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Children and young people’s safety : 2018-2020 report
Russell, Douglas H. Higgins, Daryl J.
Russell, Douglas H.
Higgins, Daryl J.
Abstract
[Executive summary] It is a troubling fact that children and young people are at risk of sexual abuse in places where they should expect to be safe – their school, sports club, church and other youthserving organisations. Organisations are taking steps to improve children’s safety and are implementing many changes to become safer for children and young people.
The Children and Young People’s Safety project is an on-going research engagement tool, developed by the Institute of Child Protection Studies, at the Australian Catholic University. The project aims to support organisations to develop and improve their child-safe culture. The Institute also uses the information to help answer research questions that will support policy and practice development across Australia and internationally.
The project continues important research work commissioned by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which handed down its final report in 2017. Since then, governments have agreed to implement National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, and organisations have been working to apply the Principles to better protect and safeguard children from child sexual abuse.
An important aspect of policy and practice changes is the ability to monitor and evaluate their effectiveness. In the case of child sexual abuse this can be difficult for a number of reasons:
1. Child sexual abuse often goes undisclosed; if disclosed it can often involve decades-long gaps between abuse occurring and disclosure (the Royal Commission found the gap was typically 23 years)
2. A reduction in the number of reports of child sexual abuse made through mandatory reporting systems cannot be relied upon as an estimate of whether child sexual abuse is actually happening less often; since the recommendations of the Royal Commission were handed down, organisations, staff, volunteers and the wider community are likely to be more vigilant leading to an increase in officially recorded reports.
3. Like many other countries, Australia does not yet have community-wide prevalence data to show whether actual rates of child sexual abuse rates and other forms of child maltreatment are changing.
The Children and Young People’s Safety project offers two empirically developed survey tools:
1. Children’s Safety Survey
2. Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Survey.
Organisations can use the surveys to measure their conditions of safety. The data is accessible in real time and quickly shows participating organisations, peak bodies, or government whether changes to safeguarding policy and practice are helping move the organisation towards greater conditions of safety for the children and young people they serve.
Organisations that invest in improving the culture of child safety, developing policies and practices that prevent abuse from occurring, and responding more appropriately when abuse does occur need to know how well those changes are demonstrating improved safeguarding. The data from these surveys can be used to measure improvements in the culture of safety and measure the success of child sexual abuse prevention efforts from the perspective of children and the workforce. This knowledge can help youth-serving organisations protect children and young people from grooming and sexual abuse.
Keywords
child sexual abuse prevention, child safety culture, safeguarding policies, youth-serving organisations, children’s safety survey, safeguarding capabilities survey, Royal Commission recommendations, National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, monitoring and evaluation of child safety, child protection research, grooming prevention, institutional responses to abuse
Date
2021
Type
Project Report
Journal
Book
Volume
Issue
Page Range
1-27
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute of Child Protection Studies
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Event URL
Open Access Status
Open access
License
CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)
File Access
Notes
© Australian Catholic University 2021
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