Our Statement of Commitment to Child Safety
All children and young people have the right to be respected, feel safe, be safe, and protected from harm. NESA is committed to child safety and child safe practices underpinning our purpose of helping children and young people to leave school ready to take advantage of life’s opportunities and rise to its inevitable challenges.
We are committed to understanding, implementing and upholding the NSW Child Safe Scheme and Child Safe Standards (the Standards), as recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. We acknowledge our important role in upholding and promoting the Standards as we work with the NSW community to set school syllabuses and assessments, regulate schools in NSW and accredit teachers in all schools and centre based early childhood services.
We are committed to:
- implementing the 10 Child Safe Standards
- keeping the safety, welfare and wellbeing of children and young people at the centre of our work and applying child safe knowledge and measures to our responsibilities that directly or indirectly impact children and young people
- building awareness of and responsibility for child safety at NESA, through our Child Safe Action Plan (CSAP) which aims to drive cultural change and influence the system, to embed child safety at NESA and in the NSW school sectors and early childhood
- building and maintaining awareness of Cultural safety at NESA for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and other culturally and linguistically diverse children, through appropriate training
- supporting NSW Government, Independent and Catholic school sectors, and early childhood services to promote and uphold the Child Safe Standards
- maintaining an inclusive, equitable and Culturally safe environment for all children and young people, and engaging them to participate in decisions impacting them
- inclusive and Culturally responsive environments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and culturally and linguistically diverse children
- inclusive and responsive environments for children with disability
- a child safe workplace culture including maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to child abuse or any other misconduct towards children and young people
- requiring NSW schools to meet regulatory requirements so that all children and young people have a safe learning environment
- requiring all teachers to be accredited and meet relevant suitability and child safety requirements, to teach in a NSW school or early childhood service
- our staff having the skills, knowledge and training to be child safe and apply child safe practices in their everyday work
- protecting confidential information about children and young people through fit for purpose data systems and record keeping processes, and actively identifying and removing any child safety system risks
- reporting any suspected abuse, neglect or mistreatment promptly to the appropriate authorities including our responsibilities for mandatory reporting.
Together we implement our child safe practices as we uphold the NSW Public Sector core values of integrity, trust, service and accountability.
Child Safe Action Plan
The Child Safe Action Plan (CSAP) (PDF 309.9KB) outlines the actions we will take to promote and support the safety of children as a prescribed agency under the Children’s Guardian Act 2019. The CSAP implements the Child Safe Standards and has a strong focus on prevention.
The Child Safe Scheme
The scheme was introduced to make child- related organisations safer for all young people. The new legislated scheme has 10 Child Safe Standards recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse following extensive research and consultation about what makes organisations child safe.
More information
The Office of the Children’s Guardian is leading the implementation of the NSW Child Safe Scheme and has a critical role in helping organisations to implement the Child Safe Standards.
The Office of the Children’s Guardian has a child safe self-assessment tool for organisations to identify their readiness in implementing the Standards. They also have a Guide to the Child Safe Standards (PDF 7.18MB).
NESA is committed to supporting the community and NSW school sectors embed the Child Safe Standards. If you have feedback to help us improve the implementation of our CSAP, please email feedback@nesa.nsw.edu.au.