Creating a policy

Your child safe environments policy is part of your child safe environments compliance statement. It sets out the steps your organisation takes to promote the safety and wellbeing of children and young people. It should be tailored to reflect your organisation’s focus and activities.

Your policy can be a single document that contains all required information, or for larger organisations it can be part of your overall policy framework. You must involve staff, volunteers and service users (including children and young people) in the development of your policy and Code of Conduct wherever possible.

Your child safe environments policy must:

show staff, volunteers, parents, guardians, carers, children and young people that your organisation is committed to the safety and wellbeing of children and young people
set out appropriate standards of behaviour and practices for people working and volunteering with children and young people — that is, a Code of Conduct
increase staff and volunteer awareness of the risk of harm to children and young people and the strategies in place to minimise them
build staff and volunteer knowledge of how to identify if a child or young person is, or may be, at risk of harm and respond appropriately (including reporting where relevant)
be relevant to the size, nature and resources of your organisation.

Developing a policy

All organisations developing child safe policies and procedures must:

reflect South Australian (SA) legislative requirement, and
align their policy with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.

The SA content that must be reflected in your policy/ies are:

Working with Children Check requirements in line with your obligations under the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Act 2016
Use of the language of ‘risk of harm ’ instead of ‘abuse and neglect’ to reflect the lower threshold for mandatory reporting in South Australia
The process for making a mandatory report, for example to the Child Abuse Report Line (CARL) on 13 14 78.

To assist you in developing a policy please refer to the Guideline to writing a policy. The Guideline includes what must be in your policy/ies to meet SA legislative requirements and align with the National Principles. We encourage you to use the headings and examples within the Guideline as a template for your policy.

Guideline to writing a policy (DOCX 152.6 KB)

Reviewing and updating your policy

Organisations with existing compliance statement lodgements must review and update child-safe policies and procedures every 5 years (at a minimum) as per Section 115 of the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017.

There is no need to do this outside of your regular policy review process. For example, if you originally lodged a compliance statement on 1 January 2023 and your organisation policy review cycle is every 2 years, you will need to review your policies and procedures by 1 January 2025.

We strongly suggest you refer to the Guideline to writing a policy to ensure your updated policy/ies includes all required content.