Standard 6 – Suitable staff and volunteers

Standard 6

Displayed on screen: (Standard 6 - People working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.)

Jacinda de Witts, Deputy Secretary, Regulation, Risk, Integrity and Legal Division speaking to camera: A child safe organisation ensures there are policies in place to make sure that staff working with children are appropriately skilled and vetted. This includes ensuring that recruitment, screening, induction and other human resource practices that create a culture of child safety and wellbeing are in place and are viewed with importance by the organisation as a whole. Ongoing training, supervision and regular performance reviews will help to ensure policies and practices are followed and enable staff to have the skills to keep children safe.

Voice Over (and displayed on screen): To comply with Standard 6 your organisation must meet the following four minimum requirements: 

• Recruitment must include advertising, referee checks and staff and volunteer pre-employment screening, with emphasis on child safety and wellbeing. 
• Relevant staff and volunteers must have a current working with children check or equivalent background checks. 
• All staff and volunteers undergo an appropriate induction and are aware of their responsibilities to children, including record keeping, information sharing and reporting obligations. 
• Ongoing supervision and people management is focused on child safety and wellbeing.

Jacinda de Witts, Deputy Secretary, Regulation, Risk, Integrity and Legal Division speaking to camera: To know if your organisation is meeting Standard 6, ask yourself these questions: 

• How do your recruitment processes focus on child safety?
• How does your induction process help staff understand their individual and organisational child safety obligations?
• How do you supervise, train and support staff to encourage child safe practices?
• And do all staff have relevant Working With Children Checks, criminal history and reference checks?

Voice Over (and displayed on screen): For more information on Child Safe Standards visit the department’s website.