Child Safe Standards

VICTORIAN CHILD SAFE STANDARDS

Child Safe Standard 9

Child safety in physical and online environments

Ensure that physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children, young people and students to be harmed.

Clonard College staff continue to work diligently to ensure all the Child Safe Standards are actioned, with a focus on continuous review and improvement. For example we:

Promote a culture of online and physical safety for all students

• Supervise students properly in all settings, including the playground, excursions and camps.
• Give particular attention to the safety, diverse needs and vulnerabilities of students in each activity or setting. Consider whether there are any barriers that might prevent students from raising concerns.
• Inform students and their families about appropriate use of the school’s technology, safety tools, and how to seek help and report concerns, including cyberbullying and online grooming.
• Keep up to date with current online safety issues and expert information from specialist government and non-government bodies, including the Office of the eSafety Commissioner and eSmart Schools.
• Promote activities in the school community that connect schools and communities, and raise awareness to prevent bullying and violence (e.g. National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence).
• Create a respectful, sensitive and safe environment for people who may be experiencing family violence, as required of schools under MARAM Responsibility 1, enabling a child or young person to feel comfortable to talk about their experiences and seek support.

Manage risk in physical spaces

• Identify and document the school’s child safety risks in the school’s risk register or equivalent.
• Consider the range of school environments and the nature of physical spaces, including onsite buildings and grounds, classrooms, corridors, and pick-up and drop-off areas.
• Consider off-site physical environments for student use and, where reasonably possible, inspect these sites and venues for events, excursions, camps and international student accommodation ahead of time.
• Consider risks arising from child-to-child and adult-to-child interactions in physical and online spaces.
• Keep records of risk management activities, including risk assessments for camps and excursions.
• Provide training and refresher training to staff and volunteers on risk management policies and procedures.

Supervise appropriately

• Be aware of risks posed by dark spaces, stairwells, private spaces and corners in school environments, and develop strategies to address these risks.
• ​Inform students about spaces that are off-limits, including out-of-bounds areas, storerooms and staffrooms.
• Meet the minimum ratios of staff and volunteers to students for different types of activities (see Excursions, Camps and Travel Policy)
• Keep records of any court orders in place regarding access or intervention orders, and communicate to staff who can collect students in these circumstances.
• Use observation aids when appropriate, such as observation windows, concave mirrors and CCTV, and consider the balance between appropriate visibility and respecting staff and students’ privacy.
• Undertake works to improve lighting in poorly lit areas.
• Let students know how to raise concerns and where to go if they need help.
• Organise professional learning to discuss risk and harm prevention and hazard awareness with staff, volunteers and school council members.
• Keep records of incidents that occur, including accidents and medical events.
• Review incidents against policies and procedures, including seeking student feedback on how incidents were handled and how safe they felt, and make improvements as needed.

Promote student safety online

• Give students opportunities to learn, play, create, entertain, make new friends and stay connected.
• Facilitate age-appropriate ways for students to use the internet and social media through Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships  and eSafety Commissioner.
• Inform students about online safety risks, including:
  • cyberbullying/trolling
  • invasion of privacy or digital surveillance
  • inappropriate sharing of images
  • phishing, harvesting of personal information or data theft
  • identity theft
  • malevolent software (malware)
  • offensive images and messages
  • age-inappropriate online content
  • impersonation/catfishing/deep fakes
  • grooming.
• Outline acceptable use of personal devices for students.
• Use filtering software on school-based devices.
• Encourage parents to use parental controls on personal devices.
• Advise students on how they can seek help from a trusted adult if they are exposed to inappropriate imagery or content that upsets them.
• Monitor online activity and respond to breaches of the online policies and procedures with appropriate consequences.