Leading Child Safety in Schools

Child safety is a shared responsibility. This episode focuses on the role of leaders in embedding safe practices across the whole school, understanding emerging risks, and ensuring student wellbeing is always central. The hosts discuss culture, policy, everyday supervision, and how to create psychologically safe environments for students and staff.
 
Guests: Anne Henderson, Shannon Tyrer
Produced by: The MacKillop Institute

Chapter markers
00:00 Safety as culture, not a checklist
03:40 Governance, policy, and transparent processes
09:20 Everyday practice, supervision, and safe routines
15:05 Responding to emerging risks, digital and onsite
20:30 Student voice in safety, listening and responding
25:10 Staff wellbeing and psychological safety
29:30 Practical next steps for leaders

If themes in this episode affect you, support is available in Australia, Griefline 1300 845 745, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, Lifeline 13 11 14.

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

That's TMI, the meaningful insides podcast, delving into the heart of human-centered professions.

Chris: 0:08

That's TMI is recorded on the lands of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to all the traditional custodians of the lands on which you are joining from today. This episode contains content that some listeners may find challenging. This episode explores supporting child safety in schools and safeguarding children. As such, we discuss content including child sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and harmful sexual behaviours. At any time that you need to stop the recording, please do so and seek help. You can talk to a trusted friend, colleague, your local GP, mental health practitioners, ask your employer for a referral to your employee assistance programme. In Australia, reach out to Lifeline on 131114 or beyond blue one three hundred two two four six three six. And to explore any of the resources mentioned in this episode, you can visit McKillopinstitute.org.au Thank you so much everyone for joining us. My name is Chris Higgins from the McKillop Institute. And you're joining this afternoon on leading child safety in schools. And the subheading of that, that it's about empowering your school community. And we're very lucky today to be joined by three wonderful esteemed colleagues of mine, and I'm very excited to be able to speak with them this afternoon. And they're coming with a range of different perspectives to this. We have people who have been principals and system leaders, we have consultants in this area, and then we also have practice specialists in this area for schools as well. Those different perspectives we will draw out and hopefully be able to share some insights on how you can lead this and empower your staff to lead this to in your schools. So thank you so much for joining us. If you've heard of McKillop Family Services before, you'll know a little bit about what we do. If you haven't, we're a national community services organization who work with children and families. Uh well, we've got offices all over Australia and we work all across Australia. And how we do that is in a range of services. And you'll see there that one of them is McKillop Education. So we actually operate our own schools, and we have a few schools across Victoria and in New South Wales. And we also run a range of other services, but bringing together my wonderful colleagues here today, we're actually bringing them in from McKillop Education, from McKillp Family Services, and also from this other part of McKillop called the Institute, which is our professional learning arm, really. We're here and we exist to try and share a little bit of what we do and share some of that. We want the best outcomes for all children and young people in Australia, but we know we can't do that alone. We do our best, we do what we can do, but we know we can do so much more when we do that with others and with other organizations. And so that's why we're here right now. Is because we want to be able to share what we do, share a little bit of our practice and insights, and work with others and work with other organizations to have better outcomes for all of our children. Without further ado, I would like to quickly introduce our speakers now. First and foremost, I would like to introduce Anne Henderson to you. Anne Henderson is responsible for McKillop's specialist schools, and that's McKillop Education, as I mentioned. Anne is also responsible for all of our education and engagement programs as well. For example, we have lots of outreach programs where we work out in the community providing educational services for children and young people, as well as our own schools. Anne has worked in schools for over 30 years. She's held a number of senior leadership positions, including as a principal. Anne is a big passionate believer in transformative education and the liberating power that is education. She's deeply committed to equity and ensuring equity for her children and young people. And she's deeply committed to equity of access and success and learning for every child, regardless of culture, background, socioeconomics, or ability. Anne also extends that career even into some other leadership positions, such as university lecturer as well, at one point. And Anne is now the group director of McKillop Education and the McKillop Institute, where, as I mentioned, she looks after all of our schools, all of our engagement programs, and the institute when we run these professional learning services. So I'm not quite sure how she manages all of that, but she does the most amazing job. I feel very privileged every day to have Anne as one of my leaders. And thank you so much for joining us this afternoon for this conversation. And welcome. And is there anything else that I've missed there?

Anne: 5:42

I think that's more than enough, Chris. So thank you so much for that um introduction. And just to welcome everyone here this afternoon, thank you so much for making the time to join us. And I hope you find it um useful as we think about child safety in our schools and organizations. So a huge warm welcome to everyone. Thanks, Chris.

Chris: 6:02

Thank you, and our next guest, we are also very lucky to have with us this afternoon and giving up some of her time. We are very lucky to have the wonderful Shannon Tyra with us as well this afternoon. Shannon is a consultant. So Shannon actually runs her own consultancy business called Project Evogue, where she specializes in the areas of child safety and policy and practice. We're very lucky to engage Shannon at the McKillop Institute to support us with a lot of the work that we do, especially with our child safety professional learning programs. She's previously worked with young people to minimize harm around things like drug use and to disrupt child sexual exploitation and practices. She's worked for the Department of Education here in Victoria, where she led the student well-being unit. And for the past 10 years, Shannon has continued her passion for empowering improving outcomes for young people and has consulted with a range of governments and other youth and family agencies through that work. A couple of specific projects to mention from Shannon would include the development of the Department of Education's Protect Child Safe Standards materials. And she recently launched the mental health and well-being toolkit and continues to consult in those areas with young people and other peak bodies. We're very lucky to have Shannon this afternoon. And thank you so much for making some time and sharing some of your wisdom and insights, Shannon. Thank you for joining us and thank you for being here. And is there anything else that I've missed that you think we should add in here?

Shannon: 7:51

Only that I feel like I'm the lucky one. I feel in lots of projects and opportunities to work with children and young people, vulnerable children and young people, I know that our partnerships and working together is always the most important thing. And I just feel really grateful to have amazing colleagues and the broader network of people listening who are all passionate about protecting our children and young people. So I'm really excited to contribute to the discussion, but probably most importantly to listen. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks, Chris, for that lovely welcome.

Chris: 8:23

Beautiful. Thank you, Shannon. And those beautiful words as well, Shannon. Thank you. And last but not least, we are also very lucky to be joined by one of my other esteemed colleagues. We are joined by the wonderful Lisa Del Din. And Lisa has over 20 years of experience in education in a range of roles, including in secondary schools as a science teacher. And she's also held a range of leadership roles in schools, such as a head of department, a year-level coordinator, the VCE coordinator, and as a member of several school executive teams. After taking a little bit of a break from traditional and maybe more mainstream school settings to work with other education teams, Lisa spent a bit of time in specialist medical colleges as well. And then when returning to more of a traditional setting, Lisa took up roles focused on child safety specifically. Lisa is currently our national child safety quality and compliance leader for McKillip Education and those schools. And Lisa is dedicated to ensuring that we have the highest standards of safety and quality for all of our children and young people and students. She's played a pivotal role in several significant projects related to child safety for McKillip Education. And this has included implementing and embedding the child safe standards and also for helping us to very successfully get through our last round of VR QA registration and a review process that happened earlier this year, which, might I add, was a phenomenal piece of work, all led by Lisa. So well done to Lisa for that. But Lisa has a deep commitment to fostering safe and nurturing educational environments for all of our children and young people. And she advocates wholeheartedly for best practices in child safety and compliance. Lisa, again, thank you so much for being here this afternoon and giving some time to share some of your thoughts and insights with us. Anything I've missed there in your bio as well, Lisa?

Intro: 10:44

Thank you, Chris. I just thought I'd give a little bit of detail about the McKillop Education schools that I work with. Although my background is, as you said, as a teacher, I now have more of an administrative role at McKillop Education. We have three specialist campuses in Victoria. And as of term four this year, we have a school in New South Wales and other opportunities for growth and expansion in the future. And our schools work to support students who are disengaged from mainstream schools. My role is a little bit different to that of a child safety officer, as I'm not working directly with students. I work to support the leadership teams with the development of the child safety and compliance policies and procedures and to ensure that we have the practices and systems in place at our schools to minimize child safety risks to the young people in our care. And so today, for my contribution, my aim is to share some of my experience implementing the new Victorian child safe standards.

Chris: 11:55

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Lisa. And that is the perfect segue into the next little bit from me, which is really just to introduce that, as I mentioned earlier, we have three wonderful colleagues here who are going to share their insights and their expertise, but from those slightly different perspectives. And so the questions that we're going to ask this afternoon will help to draw out some of those different perspectives and hopefully support you in leading child safety practices in your own school. With that, I am going to go to Anne Henderson for our very first question. First of all, Anne, and from you and your experiences of being a school leader, of being a principal, you're now, as I mentioned, the group director looking after all of our schools. What challenges have you faced as a school leader in enacting child safe standards? And how have you overcome some of those challenges?

Anne: 12:58

Thanks, Chris. A great question. I think the first thing to say is I don't think we can claim we've overcome them all, but certainly attempted to do a really great job in terms of ensuring child safety is at the centre and hard of all that we do. Overcoming compliance fatigue in schools is a challenge in itself given the demands that already exist on leaders and for our staff across our school settings. And that's really understandable. I think we began the journey, which seems so long ago now, by presenting the standards as something we are already doing. In fact, child safety is, or should be in all our schools, the defining characteristic of everything that we do every day. So that was our starting point. And I think really framing those standards by stressing how they already resonate with our practice and illuminate our commitments as educators. I think we then moved on to recognizing the importance of celebrating what we're already doing in the space, affirming the work of staff, affirming the work of other leaders across our school settings, which was probably more of an informal process for us to hear for ourselves what are we doing really well at that moment and currently. And I guess getting staff and leaders to identify perhaps areas where we could be improving. From that point, we recognize the importance of consulting with our students and our parents and guardians and hearing their voices around what they think we were doing well and what they saw as areas for development. So, of course, that was important considerations in our journey as well. And I think from those that information, moving to a more formal process of auditing against the standards. And what is the evidence? What evidence do we have against the standards to confirm perhaps what we had already identified? Or perhaps to focus our attention to areas we hadn't been aware of that we needed to do more work in. So that was some of the ways that we worked in that space. Lisa joined us probably halfway into that journey. So it would be interesting for her to reflect perhaps other things that I might have missed that she saw as really significant as that sort of moving into that space and commencing that journey with a focus on the standards.

Chris: 15:48

And I think it resonates with me around often in education, we can hear about this kind of deficit model of all the things we're not doing and more things that we need to do, and feeling like there's all this additional extra stuff. But actually, instead, you've come from that the opposite of the deficit model and looking at all the things that was already being done well, and also talking to the students and the consultative process. And that's a lot to try and capture.

Anne: 16:16

Yeah, and look, it was a journey over time, of course, but they were the sort of fundamentals, I think, in terms of what helped us get staff on board and to recognize the great work that they're already doing in this space. And of course, reaffirming the centrality of child safety for all of us every day, every moment of every day in the work that we do.

Chris: 16:42

Fantastic. And just on that theme there of the centrality of it is central to everything we do in every school every day. Lisa, I think that leads me beautifully to a question for you in schools and with school staff around child safety. What have been some of the common misconceptions that have come up? And how have you addressed those, or how have you heard about perhaps others addressing those common misconceptions? Because I imagine it happens.

Intro: 17:13

Thanks, Chris. I think one of the first misconceptions is if we make sure that our staff have working with children checks or their teacher registration, that's great. We have safety for our young people in our care. But I think that registrations and compliance checks are just one element of a whole suite of measures that schools must have in place to minimize the risk of child abuse. But as well as having those documents and those procedures, it's a m a matter of making sure that they are embedded and that they are lived and that we are adhering to them. And they're not just documents on a website, but they are actually reflecting how we practice and our child safety commitment. And so it's really important that leaders ensure that there's enough time devoted to giving staff an opportunity to uh discuss policies and procedures, even though that might not sound particularly um exciting, but we do need to have a good understanding of them and to have that ongoing training. It's not just a matter of we introduce a policy or a procedure at the beginning of the year, we give a briefing and it's set and forget. We need to have that ongoing conversation about child safety and about our practice so that we can be sure, we can be confident that it's embedded. We also need to be constantly thinking about the risks of harm that may exist within our school physical environment and also the online environments that our students are using. And we must think about are there opportunities for adults to be alone with children where they might be unseen by others and where they might be able to form relationships with children that could involve physical contact or emotional closeness that could allow a shift from what we know is acceptable to unprofessional or abusive behaviours. So being aware of that and being uh mindful of those risks and managing them. Another misconception, which I think links to this, the first one, is around we ask staff to sign a child safety code of conduct at the beginning of each year. And if we think that, okay, that's enough, just getting them to read and sign a document, I would challenge that and think there should be some opportunity for discussion about exactly what do we mean by these lists of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. And maybe there needs to be some discussion of professional boundaries so that teachers have a good understanding of what the expectations are. And as an example, the Victorian Institute of Teaching on their website, they have some video case studies that could be used to promote a discussion at a staff meeting to help raise DAF awareness. I think it's important to just keep the conversation about child safety going, having it as a standing agenda item at leadership meetings and staff meetings so that we are having the child safety conscious at all times. One of the things that I've introduced at our schools is a child safe standards notice board. And I feature different child safe standards throughout the year. Again, just to have that visible presence as a reminder for staff on a day-to-day basis. Also, when we're communicating with guardians, families, if we link some of the activities that we're doing at school, link them to the child safe standards. So, for example, if we're acknowledging Reconciliation Week or NADOC Week, providing a link to Child Safe Standard 1 in Victoria, which is about cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Again, it just helps to raise that awareness of child safety. And I think that's um a good thing that we can do for our guardians as well as with our staff. Another sort of challenge or misconception around uh child safety that I feel we have is this view that online environments are bad for children and young people. We know that access to digital media is a really important part for young people's education. And it's one of their rights to have that opportunity. And a lot of the interactions for young people online are positive and do support their social development, their relationships and their education. However, we know that there are risks associated with online environments, and so it's important for schools to identify and consider those risks and then put in place strategies to minimize those risks and to protect young people from harm. And so at school we have a really important role in educating students to be safe online, but also a responsibility to educate guardians as well. I'm sure most everyone here would be aware, but I'll just mention it. Schools can certainly help students and guardians to navigate that space. So I guess we need a balanced approach to the use of online environments for our students. And the final misconception that I'm flagged today is the notion that most abuse occurs to children and young people in their home, not at schools. We do play and we can play an important role in protecting young people from abuse in the home. And part of that is through helping to support development of student agency, that schools can help to build that protective capacity in children and young people. And if we build that agency in young people at school, then that builds agency for the young person at home. Also, if the young person has trusted relationships at school, friends, and good relationships with school staff, then this might allow the student to disclose if they're experiencing abuse within the home.

Chris: 24:50

Lisa, you've covered so much in there. I I love that you you've talked about some of those common misconceptions, but also given us really tangible, concrete examples of how you and your experience have turned something that could just be a document on a shelf into something that is living, breathing, practiced, and embedded. And we often hear about the gaps that exist between policy and practice. And I suppose that's a big key part of that, isn't it? Is it child safety can't just be, oh yeah, we've we've read the child safe standards, we've got a child safety policy. It actually needs to be lived, breathed, part of our practice. As Anne mentioned earlier, acknowledge that we already do so much good work in that area. But how can we bring in all these additional elements and layers like notice boards and building the student agency and having the environments where it's comfortable to talk about? So thank you so much. That was the first question, and there's there was so much in there already, Lisa. Thank you for sharing so much wonderful insights. And Shannon, maybe perhaps over to you because you've done so much work with the departments of education and consultancy with not-for-profits and governments and schools, and this is a real area of expertise for you. Knowing that the child safe standards as well as you do, what do you think is one of the most important aspects of the child safe standards?

Shannon: 26:18

Thanks, Chris. I'm actually really grateful that Anne and Lisa touched on the issue of compliance fatigue and the importance of bridging that gap between what's in our policies. Because I think if we look at the child safe standards, and particularly from a Victorian perspective, and think about ministerial order and all of the things that we have to have in place, it can be really overwhelming and we can feel the fatigue. I understand that emotion, but I think something that I feel is one of the most important parts of the child safe standards, and I am often talking about it because I feel really passionate about it. But at the very heart of keeping children safe is making sure that they're truly confident to seek help and that they know that the adults around them really value their views, believe them, and take their concerns really seriously. I think if we understand that perpetrators construct so many barriers to prevent children and young people from disclosing harm, as adults, as educators, as any protective adults in young people's lives, I think we have to be really purposeful about how we break down those barriers. And I feel like the child safe standards and our national principles are really carefully constructed around breaking down those barriers because we know from the Royal Commission, the average time between a child or young person experiencing sexual abuse and disclosure is 23.9 years. And you know, where I'm I mean I'm talking to a group of people who are equally passionate, so we want to make that time zero. There's lots of things we want to do to prevent the harm happening in the first place, but in the inevitable event that harm does happen, we want the disclosure to happen immediately. And schools are often the only safe space for some of our really vulnerable children to make that disclosure. And that doesn't mean I'm not saying that the onus is on our children and young people to keep themselves safe. Rather, the onus is on us as adults and educators to make that space for children and young people to feel safe, to disclose harm, or to disclose those feelings of harm right from the start if they're starting to feel unsafe. We talk a lot about early intervention, and I think in this case, it's really living those child safe standards in a way that means that our children and young people have that space. And I think schools are like there's lots of great practice out there, and I think it starts really asking children and young people about how they want to give feedback, what their barriers are. And I think by having that regular practice in uh asking children, young people how they're feeling, responding to those feelings, we just build those pathways feel that they can raise concerns about different things and that we respond and we listen. There's some really great examples of good practice, probably from lots of people listening too, but there's a really beautiful resource. It's from the ACT government, and it's called Ask Us, and it's Student Voice in the Act. And they've got these really proactive ideas and ways that we can engage young people. And there's a really beautiful one called the Co-Researcher model. Some of you might have already done this, but it's an approach where you ask your students to do, and this is maybe more an upper primary, secondary strategy, but you ask your students to do some research on the things that they think will help boost their well being and sense of safety in the school, and then present them as solutions. I feel really grateful for having opportunities to work with children and young. People because I'm always surprised at and I shouldn't be, but I'm happily surprised at how innovative and creative their solutions are. But also they understand the barriers because they're experiencing them. So I think one of the important parts of the child safe standards is supporting our kids to help break down those barriers and creating that safe space. So I also think it's a particular challenge when I've worked with bigger high schools and to build that safe space, break down the stigma that lots of young people feel in seeking help and not wanting to stand out with their friends and not having the opportunity to build those one-on-one relationships that you're much more likely to have in primary schools.

Chris: 30:41

And I think again, a beautiful segue to Anne and a question for Anne. And we've talked about leading this within a school, and we've got some great examples of how you can put things into practice in school, like in meetings and making it a standing item. In your experiences or from conversations that you've had, how can school leaders effectively engage their entire staff in creating a child safe culture? We don't just want people to just comply, we want a culture of child safety in schools. How how can we do that?

Anne: 31:16

Thanks, Chris. I think obviously compliance with the standards is a is a non-negotiable in all of our schools. However, what we know for ourselves and for our staff and for human beings generally, we don't do our best work when compliance is the sole motivation. So I think to start by connecting this work to meaning and purpose is really critical for me. I like to talk about the pedagogy of the heart, to touch in with staff the why have they chosen to do this work, why are they here? What lies at the heart of their calling, as individuals in our staff groups. And I think we can't emphasize enough, and people have touched on it, Shannon, Lisa, probably all of the people who are listening, we can't emphasize enough the relational nature of our work together and the critical importance that this plays in building that safety and that trust. And as a consequence of that, those strong and positive relationships with our students. I think the other thing that I think is really critically important is to continue to keep alive the learnings from the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, those personal stories shared by survivors who were children at the time of the abuse, the long-term impact on their lives, the recurring reality, as Shannon has mentioned, of children not being believed, and also the betrayal by those in positions of leadership, authority, teachers, leaders, either as perpetrators or as having failed to fulfil their duty of care in responding to children's complaints or parents' reporting. One of the commissioners from that at the time leading that response and investigation was addressing an audience recently, and his words have really stayed with me because they I think they disturb me quite deeply. But he talked about the fact that we can no longer rest in the comfort of assuming that every single person we employ is committed to child safety and to safeguarding children. Which is disturbing to really sit with that reality, I think, but I think a call to action and vigilance. And I guess while holding those learnings, I think we also need to be aware, and I'm sure we all are, but continually remind ourselves of the reality of um child sexual abuse and the tragedy that is the experience of many children now here today as we speak. And we know from the Australian child maltreatment study, we know from incidents recently highlighted in the media that are recurring that harmful sexual behaviours and that there are victims of child abuse happening all the time. What does that mean for us in our education settings? And I guess going back to moving away from just the focus on compliance or not underestimating the importance of that, but I guess inviting our staff and reminding ourselves and each other that as responsible adults, we should be driven by a deep desire, by that moral obligation we have to keep children safe. I think also as educators, that call to remind ourselves of the fact that safety is a precondition for any learning and therefore the responsibility that we have to be doing all that we can to providing that learning environment for every child in our care. I think, too, of course, as professionals, we do have a legal requirement and we shouldn't be losing sight of our obligations to fulfill those duties of care that we have and necessarily the compliance with all of those standards. I think the last thing to say is that obviously all of the people, each of us talking today, and all of the people in our audience have a deep love of children, whether or not they're our own, whether or not they're the children and that we teach and educate, or whether and we have those connections through extended family. But I think when we keep those children at in the centre of our minds and at the centre of our attention, what would we want for our children in any school, for those children that we love? And the reminder that our parents and guardians are entrusting the care of those children to us each day, and I guess honouring that trust they're placing in us to ensure that they are safe and they can flourish as human beings, you know.

Chris: 36:24

And I'm like, Oh, my kids did this today, my kids did that today. And they're like, How many do you have? Thank you. And some of this is tough conversations to have, but we need to have them and we need to have them out there openly and publicly. If we don't have those conversations, then things don't get addressed, do they? And some of the learning from the Australian childhood maltreatment study um that was published last year. If you haven't heard of it, landmark study of its kind into the prevalence of a range of childhood maltreatment. And it does show us that this isn't something of the past, uh, this is happening now, and certain forms may be changing. There's a little bit less now of adult to child, but we're seeing increasing rates of child-to-child harm and young person to young person, it's still there and it's still prevalent. And Lisa, this leads me to a question for you as well. And uh Anne's kind of talking from a leadership perspective, but beyond that leadership perspective, how can school staff take an active role in maintaining and promoting child safe environments? What can our staff do?

Intro: 37:33

We all staff have the individual responsibility to personally abide by the child safety code of conduct, which, as I said, we ask them to sign that each year. But also, staff have a responsibility to call out breaches of the code of conduct by their colleagues and others. That's a challenging thing, and staff can often feel very conflicted between trusting a colleague on one hand and their responsibility to the students on the other. And the notion that teachers may be seen to be in judgment of their peers and reporting their behaviour might not sit comfortably with them, but our duty of care, it is our responsibility to the young people in our care, we must report. I mentioned before, and we've all touched on student agency as being a protective factor for young people. And school staff, we all play an important role in educating young people about their rights, consent, providing age-appropriate sexual health education, and encouraging student voice both in and out of the classroom. And so by all of us working together to build the agency of young people, then they may be better able to recognize and report abuse when it occurs. One of the learnings from the Royal Commission was with respect to what makes a school safe through the eyes of a child. And one of the learnings was that students felt that a school's response to bullying was an indicator of safety. And they felt that if the school didn't deal with bullying, then they weren't confident that the school would act if they were to disclose that they were experiencing abuse. So I think that's something that we need to be mindful of as a staff, how we do respond to bullying. Teachers can also, and I know they do this all the time, but we do uh want to encourage our young people to speak up if they're not feeling safe. And we need to give reminders of that, not just assume that students know to talk to us, but we need to deliberately raise it and tell them that we would like to know if they're not feeling safe, if they have any concerns. And maybe we need to make sure that we provide a range of um ways for students to raise their concerns. So it could be in forums such as at an SRC. It could be, hopefully, if they have a trusted staff member that a student could raise concerns with. Or maybe we need to make sure we have in place paper forms that could be filled in privately, or a QR code that goes to an online form, or make sure that we have phone numbers and websites where students can access help and have those visible around the school so that there are options for students. We're also aware that students and young people are most likely to disclose abuse to their peers. So, as part of our programs, we need to skill children and young people up to be able to respond and support their friends. And one of the requirements of Child Safe Standard 3 in Victoria is that the importance of friendship is recognized and support from peers is encouraged to help young fit people feel safe and less isolated. So teachers can do a lot to help young people to learn about positive relationships, how to be a friend, and how to support a friend if they disclose to them that they have been abused. One of the things that we did when we were implementing the child safe standards was we used the Australian Catholic University's Child Safeguarding Capabilities Survey to provide us with some data around our staff's child safety awareness, their knowledge, and importantly, their confidence to act. And one of the findings and recommendations from that survey for us was that while most of our staff felt confident that they knew what was expected to create a child safe environment, they felt less confident in their ability to educate children and young people about their own personal safety, particularly focusing on keeping them safe from sexual abuse. So now that data has given us an area that we will work on as an area to address and better support our staff with developing and enhancing their confidence to act.

Chris: 42:45

Yeah, I think it also touches on something that we we touched on earlier as well, around some of the harmful behaviors we're seeing from young people to each other. And I'm gonna come to you now, Shannon, with a question for you because I know that this is an area that you've done some work in, and we're seeing a lot more of this. We're dealing with it in our schools, we're seeing it in the news. There was even an article today I was reading about this. Lots of discussion in the media about harmful sexual behaviours is the kind of common terminology. If anyone listening is not familiar with that, we we often talk about the kind of youth on youth, peer-on-peer, harmful sexual behaviours that um here when we use that term. Do you have any thoughts and from any of the work that you've done about how schools can reduce the risks of that type of harmful sexual behaviour and actually better safeguard our children and young people from it?

Shannon: 43:41

Yeah, definitely, Chris. Thank you for that question. And it's such a challenging area and a really uncomfortable topic for lots of our schools. But as we touched on the Australian childhood maltreatment study earlier, we can see that incidents of harmful sexual behaviour from the latest 2024 report are on the rise. And that this data is really uncomfortable. So one in five young people aged 16 to 24 have been sexually harmed by another teen. And that was a study that involved three and a half thousand young people in that age bracket have indicated that they have experienced sexual harm from another teen. You you touched on the ABC report that came live today. And Chris, I'm also really glad that you talked about the term harmful sexual behavior because I think we have to be really careful with our language. It's really important here. We know that with therapeutic intervention, children and young people who display harmful sexual behaviours, such a huge majority of them do not go on to display those behaviours into adulthood. So if we use terms like perpetrators or we label children and young people with their behaviours, and we know this in all of our school settings, you stick a label on it, it's really difficult to take it off and to fulfill your full potential. So reducing stigma and labels is really important. But as with everything, and I think this is our kind of topic of the day, early intervention is key in terms of how we respond to harmful sexual behaviors, and that doesn't help the schools that are moving through really challenging, very emotional, harmful situations. But the early intervention, I think, is in two parts. And Lisa, you touched on this that respectful relationships and sex education. And I just want to touch on a few things that I think that is really critical to cover, and also on how we boost confidence and capabilities of our staff. So just quickly, in terms of so for Victoria, it's our Child Safe Standard 8 or National Principle 7. But we have that those principles really put an emphasis on high quality, respectful relationships and sex education. And I think the things that we're really we know and the evidence tells us we need is emphasis on help seeking, really explicit teaching and learning about what a respectful relationship does and doesn't look like. And this one can be uncomfortable in lots of different environments, but really critically addressing the topic of pornography, gender stereotypes, and the normalization of violence in porn. If we look at the proportion of children and young people that are watching violent pornography online, sifting through that data demonstrates how much we really need to explicitly respond. And there's a really great resource from the New Zealand Ministry of Education that outlines some of the really effective ways. So it's not a teaching and learning resource in itself, but it talks about the principles of what that really effective education looks like. But also on the converse is how we make educators feel really confident and respond in a really consistent, informed way. It's challenging. Like I being in a classroom and seeing behavior, any form of sexual behavior, even if it's age appropriate, can be really challenging to deal with because of the context that you're in or the expectations from parents or responses to people around you, maybe you've experienced trauma. There's a lot going on in that space. And I think building our real evidence around how we respond, understanding what the curve of normal sexual development is, and then working out our responses in that evidence-informed way, I think is really important and it supports not only our students to understand, have a consistent response and understand, like we would with literacy and numeracy, understand their development and the next steps on their development, but also our teachers and our educators who are in the moment to have something to draw from and build confidence from, and have a program power to kids at the McKilloph Institute, and we're rolling it out in schools at the moment. And it's a light man. You've sat in the room with me when we've talked to lots of educators. But when we talk about normal sexual development and we put words around what is harmful sexual behavior, what's concerning, we think about it in a scale and a proportional measured response. You can see a sense of calm coming across the room. And I think that's what our educators need. And I feel, yeah, that's a really important step.

Chris: 48:24

I'm conscious we're we're close to time. So I do just want to see if maybe Ann and Shannon could summarize very quickly a last couple of questions for me. One for you was very much around that kind of leadership perspective. And I'm going to ask you to try and give me the shortest possible answer that you can to this. And I'm so I'm sorry to do this to you, but for for anyone listening who might be a new principal or a new school leader or stepping into this space of leading child safety, what what advice would you give for trying to really integrate child safety into the core operations of what the school is doing?

Anne: 49:04

Relationships and the quality of those with our students and our parents and guardians and with each other, actually. And I think creating a culture where child safety is part of our school's DNA. Any person who walks through the door can see, hear, feel, experience that child safety is in fact a priority in this environment.

Chris: 49:27

And Shannon, to you finally, because you've already given us so many amazing resources and ideas. Is there any other kind of final ones that you would add around any other great resources to support schools in this?

Shannon: 49:40

Awesome. I'll try and do it in 10 words or then. I feel like we haven't touched, I know Lisa, you did um a little bit earlier, but on the importance of cultural safety. And there's a really great resource that I love features Mina Singh, the Yaughi Yoda woman who's the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People in Victoria, and she talks so passionately and practically about the importance of cultural safety. So I feel like if we can do one thing watching that is really awesome. The Australian Human Rights Commission's got some really great resources, and they're focused around the national principles. But what I really love about them is there's these indicators in there. They're really practical indicators to say, are we actually living this standard? I feel like they're great conversation starters, Lisa. They're probably already plastered all over that excellent board that you were talking about earlier. And finally, we're McKillop Institute. We're also releasing some modules for educators, school councils, and governing authorities that touch on some of the things that we have today, but include within them a list of extra resources. So we've tried to bring in the most important ones today, but there's more.

Chris: 50:47

Fantastic. Thank you so much. And I think that's a great little segue again, Shannon. I really appreciate how many tangible resources and external supports you've mentioned. Uh, and I suppose just to round us out a little bit for this, is just to mention that as Shannon's kind of touched on, we are trying to support this work in schools and this wonderful professional learning program that we have called Power to Kids in Schools. You can learn more about how we're trying to support child safety, especially around harmful sexual behaviors, child um sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse, and how we can support schools with that work. And also on that website, you'll be able to find the child safety modules and learning modules that we were talking about. But very finally, thanks for being here with us. Thank you to Lisa and thank you to Shannon. Thank you so much for sharing so much of your wisdom and your knowledge and your experience over the years in this space. This was a very brief conversation in the grand scheme of child safety. And I know we could go on for uh several hours more. So I really just want to express my appreciation from everyone that I'm sure is listening just now. Thank you for sharing your time. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Uh, for anyone who is listening, if you want to continue to hear more from us that we're putting out there again, just to support all of us in this work because it's so important and we genuinely believe in every child having the best start in life and having the best possible outcomes, you can visit our website or our LinkedIn page. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Stay safe, stay well, and have a wonderful evening, morning, afternoon, wherever you are, or whatever time it is that you're listening. Thanks, everyone.