Ensuring that children and young people with disability are safe has presented challenges for organisations both large and small, across Australia. Staff, volunteers and employers alike, have struggled to deliver responses that guarantee safety and protection against harm. 

Effectively responding to these challenges—while ensuring that organisational structures, systems and procedures support all children and young people with disability to safely engage—requires the most attentive development of programs and practices. 

The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (endorsed by members of the Council of Australian Governments in 2019) which aim to provide a nationally consistent approach to creating organisational cultures that foster child safety and wellbeing, is a laudable first step. The subsequent challenge is to implement the principles in a way that best supports all children and young people, including those with disability. 

To address the challenge of implementing the principles, CYDA conducted consultations with a broad range of stakeholders to inform the development of resources to support this important next step. The consultations (many facilitated by young people with disability), sought the views of experts (including people with lived experience) to develop a proposal for the purpose and general content of resources that will support organisations to better keep children and young people with disability safe and supported. 

You can download our full proposal using the buttons above.