Health & Safety

We do this by:

• Ensuring the best interests of the child remains our highest consideration.
• Applying our Governance standards to support a child safe culture and providing oversight and
  monitoring.
• Using a risk management approach to provide safe environments to reduce the risk of harm.
• Supporting children to reach their full potential.
• Placing children at the heart of everything we do, ensuring that their voices, rights, and perspectives are
  respected, heard, and central to all decisions and actions that affect them.
• Educating children about their rights, strategies for staying safe, speaking up and seeking help if needed.

We do this by:

• Upholding the rights of children.
• Encouraging children to participate in decisions that affect them and seeking their consent.
• Providing programs and resources to educate and engage children about their rights, implementing
  protective strategies for staying safe, and asking for help when needed

We do this by:

• Actively preventing all forms of child abuse such as physical, emotional, sexual, or neglect through our
  Policies and Practices, Organisational Culture and Physical Environments.
• Encouraging vigilance to recognise any deviations from acceptable behaviours, practices and interactions
  with children.
• Implementing immediate action to respond to any suspicion that a child has been harmed or is at risk of
  harm.
• Implementing early intervention strategies in response to any allegations made.
• Enforcing the Child Protection Commitment that outline expected behaviours, appropriate interactions
  and ensuring the professional conduct of Team Members.
• Removing any potential for secrecy surrounding child abuse and neglect.
• Our recruitment and screening process has specific questions through the interview process to ensure all new educators are aware of their child safe reporting requirements and expectations.
• All educators are included in a full day induction before commencing at any of our campuses, where their child abuse reporting obligations are reenforced and they are provided the information of the process to report signs or suspicion of abuse at Only About Children.

We do this by:

• Actively promoting culturally safe and inclusive environments.
• Respecting and valuing every child, and supporting those from diverse backgrounds, including Aboriginal
  and Torres Strait Islander children, children from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and
  children with disabilities.
• Providing accessible and culturally appropriate child-friendly information to support children to identify if
  their safety is being compromised, or if a child makes a complaint or disclosure.
• Involving families and communities and seeking input regarding the approach of OAC to child safety,
  protection and wellbeing through a formal Policy monitoring and review program.

We do this by:

• Developing People Strategies which include:
  Best practice recruitment and selection Policies to attract high calibre applicants, whilst identifying
  and eliminating applicants who are not suitable to work with children.
• Undertake background and reference checks, to ensure every individual working with OAC
  remains qualified, safe, and committed to child safety and protection. This will ensure ongoing
  compliance to Working with Children Checks, Child Protection Legislation and the Early
  Education and Care National Law.
  o Attracting, retaining and developing Team Members who align to the philosophy, purpose and
  values of OAC.
• Formally defining Team Member Child Safe Behaviours and seeking ongoing and formal
  acknowledgement to verify expectations are clear, agreed and monitored.
• Ensuring our systems for ongoing supervision, support and performance management enables Team
  Members to be the best they can be.
• Providing ongoing and mandatory child safety and protection training and information to all Team
  Members. This includes equipping them with the current knowledge and skills to uphold the highest
  standards of child protection.
• Providing ongoing communication and information and promotional activities to support an ongoing
  culture of child protection and safety.

We do this by:

• Creating, maintaining and continually improving the safety of our physical environment.
• Developing and implementing preventive maintenance, property improvement strategies, and hazard
  reporting protocols to reduce the risk of harm.
• Creating physical environments and supervision protocols and practices which seek to minimise
  instances of Team Members being alone with children.
• Applying robust Information Technology systems, Privacy Policies and record keeping protocols that
  provide digitally secure environments, and prioritise the protection of family and children’s information,
  including digital images.
• Regularly formally reviewing our online practices to meet evolving needs and take advantage of
  potential opportunities that may be available to enhance innovation in this area.
• Ensuring sufficient staffing arrangements are in place to meet legislative ratio requirements.

We do this by:

• Actively encouraging children, families, and Team Members to speak up about any concerns regarding
  the safety and protection of children.
• Providing opportunities for a child to make a disclosure.
• Believing a child if they make a disclosure, either directly or indirectly.
• Removing barriers to reporting any form of, or suspicion of abuse or neglect by providing simple, clear
  and accessible reporting and escalation options.
• Taking all reports seriously and acting upon notifications without fear of retribution or retaliation.Providing options to escalate any concerns together with the provision of impartial whistleblower
  protocols.
• Ensuring robust investigation processes which provide natural justice to any investigation processregarding allegations made against a Team Member. This will occur by utilising the balance of probabilities approach i.e.is it more likely to have occurred than not, in the best interest of the child.

We do this by:

• Including Child Safety and Protection as part of the OAC Corporate Strategy.
• Committing to continually monitoring, reviewing, evaluating and improving our child safety and
  protection measures.
• Actively seeking feedback from children, families, staff, and external experts to ensure our approach
  remains effective and align with best practices.