protect children in their care from abuse.
• These failures were historical and contemporary, meaning they didn’t only happen ‘in the past’.
• The institutional cultures and practices that allowed abuse to happen and stopped people investigating it properly were still happening.

The Royal Commission made recommendations designed to put these things right, including:

• the development of a national set of child safe standards (now called the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations)
• that places in Australia that didn’t already have a reportable conduct scheme in place developed and implemented one.

In 2023, ‘Tasmania’s Child and Youth Safe Organisations Framework’ was developed. Key parts of the Framework are based on these recommendations.

Our Statement of Commitment

Circular Head Council is committed to being a Child and Youth Safe organisation and has zero tolerance for child abuse.

We want all children to feel and be safe, supported, respected, included and heard in our Circular Head community.

The welfare of children attending Circular Head Council events, using services and community spaces is paramount and our legal and moral obligations to children are at the forefront of everything we do.

Our Child Safe Policy guarantees children in Circular Head Council an environment that promotes child-safe and child-friendly practices.

Circular Head Council Child Safety Policy

Circular Head Council Interim Allegation & Complaints Handling Procedures

For Children

We will prevent child abuse by identifying risks early and removing and reducing these risks.

We will treat allegations of child safety concerns seriously and respond appropriately.

We will contact authorities when there are reasonable concerns about a child’s safety.

We will ensure the cultural safety of all children, including Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children, children from a culturally or linguistically diverse background and children with a disability.

We will maintain recruitment practices that consistently select staff, volunteers and labour hire contractors who do not pose a risk to children’s safety.

For Staff, Volunteers, Councillors and Organisations

We will train and educate our staff and volunteers about child safety and child abuse so they are aware of their obligations.

We require that Councillors, employees, volunteers, organisations and others associated with Council understand and follow child-safe principles and expectations for appropriate behaviour towards, and in the company of children.

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The Child and Youth Safe Organisations Framework will apply to a wide range of organisations that engage with children and young people.

The Framework consists of:

The Child and Youth Safe Standards: Ten principles that organisations must put into practice when they engage with children and young people. In putting the Child and Youth Safe Standards into practice, organisations must also give effect to a Universal Principle for Aboriginal Cultural Safety.

Information Sheet on the Child and Youth Standards from Dept of Justice (doc)

The Reportable Conduct Scheme: A compulsory scheme that requires leaders of certain organisations to report — and investigate — concerns about conduct related to child abuse involving a worker to an independent regulator.

Information Sheet on the Reportable Conduct Scheme from Dept of Justice (doc)

More information on the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Framework can be found here -

https://www.justice.tas.gov.au/carcru/child-and-youth-safe-organisations-framework