Child safety
Outloud

Child safety

Outloud’s Child Safe Policy

Our policy guides workers (paid and volunteer) on how to behave when interacting and engaging with children in our organisation. The policy focuses on how we can build and maintain a child safe environment which is inclusive, transparent and promotes children’s participation.

Children’s Participation

Our organisation supports the active participation of children in the programs, activities and services we offer.

We provide a range of way to allow children to provide feedback or raise concerns – through discussion with facilitators and staff, and surveys at the end of the program.
We listen to their views and respect what they say.

Recruitment

Our organisation will maintain a rigorous and consistent recruitment, screening and selection process.

We use interviews and reference checks and require all staff to hold a current working with children check.

Complaints Management and Reporting

Department of Family and Community Services

NSW Ombudsman

Office of the Children’s Guardian

  • Children and workers will be instructed that they can always raise concerns or complaints with either facilitators or office staff. They are able to contact the project manager or the Artistic Director directly. 
  • We have reporting responsibility to report suspected child abuse and neglect to government authorities. In NSW, mandatory reporting is regulated by the Children and Young Persons Care and Protection Act 1998 (The Care Act.)
  • The Child Safety Contact Person is the Artistic Director + CEO, who will manage all complaints.
  • The process for all staff who suspect abuse or neglect or receiving complaints is to:
    • Give essential details to the Artistic Director + CEO:
      • child or young person’s details (name, address, DOB, details of siblings)
      • incident details (date, type of risk, person’s causing or contributing to harm)
      • impact of the incident on the child or young person
      • network of support around the young person
    • If working in schools, give this information to the relevant teacher as well.
    • When not occurring in schools, the Artistic Director+CEO will explore appropriate support services for the child/young person and their family. The following options may assist you:
  • Contact your local Family Referral Service (FRS) if you would like help referring the family, child or young person to local support services such as housing or respite (http://www.familyreferralservice.com.au).
  • Visit the Human Services Network (HSNet) website to self-access a broad range of services https://www.hsnet.nsw.gov.au/
  • Contact NSW Family Services Inc. (FamS) to access support to non-government, not-for-profit organisation staff working with vulnerable children and families https://www.fams.asn.au/.

Training, support and supervision of workers

  • We promote respect, fairness and consideration for all workers
  • All workers have a more senior worker assigned to support and supervise their work.
  • All new workers will receive a copy of all child safe policies and procedures and a more senior worker will set up a meeting to discuss the policies and allow the new worker to ask questions and clarify their understanding

Child safe is a standing agenda item at meetings and workers are encouraged to ask questions and contribute to the continuous improvement of child safe policies, procedures and practices in the workplace.

Other legislation, industry standards or internal policies

Communication

  • We will hold regular information sessions for staff, volunteers and students.
  • Our policy will be discussed during induction sessions for all new staff, volunteers and students.
  • Kids and parents joining our program/s will be verbally briefed about the processes at the beginning of programs.

Review

The policy and guidelines will be reviewed every two years and incorporate comments and suggestions from our range of stakeholders (including workers, children and families).

Organisations we love

Additional resources (external)