The National Children’s Commissioner, Megan Mitchell stresses that organisations must go beyond policy and procedure to be truly safe, and their safeguarding initiatives must be rooted in the organisation’s culture. PCA cannot echo this sentiment loudly enough! At the end of the day, mission statements, values and goals, and policies are just words on a page unless they are lived every day by the individual staff, volunteers, and all adults associated with the organisation. It is only when organisations embrace child safeguarding as core to their culture and purpose that they will truly be a Child Safe Organisation.

In 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse handed down their Final Report. This report contains seventeen volumes and, along with the three earlier Reports handed down by the Commission, is over 2-feet thick. In Volume 2: Nature and Causes, the Final Report states, “Many survivors told us that ignorance about child sexual abuse in institutions hindered prevention and identification, and meant institutions failed to respond appropriately. In many instances, the lack of knowledge enabled sexual abuse to continue undetected” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017a, p. 9). In Volume 6: Making Institutions Safe, the Final Report states, “What we heard showed that child sexual abuse in institutions continues today and is not just a problem from the past. We learned that institutional cultures and practices that allowed abuse to occur and inhibited detection and response continue to exist in contemporary institutions” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017b, p. 9).

PCA tenaciously advocates that the first step for any organisation to become child safe is always the same: organisations must first recognise that the risk of child abuse and neglect is always present within their institution. Why is this so important? Because you can’t find what you’re not looking for. PCA believes that child sexual abuse, and probably all types of child abuse and neglect are entirely preventable in institutions – but not in organisations that don’t even acknowledge that the risk exists.

If you’d like to learn more Child Safe Organisations, why they’re important, and receive some free actionable advice – stay tuned. Over the next five days, PCA will be publishing five articles explaining different aspects of being a child safe organisation. Find them on LinkedIn, on PCA’s website or on Twitter with the hashtag #CSOin5Days.