South Australian Child Safe/Child Safeguarding Program Update July 2021

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South Australian Child Safe/Child Safeguarding Program Update July 2021

30/07/21

Chapter 8 of the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017 (SA) (Safety Act) requires certain organisations, including non-government schools, to provide a child safe environment.

Under section 114 of the Safety Act, these organisations must lodge a child safe environments compliance statement with the Department of Human Services (DHS) as soon as reasonably practicable after preparing, adopting, varying or substituting the organisation’s policies and procedures for ensuring a child safe environment.

Section 115 of the Safety Act requires that these policies and procedures must be reviewed every five years, at a minimum. Together, these requirements mean that non-government schools must:

lodge an initial child safe environments statement when they first prepare or adopt their child safe policies and procedures
review these policies and procedures at least every five years
lodge an additional child safe environments compliance statement every time their policies or procedures are varied or substituted, whether as a result of their internal review cycle (whether every five years or more frequently), of legislative change, or otherwise.