We welcome the establishment of the Child Safe Organisations framework with the Child Safe Organisations Act 2024
These new laws are designed to protect children from harm and promote their safety, wellbeing and best interests.
Organisations that engage in child related work, provide services specifically for children, or facilities for children’s use (called ‘child safe entities’ in the new legislation) will be required to comply with 10 Child Safe Standards and a Reportable Conduct Scheme. A child is anyone under the age of 18 years.
Child Safe Organisations include early childhood education providers, schools, hospitals and churches through to businesses and organisations employing staff or run by volunteers that provide services to or who work with children. Child Safe Organisations may be solely based in Queensland or may work across state boundaries.
The Child Safe Organisations framework will be introduced in a phased approach from October 2025 meaning different sectors will be required to meet their legal obligations at different times.
We have started work on implementing the framework. We encourage you to bookmark this page and visit regularly as we provide updated information, resources and details of community engagement activities.
We will be working over the coming months to build and provide Queensland-specific resources.
What is a Child Safe Organisation?
All children, their families and carers should feel welcome in an organisation, including feeling able to express their identity and raise concerns about their own or others’ safety.
All children have the right to feel safe and to be safe all the time, but safety does not just happen.
A Child Safe Organisations takes deliberate steps to protect children from physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse and neglect. Child Safe Organisations have a culture, commitment and responsibility to keep children safe and to uphold their rights.
A Child Safe Organisations is a place that consciously and systematically:
- creates an environment where children’s safety and wellbeing, including their cultural safety, is the centre of thought, values and actions
- upholds children’s rights and human rights
- places emphasis on genuine engagement with and valuing of children
- reduces the likelihood of harm occurring
- increases the likelihood of harm being identified
- recognises, and responds to, any concerns, disclosures, allegations or suspicions of harm
- has values and practices embedded into the culture of the organisation
- engages in a dynamic process of continuous improvement to analyse performance, identify opportunities, learn and make changes to ensure the needs, wellbeing and cultural safety of children is maintained
Visit our frequently asked questions for more.
Child Safe Standards
Reportable Conduct Scheme
Training and resources
Raising concerns about child safety
Implementation in Queensland
Background
The Child Safe Organisations framework was recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission) in 2017 and is a framework underpinned by a child rights, strengths-based approach.
The Royal Commission emphasised that members of the public, children, young people, parents, carers, families and communities should be confident that organisations working with children provide safe environments where children’s rights, needs and interests are met. It identified specific elements that institutions should adopt to be child safe, and its Final Report proposed 10 Child Safe Standards to provide guidance to organisations about how to achieve effective safeguarding.
The Royal Commission envisaged the oversight of Child Safe Standards to occur in a way that does not impose an unnecessary regulatory burden, and that works collaboratively with existing sector regulators to capitalise on existing regulatory regimes.