As most of you will know, Victoria has specific Child Safe Legislation which protects children from harm by creating safe spaces and safe environments for children. The Victorian Child Safe Standards apply to all sporting organisations that operate and provide sporting services to children and young people within Victoria.
Organisations that provide a service to children, including sporting organisations, are legally required to comply with the Standards which came into effect on 1 July 2022. The Standards outline minimum requirements and actions organisations must take to keep children and young people safe from all forms of abuse.
Archery Victoria and our Member Clubs were required to comply with the earlier legislation and your club should already have a Child Safe Policy in place. Archery Victoria has modified the AV Child Safe Policy to cover the new standards.
What Are The Standards?
1. Organisations establish a culturally safe environment in which the diverse and unique identities and experiences of Aboriginal children and young people are respected and valued.
2. Child safety and wellbeing is embedded in organisational leadership, governance and culture.
3. Children and young people are empowered about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously.
4. Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing.
5. Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.
6. People working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.
7. Processes for complaints and concerns are child focused.
8. Staff and volunteers are equipped with the knowledge, skills and awareness to keep children and young people safe through ongoing education and training.
9. Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.
10. Implementation of the Child Safe Standards is regularly reviewed and improved.
11. Policies and procedures document how the organisation is safe for children and young people.
Those of you who are familiar with the original legislation will note that the number of standards has increased. One of the aspects of the new standards and legislation is that we, AV and Members Clubs, must ensure that training is available to our volunteers and members and that we have Child Safe Action Plans in place where needed.
The Victorian Government funded VICSPORT and a number of other partners to make our lives easier and simpler and specifically to ensure that training and resources are readily available to us all. This work has now been completed and considerable resources are available to us. Resources can be sourced direct from the VICSPORT website at Child Safe Sport — Vicsport. Please note that AV is a member of VICSPORT. If you have any queries in relation to the resources or any other Child Safe matter, please come through AV first rather than go direct to VICSPORT. This will ensure that we can consolidate answers and provide them to all if needed and can use our networks to get the best possible outcome for our clubs.
This topic is complex and may be confusing for many, so we want to keep it as simple as possible and allow clubs to move at their own pace to work their way through this. We are suggesting your club start with the following:
1. If you have not already done so, appoint a Child Safe Officer or someone who will take primary responsibility for this aspect of running your club. It can be someone appointed to your committee specifically for this purpose or it could be a secondary appointment for someone already on the committee. Like all committee members, the person responsible for child safety at the club will need to have a Working with Children Check. They should also be able to relate well to children. This person should be carefully chosen and there are some guidelines at the above link that will help you.
2. Make Child Safe a standard Agenda item at your meetings. This will ensure that it doesn’t get forgotten and the larger committee will be able to keep an eye on your progress.
3. Review your Child Safe Policy and update as needed. (Please note that AV will provide a review service for your draft policies should you need this assistance.) The new AV Child Safe Policy can be found here 0505-Archery-Victoria-Child-Safe-Policy-2022 and can be used for guidance.
4. All committee members, coaches, judges (National Judges, National Judge Candidates and Event Judges) and other volunteers should undertake the online training in the standards. These have been designed specifically for sports. There are eleven modules for the eleven standards. Attached is some information which gives you an outline of the standards so you can get a flavour for them. We suggest you provide this overview to those who will be completing the training so they come to the training with a little bit of familiarity. The modules do not have to be done all at once. As a club you might decide to get your committee and volunteers to do one of the modules and then discuss this module (at a committee meeting or separate meeting) – training modules can be found here: etrainu – LMS | custom eLearning
