This page lists our annual statements of compliance with the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework. Our Secretary has authorised these statements.
2022 Statement
We are committed to promoting and maintaining a culture that does not permit or tolerate child abuse, neglect, or exploitation.
We recognise the role we play in ensuring the safety of children.
For this reason, we:
- are embedding child safety and wellbeing into our leadership, governance, and culture
- have created child safe practises for our staff to be aware of and to adhere to.
We have included the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework as part of our divisional business and risk planning process. This helps us to identify the level of direct or indirect contact with children across our divisions.
We completed a Commonwealth Child Safe Framework risk assessment for those divisions with direct or indirect contact with children.
During last financial year, we acted to further strengthen our compliance with the Child Safe Framework and to minimise key risks, including:
- reviewing and updating the Department's internal child-safety online training module
- working with portfolio agencies to promote compliance with the Framework
- developing organisation-wide communications to support greater awareness and understanding of our obligations under the Framework.
Our current overall aggregate risk rating is medium, with no high risks identified. We expect the overall risk rating is likely to decrease as the initiatives are further embedded into our culture and practices.
Making information, education and training available for our staff is important in creating a child focused, transparent, and safe organisational culture. This kind of culture protects children and keeps them safe.
To ensure our staff are aware of and create a child-focused, safe organisational culture, we have implemented a clear Child Safety Policy. The policy addresses all 10 National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. We require staff in identified child-safe positions, or undertaking child-related work, to complete Child Safe training modules.
We comply with the key requirements of the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. Our key initiatives include:
- communicating and promoting our Child Safety Policy to staff
- our senior executive supporting the Child Safety Policy across our department
- child safe clauses included in grants or procurement documents for funded third parties where appropriate
- starting to develop documents for children so that they are easy to understand, and are available to staff and children
- ensuring relevant staff do the required training and get or maintain relevant checks