National Principles for child safe organisations

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made recommendations about:

what makes institutions safe for children
improving child-safe approaches.

The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations have replaced the former South Australian Principles of Good Practice.

From 1 July 2021, all organisations developing child safe policies and procedures must:

align these with the National Principles, and
reflect the SA legislative context, as described on this page.

Organisations with existing compliance statement lodgements must review and update child-safe policies and procedures every 5 years (at a minimum) to reflect the National Principles as part of their organisation’s regular policy review process and timelines.

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 2021 and your organisation policy review cycle is every 2 years, you will need to review your policies and procedures on 1 January 2023 and update to include the National Principles content.

South Australian content

Within South Australia, the following content must be reflected in your policies and procedures:

Working with Children Check requirements through the Screening Unit of the Department of Human Services (unless an exemption applies)
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.

Refer to the policy templates and resources for further information.