Co-design process

The National Office for Child Safety (within the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department) is responsible for delivering the Framework. Given the National Strategy applies across Commonwealth and state and territory jurisdictions, and that one of the National Strategy’s core values is that child safety is everyone’s responsibility, a co-design approach was adopted for the development of the Framework. In this context, co-design refers to collaboration and decision making between equal partners, including governments as well as organisations and people with lived experience of child sexual abuse. Because the National Strategy is ‘for everyone’, it makes sense to include the people and groups impacted by the Framework in its development.

The National Strategy Advisory Group provides advice on the National Strategy activities and objective. The Framework Co-design Working Group was comprised of Advisory Group members and government representatives with expertise in monitoring and evaluation, or with experience that would inform the development of the Framework. The Co-design Working Group’s purpose was to collaborate and make decisions about the design of the Framework, and includes representation from people with lived experience of child sexual abuse and other National Strategy priority groups, as well as representatives from governments and organisations.

The Co-design Working Group engaged through 5 workshops and a number of out-of-session processes to design and agree on the Framework. The outcomes of these discussions and Co-design Working Group recommendations are captured in this Framework. 

The Framework built upon components of the National Strategy that were agreed as part of the National Strategy’s development, including: 

• the vision (the long-term impact)
• the objective
• the 5 themes
• the values
• the activities, which refer to the 62 activities outlined in the National and Commonwealth Action Plans. 

Other components of the Framework were co-designed through the Co-design Working Group workshops, including:

• the principles for monitoring and evaluation to guide all monitoring and evaluation activities for the National Strategy
• long-term outcomes, which refer to the sustained changes required to reduce the risk, extent and impact of child sexual abuse and related harms in Australia
• medium-term outcomes, which refer to the specific and measurable changes that are expected as a result of activities being implemented. Outcomes will be focussed on the impact of activities for children and young people, victims and survivors, families, kin and carers, communities, and organisations and governments (though individual activities may not result in material changes for all of these groups)
• indicators, which refer to the change needed and direction of change (that is, increase or decrease) needed to progress towards an outcome.