National Strategy Theory of Change
The National Strategy’s activities are organised into 5 themes. The National Strategy Theory of Change is therefore broken down by each of these 5 themes.
Theme 1: Awareness raising, education and building child safe cultures
What is needed?
The Royal Commission found that organisational cultures and practices had allowed child sexual abuse to occur and inhibited detection and response – and that this continued to exist in contemporary Australian organisations. Many of the Royal Commission’s recommendations aim to raise awareness of child sexual abuse across all layers of Australian society and build child safe cultures within organisations. A well informed community is better equipped to identify, respond to and prevent abuse from occurring. It will give victims and survivors access to the information they need. It will also change the misconceptions and stigma that stop people from asking for help.
What are we doing?
We will build a culture that respects the rights of children and young people to be
protected, safe and listened to. This includes:
- engaging, educating and empowering children and young people, parents, kin, carers, families, communities and organisations
- educating and training organisations, professionals and students where their roles include working with children and young people
- engaging, educating and empowering parents and families to recognise and prevent harmful online behaviours
- building organisations’ capacity to be child safe, and improving transparency and accountability
- working with the digital industry and raising awareness of their role in stopping criminal activity (including child sexual abuse) on their platforms and educating children and young people, families and the public about online safety
- improving national arrangements for sharing child safety and wellbeing information.
What are we going to achieve?
- Everyone has increased awareness and understanding of child sexual abuse.
- Communities, organisations and governments implement child safety policies and practices and have a culture where the best interests of children and young people, and victims and survivors are a priority.
- Child sexual abuse is discussed openly, respectfully and without shame or stigma.
- Digital technologies are used to promote child safety and respond to child sexual abuse.
These 2: Supporting and empowering victims and survivors
What is needed?
The effects of child sexual abuse can be cumulative, complex and long lasting. Victims and survivors need access to trauma-informed help from a range of services during their lives and as their needs change. The people who help victims and survivors may also need support. This includes:
- secondary victims
- family members, kin and carers
- witnesses to the abuse
- teachers and other school workers
Trauma-informed services can improve victims and survivors’ wellbeing and quality of life. They can also help interrupt intergenerational trauma.
What are we doing?
We will promote and support accessible, high-quality, trauma-informed and culturally safe services that support people as their needs change. This includes:
- reviewing the service sector responding to child sexual abuse and considering service gaps and opportunities for system reform
- setting up a national point of referral to help victims and survivors, practitioners and the general public navigate the service system and access help and information
- supporting healing for First Nations victims and survivors, their families, kin and communities
- increasing support for non-offending family members of child sexual abuse offenders
- enhancing access to the national specialist trauma-informed legal service and setting up an online chat service providing free legal advice
- looking at ways to improve the availability of civil remedies for victims of Commonwealth child sexual abuse offences.
What are we going to achieve?
- Victims and survivors are better recognised and believed at all stages of disclosure and complaint.
- Victims and survivors, including secondary victims, are supported and empowered to manage the impacts of child sexual abuse.
- Organisations responsible for harm restore trust from victims and survivors.
- Victims and survivors, including secondary victims, have access to high-quality services.
- The workforce and organisations are resourced to recognise and respond to child sexual abuse with high-quality care.
- Service system responses (criminal, legal, statutory, educational, health and mental health sector) to child sexual abuse are coordinated to support victims and survivors.
Theme 3: Enhancing national approaches to children who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours
What is needed?
The Royal Commission found that there was no nationally comprehensive and coordinated policy approach for preventing, identifying or responding to children and young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours. There was limited knowledge and understanding of the issue within the community, and inconsistencies and gaps in how Australia responds to this issue.
Lack of common understanding and response to children and young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours means children and young people may face stigma and not be able to access the support they need when they need it. When provided with an appropriate and holistic assessment, and a therapeutic response tailored to their individual needs, harmful sexual behaviours are more likely to stop and less likely to escalate.
What are we doing?
We will develop a framework to understand, prevent and respond to children and young people who have displayed concerning or harmful sexual behaviours, based on a public health model.
This means we will act early when concerning or harmful sexual behaviours first appear, and help children and young people access appropriate therapeutic responses and support. We will build our national capability, with the aim of implementing relevant Royal Commission
recommendations over the National Strategy’s 10 years. This includes:
establishing a group of experts to inform governments’ work
developing national guidelines and standards for responding to, supporting and protecting children and young people who have displayed concerning or harmful sexual behaviours
setting up a National Clinical and Therapeutic Framework to help health professionals respond to harmful sexual behaviours displayed by children and young people
increasing workforce capability and supporting the community to better understand and respond to the range of sexual behaviours displayed by children and young people, including developmentally expected, concerning and harmful sexual behaviours
What are we going to achieve?
- Building knowledge so everyone can understand and recognise developmentally expected, concerning and harmful sexual behaviours.
- Children and young people who have displayed concerning or harmful sexual behaviours receive access to high-quality assessment and proportionate therapeutic responses and support.
- Families, kin and carers, communities and workforces receive support and are equipped to meet the needs of children and young people who have displayed, and those impacted by harmful sexual behaviours.
Theme 4: Offending prevention and intervention
What is needed?
Offending prevention and intervention measures are critical to reducing the risk and
extent of child sexual abuse.
The Royal Commission found a lack of early intervention services in Australia for people who have
sexual thoughts about children and young people. Most available support programs were only available to people who had been convicted of child sexual abuse offences. Preventing offending from ever happening is the best way to protect children. Community programs that intervene before a child or young person has been harmed means that law enforcement can focus their resources on responding to high risk offending – where a strong criminal justice system response will always be needed.
Child sexual abuse is difficult to identify, investigate and prosecute. Evidence suggests that online
child sexual abuse is a growing crime type that requires strengthened law enforcement and
intelligence responses
What are we doing?
We will introduce services to stop people before they start harming children. We will also introduce programs that support police and others to uncover and prevent child sexual abuse. We will balance community prevention and intervention programs against new and stronger law enforcement responses. This includes:
- improving how police share information to help them find children who are being abused and to
find those doing the abuse - improving financial intelligence to stop online child sexual abuse
- creating programs that stop people before they offend and that reduce repeat offending
- making sure laws stay current to protect children in Australia and online and to hold offenders
to account - working with countries and online companies to improve the global response to child sexual abuse
- working with the Indo-Pacific and South-East Asia regions to provide support to stop child sexual abuse
- strengthening the Australian Government’s ability to prosecute offenders.
What are we going to achieve?
- People and organisations are aware and comply with their responsibilities regarding child safety.
- Justice and service providers are better connected to identify and respond to offenders,
perpetrators and people at risk of perpetrating child sexual abuse. - Statutory frameworks and justice responses are focused on stopping child sexual abuse including
preventing further abuse. - High-quality referral pathways for offenders, perpetrators and people at risk of perpetrating are
available, used and have appropriate referral pathways in and out.
Theme 5: Improving the evidence base
What is needed?
The Royal Commission found significant gaps in the evidence base on the prevalence, risk factors and impacts of child sexual abuse in Australia. A strong data, research and evaluation agenda is needed to guide the design and ongoing improvement of our policy response to child sexual abuse. It will also ensure the National Strategy is culturally safe, age and developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed and meeting peoples different needs and circumstances.
What are we doing?
Australian, state and territory governments will identify where there are gaps in the evidence base and work together to develop and implement solutions. This will include:
- running future waves of the Australian Child Maltreatment Study to work out how many Australians have experienced child maltreatment and whether this is changing over time
- setting up a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess how well the National Strategy’s activities have been implemented and whether the National Strategy meets or achieves its vision, objective and values
- working together to develop and implement a nationally coordinated research agenda
- improving law enforcement, intelligence and research agencies’ ability to disrupt the cash flow behind online abuse including livestreamed child sexual abuse
- delivering surveys and starting statistical collections to better understand child sexual abuse in
Australia, including victim and offender characteristics.
What are we going to achieve?
- High-quality evidence and knowledge is available on the prevalence and incidence of child
sexual abuse. - High-quality evidence and knowledge is available on effective and best practice early
interventions and holistic responses to child sexual abuse.