Child safety and wellbeing policy

A Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy supports schools and school boarding premises to create and maintain a child safe organisation where children and young people are safe and feel safe. The policy provides a framework for how schools approach child safety.

Why schools need a Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy

All members of your school community have a responsibility to care for children and young people, to positively promote their wellbeing and protect them from any kind of harm or abuse.

Your Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy tells your community about your strategies and arrangements to keep children safe.

Your policy must be publicly available. This will help you create a shared commitment to keeping children safe. It will also support everyone in your school community to know their responsibilities.

How to comply with Ministerial Order 1359

Overview

Ministerial Order 1359 provides the framework for child safety in schools. It requires all schools to have a Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy. The policy must include:

• your school’s commitment to child safety
• actions your school will take to ensure a child safe culture is championed and modelled across the school
• governance arrangements your school uses to implement the policy
• processes your school will use to review its child safe practices.

Your school needs to make sure that everyone is supported to implement the Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy.

Additional requirements

In addition, your school must:

• Make sure staff engaged in child-connected work receive an induction about child safety. The induction should include information about the Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy, Child Safety Code of Conduct and procedures for managing complaints and concerns related to child abuse.
• Make sure staff engaged in child-connected work receive training and information on child safety at least once a year
• Develop and endorse a policy or statement on online conduct and online safety.

Volunteers

There are some specific requirements for volunteers. Your school must:

• Determine the child safety training and information to provide to volunteers
• Make sure volunteers engaged in child-connected work receive an induction about child safety. The induction should include information about the Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy, code of conduct and procedures for managing complaints and concerns related to child abuse.
• Make sure volunteers know about your Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy and Child Safety Code of Conduct.