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.
More information
Downloads
- Mandatory Reporting Guide (PDF 1004.7 KB)
- National Principles for Child Safe organisations - Australian Human Rights Commission (PDF 1 MB)
- Final report: Making institutions child safe - Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Volume 6) (PDF 2.3 MB )
- Trust is a Must: What does it take to be child friendly and child safe? - Education Standards Board
- Keeping our kids safe - Cultural safety and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations
External website
On this site
- Child Safe Environments training
- Child safe environments compliance statements
- Lodging your compliance statement
- Creating a Policy
- What goes in your policy
- Resources for creating a child safe environments policy
- National Principles for child safe organisations
- Developing a Code of Conduct
Contact us
Phone 8463 6468
Email dhs.childsafe@sa.gov.au