A Child Safe Organisation
Our commitment to child safety
- We are committed to creating and maintaining a child safe organisation where protecting children and preventing and responding to child abuse is embedded in the everyday thinking and practice of its workforce.
- We are committed to child safety. We want children to be safe, happy and empowered. We support and respect all children, as well as our staff and volunteers.
- We are committed to the safety, participation and empowerment of all children.
- We have a zero tolerance of child abuse, and all allegations and safety concerns will be treated very seriously and consistently with our robust policies and procedures.
- We have legal and moral obligations to contact authorities when we are worried about a child’s safety, which are followed rigorously.
- We are committed to preventing child abuse and identifying risks early, and removing and reducing these risks.
- We have robust human resources and recruitment practices for all staff and volunteers.
- We are committed to regularly training and educating our staff and volunteers on child abuse risks.
- We are committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal children, the cultural safety of children from a culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and to providing a safe environment for children with a disability.
- We will abide by specific procedures and will have trainings in place to support the leadership team, staff and volunteers to achieve these policy commitments.
We are all responsible
Everyone working at FVREE is responsible for the care and protection of children and reporting information about child abuse. Our Child Safety-Code of Conduct outlines how staff, students and volunteers will behave when working with and around children and must be agreed and signed by everyone.
We have risk management strategies in place to identify, assess and take steps to minimise child safety risks and concerns. We ensure that our systems protect children from abuse, and will take all allegations and concerns very seriously and respond to them consistently in line with the organisation’s policies and procedures. We also have staff appointed to support employees and to oversee, monitor and review all practices and policies around child safety.
Standards and reporting
In Victoria, Failure to Disclose or Protect a child from sexual abuse may be a criminal offence:
- Under Failure to Disclose Legislation all adults are required to report to police any reasonable belief that a sexual offence has been committed by another adult (over 18) against a child under the age of 16.
- Under Failure to Protect Legislation, if leaders at an organisation become aware that an adult associated with the organisation poses a risk of sexual abuse to a child under the age of 16, they must take all reasonable steps to remove or reduce that risk.
The simple rule is: If we have a reasonable belief that a sexual offence has been committed by an adult against a child, or one of our people poses a risk to children, we will report that belief to Victoria Police.
Mandatory Reporting
When a client has disclosed a crime against a child, we have a legal obligation to report to Victoria Police or Child Protection. The intent of this report is to protect children, not to further victimise or impact the safety of the woman or parent experiencing family violence. All clients will be advised of their own obligation to report, as well as that of the organisation. The suspected crime must be reported, even if parents are acting protectively. We will work with the woman or parent/caregiver, Child Protection and Victoria Police to ensure the rights of the child are paramount, whilst also not impacting the safety of the person experiencing family violence.
Under the Child Safe Standards, all organisations providing services to children are required to have a child safe policy, or a statement of commitment to child safety.