Child Safety Risk Management Resources
The National Office for Child Safety (National Office) developed a Child Safety Risk Management Guide and accompanying resources to support organisations to understand how to appropriately manage child safety risks. These resources align with and support implementation of the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.
The resources support organisations of varying maturities to develop risk management practices to safeguard children and young people from harm.
Development of the resources involved consultation with a range of stakeholders including Australian Children’s Commissioners and Guardians, Commonwealth Departments, members of the Child Safe Sectors Leadership Group and members of the National Strategy Advisory Group.
The resources developed include:
- Child Safety Risk Management Guide (Guide): The Guide explains the steps that organisations of varying risk maturities should take to embed child safety risk management.
- Child Safety Risk Identification Checklist (Checklist): The Checklist gives examples of risks related to the 10 National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and suggests ways to mitigate these risks. The Checklist will act as an environmental scan to guide organisations to identify relevant risks, draw out gaps in their current child safety practices and identify actions required to better manage risks.
- Child Safety Monitoring, Reviewing and Reporting Quick Reference Guide (QRG): The QRG aims to provide concise and convenient guidance regarding child safety risk monitoring, reviewing and reporting.
- Child Safety Risk Management Video: The video provides information on ways organisations can keep children and young people safe by walking through six easy and essential steps to understand and manage risk, in line with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.
Read the transcript
This video discusses child sexual abuse.
Please take care when watching.
You can find a list of support services at ChildSafety.gov.au.
Ang recently started work at a Youth Centre that provides after school activities to children and young people.
He is the Program Activities Manager and Salina, the Manager of the Youth Centre, is training him.
He knows staff and the Centre’s leadership have a responsibility to keep the children and young people safe.
Salina tells him that one way leadership does this is by making sure they understand and apply the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. This includes understanding and managing risk.
Salina explains risk is the possibility of something going wrong in the future. A child safety risk is anything that increases the chance of a child being sexually, emotionally, or physically abused or feeling unsafe in any way.
Risk management reduces the opportunity for this to happen.
One of Ang’s responsibilities is to develop a child safety risk management plan for the Centre and for the activities he will run.
Salina helps Ang to go through 6 easy and essential steps for managing risks.
In step one, Ang must understand the risk context – the general level of child safety risk of the Centre.
To understand the risk context Ang needs to consider internal and external factors such as the spaces they operate in, who they work with, what activities they run, and what rules are in place.
Salina says external factors might be laws or reportable conduct schemes. For example, differences in local requirements for child safety might make the child safety risk higher or lower.
Internal factors include activities the Centre engages in – for example those involving a mix of younger and older children, the culture of the Centre, how online and other forms of communication are managed, or its recruitment and complaints processes.
Ang sees that the risk context is different between organisations and this makes each child safety policy and risk management plan different.
He also sees he can’t do this alone.
Asking questions and talking with others, including children and young people, will help him understand all the Centre’s child safety risks.
Ang moves onto Step Two: Identifying Risks.
Ang must ask himself:
What could happen?
How could it happen?
Where could it happen?
Salina explains risks can come from many areas.
These include:
- Situations or places where adults and other children and young people can be alone with a child.
- Engaging children and young people in private conversations online or using other forms of communication.
- Recruiting staff who do not value children and young people, or see child safety as a priority.
- Not having strong child safety practices or policies.
- The age of a child, language barriers and cognitive ability.
- These vulnerabilities can all make it less likely for children and young people to speak up and be believed.
Ang now knows how to identify the risks.
For Step three he needs to use the risk matrix to calculate the risk ratings for each of the risks. Ang needs to think about how likely the risks are to occur.
Would they be rare, unlikely, possible, likely, or almost certain?
He then needs to work out the consequence of each potential risk. These can be minor, moderate or major.
Knowing the likelihood and consequence will let Ang work out a rating for each risk.
On the risk matrix, this might be low (shown in green), medium (shown in orange) or high (shown in red).
By understanding the likelihood and consequence he can act in a way that lessens the risk.
That takes us to step 4.
Salina says that depending on the risk rating, they must now try and work out ways to prevent or reduce the risk occurring.
Salina shows him the Child Safety Risk Identification Checklist. This will help them see what actions the Centre can take.
For example, they could do something to lower the risk.
In step 5, Salina shows Ang that risks don’t disappear and must be constantly tracked.
Staff must meet regularly to review their risk plan to see if there are any changes or new problems.
Staff also need to regularly check that the risk reduction plans are still in place and working.
The final step, step 6, is to communicate the risk management process and plan.
This could include to staff, volunteers, children and young people, families and carers.
Ang smiles as he realises that this is what Salina has been doing all along.
Just like Salina and Ang we can all do our part to keep children and young people safe.
The National Office for Child Safety is here to help.