Unpacking the Universal Principle – Cultural Safety in the Child Safe Standards

Does your business or organisation work with children, or provide services or spaces for them? If so, you need to be getting ready for Queensland’s new child safeguarding law (the Child Safe Organisation Act 2024) which comes into effect, starting from 1 October 2025.

Under this new law, your business or organisation will need to meet 10 Child Safe Standards and provide a culturally safe environment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—which in the law is known as the Universal Principle and is embedded across all 10 standards.

You will need to effectively introduce these Standards to be considered child safe.

What is the Universal Principle?

The Universal Principle is about creating environments that make Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel culturally safe, which broadly means welcome, safe, valued, included and respected.

In culturally safe organisations:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people define cultural safety and how it is measured
• workers develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to recognise and address biases and stereotypes, and
• systems are transformed so they work better for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

What young people said

We asked young people from Queensland about the Standards. This is what Nooria said:

“The phrase cultural safety goes beyond awareness and sensitivity. To me, it means enriching cultural respect, values and understanding in an environment. It is beyond just tolerating, but it is celebrating and embracing. It goes beyond representation. To be culturally safe, I’d have no fear of judgement or discrimination. I know I’m culturally safe when my perspective and circumstances are reflected in policies, services and interactions.”

Why is it important?

Children and young people have a right to practice culture. We know a strong connection to culture is a protective factor for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and a key way to ensure safety and wellbeing.

If a business or organisation isn’t culturally safe, it’s not child safe.

What does it mean for organisations?

Businesses and organisations are responsible for enabling culturally safety. How cultural safety looks in your business or organisation will depend on how you operate and engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

There’s no one-size-fits all approach, but generally speaking, culturally safe environments have some things in common:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel welcome, valued, safe, included and respected
• leaders incorporate cultural safety in daily operations
• people and policies prevent and address racism, discrimination, biases and stereotypes
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people inform and guide actions needed to deliver cultural safety, without being expected to carry the responsibility
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are meaningfully involved in the decisions that affect them
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people define and measure cultural safety.

Things you can do now

Every business or organisation will be at a different stage of developing its attitudes, knowledge and capability in being culturally safe.

Start by reflecting on where you are and what you need to do to become culturally safe. You can do this by:

• reflecting on the cultural safety indicators in our Guidelines for implementing the Universal Principle and Child Safe Standards in Queensland and identifying where you need to take action
• asking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families who you work with or for about their views on cultural safety in your business or organisation
• actioning feedback you receive to strengthen cultural safety in your business or organisation
• ask your staff about what they need to strengthen their capability to create a culturally safe environment.

Additional resources

Watch this nine-minute video developed by the National Office of Child Safety which explores cultural safety within each of the 10 Child Safe Standards. You can use this for staff and volunteer training.

For more information about the new law, visit our Child safe webpage.