Goodstart is a child safe organisation. This means the safety and wellbeing of children is at the centre of everything we do.
Our teams are trained to ‘look, do, tell’ which makes the safety of every child, everyone’s responsibility.
This is more than just meeting our legal and compliance responsibilities - in 2019 Goodstart adopted the child safe principles which ensure every person in your child’s centre is accountable for the safety of all children in the centre.
The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations reflect ten child safe standards recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. You can read more about the principles here.
Being child safe in our centres takes many forms, including a rule that no photographs or video material can be recorded on educator’s personal devices; that educators should never be alone with a child without a valid reason and that every child must always be in learning environments that are safe and supervised.
You can read more about our code of conduct, child safe behaviour standards and our safeguarding children program here.
At a minimum, everyone who works for us must hold a current Working With Children check and undertake annual mandatory child protection training.
Our teachers and educators are qualified professionals who work to stringent policies and procedures, and we have expert teams who support them to understand and implement our safety principles. This helps to ensure high quality, child safe practices in every single Goodstart centre.
Support for families
In September Goodstart families will be provided with our new Protective Strategies Kit. The kit is designed to help each of us understand the things we can do to help protect children.
From an early age, you can give your child age-appropriate knowledge, strategies and skills to respond to a range of unsafe situations, in a way that is helpful rather than frightening.
These are known as protective strategies or protective behaviours. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse highlighted the importance of providing children with protective strategies to reduce the risk of child sexual abuse or harm.
There are some great resources already available for families, carers and community members who are interested in learning more about how to help keep children safe, and how to help them tell a trusted adult when they are feeling unsafe.
Free children’s books on body safety and consent
Educate2Empower Publishing is an international award-winning children's book publisher who specializes in children's books on body safety, consent, gender equality, respectful relationships, and social and emotional intelligence. Educate2Empower Publishing provides free resources for parents, caregivers and educators on these important topics. Click here to read more.
Australian Federal Police resources
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) website was created by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to bring together a world-leading approach to counter child exploitation. They have some great resources for families and carers here.
Online safety
The National eSafety Commissioner also has a website packed with helpful resources for parents and carers here.