Policy and Practice in Focus: An ECEC Child Safe Podcast Miniseries

Lisa Warburton is a family day care educator and children's advocate from Sydney, with more than 2 decades of professional experience in early childhood education. Her parenting book will be released next year.

Angie Camilleri is an education leader at a long day care service. She has worked in the early childhood education and care sector for 15 years. She holds a bachelor's degree in early childhood education and a master's degree in education (primary).

Rachel Norman is a Child Safe Officer at the Office of the Children's Guardian. She has a master's degree in disability policy and practice, and has worked with the early childhood education and care sector for 3 years. Her focus is on educating service providers about the risks of abuse in organisations.

Bravehearts - https://bravehearts.org.au/

Child Safe Self-Assessment - https://cssa.ocg.nsw.gov.au

Early Childhood Australia Learning Hub - https://learninghub.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/

Educate2Empower - https://e2epublishing.info/

eSafety: Resources for parents - https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents

Office of the Children’s Guardian resources - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/our-resources 

Teeny Tiny Stevies - 'Boss of My Own Body' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLpjNJnXZlU

If you are looking for support on how to improve your child safe practices, or to speak to a child safe officer, contact childsafe@ocg.nsw.gov.au.

Have a concern or a complaint about a child-related organisation? Contact us on (02) 8219 3600 or through our form - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/contact-us 

Katey Street

Hello and welcome to this podcast from the Office of the Children's Guardian, funded by the NSW Department of Education under its Safety and Quality Practice program. Today we'll be looking at how both national learning frameworks that cover quality program delivery in early childhood and school aged care settings: Being, Belonging and Becoming and My Time, Our Place have been recently updated to promote empowerment opportunities through voice and choice and how this links to the NSW Child Safe Scheme. Since 2012, there have been 2 national approved learning frameworks available under the National Quality Framework for early education and school aged care, and both of these were refreshed in 2023 following a partnership and assessment process with Macquarie University on behalf of all Australian governments. The NSW Government introduced the Child Safe Scheme and the ten Child Safe Standards in February 2022 to as a framework for organisations to keep children safer. Standard 2 places a particular importance on empowering children, which fits well with the pedagogy of child safe learning in the National Quality Framework and the values of modern educators. We've got a great panel today to explore what the updates in the frameworks mean for early childhood education and care organisations and educators.

Our guests today are Lisa Warburton, who is an innovative family day care educator and children's advocate from Sydney. Her career spans more than 2 decades in early childhood education across the globe, while her breadth of experience as a parent and as a former management consultant fuels her passion in providing all children with the strongest possible starts in life.

Angie Camilleri has worked in the early childhood sector for 15 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education and a master’s degree in primary education.

Rachel Norman from the Office of the Children's Guardian has a master’s degree in disability policy and practice. She worked with the early childhood education and care sector for 3 years and is passionate about educating service providers about the risks of abuse in organisations.

So we're here today, we're talking about voice and choice in the early years curriculum and Lisa, I'm going to come to you first, and I want to ask you, how do young children benefit from being empowered in early years settings?

Lisa Warburton

Well, in my experience, they've really benefitted from just being able to have input in all of the decisions that they make. They have so little autonomy generally in their lives. So throughout my day, I can incorporate their opinions on a whole myriad of things and quite quickly it just really enables that sense of belonging and trust…

Katey

Which is what the curriculum is all about, isn't it, in early years?

Lisa

Absolutely.

Katey

Yeah, that's amazing, and obviously a lot of fantastic early years educators will do this naturally, but we're going to dig into a little bit more across the episode. So my next question is we talk about children being active participants in their learning quite a lot, but what does active participation actually look like?

Lisa

So for me it can range from anything as small as choosing the colour paint that they make a picture for mum or dad with and to really quite big topic, so I've had children talk to me about their cultural backgrounds and tell me something that doesn't quite make sense to them and wanting to know more about it. So then we'll go on a journey of discovery together, so it really can come from all different areas, and just as a very topical example at the moment, we've been looking at what do we do for Christmas gifts for families? And at one point I did have a little look around the round Facebook for ideas. Actually, then I stopped myself and I just spoke to them all individually and asked them what they would like to do, and they all came back with something really simple and beautiful, so that's what we work with.

Katey

That's gorgeous, isn't it? And you often find that children come up with much better ideas than we do. Angie, you probably find that in a long daycare setting, child centred-learning has always been a huge part.

Angie Camilleri

Definitely, yes, definitely. I think, too, like, you know, looking at long daycare settings, majority of us, the largest services are working with 70, 80 children in a day. So, you know, there's lots of voices happening every day, especially in our older rooms, that they give us the ideas for the entire day, like just listening to their conversations, we're able to pick out and see what things that we can extend on and help them and help them learn and develop.

Katey

Right. So when you walk into a classroom in your particular setting, what kinds of evidence are you looking at to know that child centred-learning is actually occurring?

Angie

So each of my learning rooms, we all have our we call them our big books, so that's a large A3 visual art sized diary. And every day the teachers will actually record the voices, so they might hear a child say something about what they're doing at home that could not be necessarily in a conversation with them, could be hearing children talking amongst themselves, and they'll record that down, and then those ideas then inform their program. So that happens in all of the rooms, but then there's also like, every morning the children help set up the room, so you often go in and see them going in and out of the school rooms and getting the art and stuff and ready and just sitting down, having conversations with their teachers, asking them about like what they would like to do for the day and things like that. When they go outside, they help set up. So majority of the day it's them facilitating what they'd like to do.

Katey

So how is children's engagement actually been impacted by that kind of practice? What have you noticed?

Lisa

Yeah, yeah, it's quite huge actually. Children that have come from other services or just have shared care across other services, I find they respond really well, so just having input all the time so they can, they can give suggestions. If I lay out activities, they can be moved around. I have no barriers to that. I'm fortunate I can enable that to happen, and again, we can set up activities outside and they can take full ownership. So as long as I've given them certain kinds of aspects to moving around in large areas. If I trust them, they will create spaces, huge obstacle courses and they will remember what we've learned and they will build things around what they know to be safe.

Katey

So what I'm hearing here is that it isn't just about taking children's voices and inputting them into the planning cycle. It's really a focus on that relationship that you have with the child and the relationship the child has with you. Would you say that that's accurate?

Angie

Yeah, definitely, and I think too, going off what you were saying, Lisa, about like having that relationship with the smaller group, I definitely agree because I look within our services and, you know, if I look at my senior preschool and we've got 20 children in there and you're always going to have those select few children that love to voice what they want to do and then you've got those that kind of sit back a little bit, so what we're actually working on at the moment, we've just done some training around it, is looking at those children that kind of go under the radar and trying to work on how we can incorporate their voices in, because they often do get missed because they just prefer to sit back and let everyone else talk, or you've got those children that just want to talk all the time, so we’re really working on how do we get all of our voices heard, which is a bit difficult when looking at twenty children who have all different personalities, but we’re working on it.

Katey

Angie, can you give me an example of, or maybe some tips even for educators that are really trying to draw out ideas from children that might be under the radar.

Angie

So to start with, to kind of identify those children, we all sat down and on a piece of paper I got all the educators to write down off the top of their head a student, I think of it in their room. So they are the children that are there all the time at the forefront of our minds because, you know, and then it was, okay, now think who are the next, say, 10? Okay. These children, you know, they talk to us and they come to us, but maybe not so much. And then it was like, who's left? And then it was like, wow, okay, those children don't really come to us. We have relationships, but it's not as strong as these ones. So it was things of just being more aware then of those children and even talking more with their families. We found even just by making sure that when they're doing activities at the table, on the floor, or outside, trying to spend more time with them and just converse a lot more to try and get their ideas and their input. And then we find once they start to get more confidence in sharing that, then during all our group times and transition times, they are more happy to share their voice, their voices and their opinions and things like that in regards to what they like to do for the day.

Katey

Yeah, so that really goes back again to having those relationships, maintaining strong relationships, trusting relationships with family, children and the educators. That's really cool. Thank you for that. Rachel, I might come to you here to ask about the significance that's been put on empowering children in the child safe legislation. Can you take us through why empowering children is integral to keeping them safe?

Rachel Norman

Well, firstly, that significance of embedding that in legislation was incredible and I wish there was a little bit more noise in the media about it because it is a really significant change that, to my knowledge, hasn't been reflected in legislation before. So it's the first time where children's rights in terms of organisations should be listening to their voice and also including children in that process of decision making if it is going to impact on them.

So now services like early childhood are obligated to make sure this is part of that practice. So for early childhood, it's always been children's rights have always been reflected in your frameworks. However, this shift in legislation means that it is something that now it's an obligation. So that's the main feature of the legislation. That's a big shift for organisations.

So in the Royal Commission that taught us that children are more likely to disclose harm or abuse to adults they trust and feel safe with, and the other thing that's quite significant that we learned is that children, particularly younger children, are more likely to make disclosures of harm and abuse in a piecemeal fashion. So knowing your children quite well, which is what you were talking about before, and you say knowing them really well and listening to them is really important. So you would pick up on potential piecemeal allegations or concerns children might have. So I suppose shifting that or relating that back to safety now listening to children is obviously integral to create that child safe culture in your organisation. So I think we've heard quite well from Lisa and Angie here that educators already have an incredible ability to connect with children, build a rapport with children… You're already listening to children to embed their interest and skills into your programming. The child safe lens means we're asking you to extend your current practice to think about how you're empowering children with their safety. So a lot of educators will already be talking about safety around road safety, stranger danger.

What we're asking you to do is to shift that skill you have around having conversations in age-appropriate ways about their personal safety and those protective behaviours. So with the skill you already have those activities that you might engage children in around conversations about who they feel safe with, where they feel safe in your environment, are really important for you to understand how safe your environment is, because kids feel and perceive things differently to adults. So having those conversations with children informs you and it strengthens how safe your children are in your environment when you have a good understanding of how children feel or where they feel safe because, as I think Lisa said, when you have individual conversations with children, you glean different things from them. So it's really important, as Angie was saying, even the quieter children, you know, if a quieter child's more attached to one educator honouring that and going, okay, this educator is going to have that conversation with them, not me, because they're more likely to get that information from the child. So with that information, one, you making it safer as educators, you're on the front line you've got that information, and then it's about sharing it with your team. And that information you have strengthens your risk management plan and your strategy. So your child safe practices can shift to reflect how children feel, where they feel safe, and improve the safety aspects of caring for children in your environment. The other benefit of, once you've shared that with your broader team, you can also then go update your policies and procedures. So then that practice is actually embedded across all aspects, particularly for and a long daycare or preschool. So it's spread across all the other rooms, so it's known to everyone and once it's in policy, hopefully that translates into practice across all staff members and educators as well.

Katey

So what I'm really hearing here is there's a cycle between making those respectful relationships between educators and children, being able to educate them on their safety strategies, hearing their feedback for it, and then feeding that back into the relationships and keeping those cycles going and helping them be safer and get stronger.

Rachel

Absolutely, and so often what we we've found in research is the feedback loop, sometimes that chain that you've just described, once we get the feedback, children might tell us it's that point in time where organisations need to actually respond. So sometimes we might collect all this information from children and we sit on it, but then we don't act on it. And then children don't see that we've listened and responded. And that's a really, and again I think educators do do that well in this sector, obviously, there's a lot of other sectors in the scheme that might not have that strong foundational relationship like educators do. But that's a common theme, I suppose, where you've got to follow through. It's the follow through that's really important in that, in that cycle that you described.

Katey

Yeah, fantastic, I love that. And I'm very passionate about bringing out resilience in children and teaching them about how to embrace their own resilience and I know that you guys are very similarly passionate about that. So in that vein, Angie, I wanted to ask you and focus on specifically Learning Outcome 3 of the EYLF, if there's been a huge update that includes personal safety strategies, which links really, really well to the child safe standards there.

So I want to ask you, what does it look like in a long daycare context when we're supporting children to develop personal safety strategies?

Angie

I think we're looking at it through a long daycare context, and as I mentioned before, like working with a large number of children. So though I also look at it too is, you know, if I look at we have 110 children that utilise our service, that's 110 children and families that we can impact with our knowledge and education around those personal strategies and how they protect themselves and things like that. So, you know, especially when I look at like my my, my 3-to-6 year old rooms, like those age ranges, they're they have more voice, they’ve got these verbal skills. So it's really like it would be such an injustice if we didn't emphasise on personal safety. You know, these include looking at, you know, strategies with age-appropriate curriculum choices, asking them questions like we don't throw it in their face, but like, it's kind of like, you know, when we have discussions and things like that. And obviously looking at the age ranges, there are obviously more conversations happening because of them becoming more aware of their body themselves and that somebody then bringing those conversations, using resources to then have a chat about, you know, you know, what things look at what is looked like and what our rights are with our bodies and how we can communicate that to others. And then all these things we can share with our families because it's quite important that they also know how to educate their children away from the service.

Katey

Definitely. And we know that what we teach within the classroom has a huge impact on what happens at home. Right? You must see that all the time.

Angie

Oh yeah, especially like you might have a family coming in or a mum drop off and they'll be like, you're learning about such and such. They've talking about it at home or in the car and tell me all about it. And it's like, that's great. You know, I've had families come in and say to me, my child's actually taught me something that you guys are doing. Like, I didn't know that. And I'm like, wow. And they're actually listening to me and taking it home.

Katey

That's great. Yeah, that's great, societal change, it starts in the classroom.

Angie

Definitely, Definitely.

Katey

So what kind of behaviour changes have you seen within children as a direct consequence of teaching personal safety strategies?

Angie

It's really empowered them to understand their own bodies and they're aware of their rights as well. So these oftentimes they're, you know, they might be in the bathroom and like we supervise in the bathroom, there'll be 2 or 3 children in there and you'll hear them have conversations around them being in the bathroom. But what they've learned from what we've been saying and things like that, not only that, they might come straight to us as well and be like, you know, I'm uncomfortable about this. And they'll tell us, that confidence now to, to tell us and be like, I didn't like that old things like dynamic and work together on, you know, how can we support the child and things like that.

Katey

Yeah. Perfect. Lisa, I might throw you a question here from your experience as an educator, is personal safety strategies something that should have been in the curriculum a long time ago?

Lisa

Yeah, absolutely, and I, I really try to build these, model these really great relationships, respectful relationships very early. So I have a broad range of ages that I might have at any one time. So they could be babies and children who are non-verbal, so it's about looking up all the size of how somebody is feeling. First, I get the children to listen to their bodies, how are they feeling? And I kind of start that with maybe some risky play which where they're having to listening. Do I feel I'm capable of doing this? How am I feeling? And they interpret those feelings within themselves and make a decision. Is it safe? Should I proceed? Should I not proceed? And they can listen and they can choose for themselves – do they participate or not? So it will start there really in kind of listening to themselves. And then once they recognise those feelings of uncertainty, they can apply those to relationships. So then they'll start, you know, we deal with people and there are different people in the world and some are very tactile and some are not. And we see that in children all the time, so you have a real hugger in the group, perhaps, and somebody who just does not like to be touched at all. So this is a great opportunity for modelling. There'll be a hugger and they'll approach someone who doesn't want to be hubs. So it's about then the hugger looking at the child who they approaching. Are they happy to be approached? What's their body language look like? What's their face doing? If you give a hug? Are they stiff in that hug? They join that up. So it's about looking at that and asking them during the process is are they enjoying that? Is everyone happy? Is everyone comfortable? It's just a hug. But it says so much more about relationships in society so we can start there. And for the child that's receiving the hug, it's about teaching them. It's okay to say no if you don't win the hug now, and I will model it in the classroom because I don't always want to be hugged. I can be really hot. There could be some bodily substance somewhere that nobody wants to come into contact with. I have to say no sometimes. And so I model that and it just teaches children it's okay to say no to anyone.

Katey

Yeah, that's a really great point. And I think it's important to note here that Voice and Choice isn't about, isn't just about personal voice and choice. It's about respecting other people's voice and choice. And we can teach that from really, really young ages. We've touched a little bit on there on, you know, some of the ways to kind of start those conversations and start supporting children to express their voice and choice, but can you give us any specific examples of promotion of voice and choice in both early years and outside school hours care that you've been particularly impressed by through your work?

Rachel

Yeah, so, I might just jump into before and after school care. I think that is a really interesting and in a lot of ways challenging service talk because you're working with children across a very broad age range. So you've got from 6 right up until - apparently by 12 kids really don’t want to be there, but you've got that really big age range. And the other thing that's a bit challenging about before and after school care and vacation care is, usually it's in a school setting or a hall, which is a very big physical space for educators to work in and support children in. So some really lovely practices that I’ve seen there is where educators, again, I'm linking this back to relationships. So when educators have really good relationships with the children and they're teaching children while you're here, you have the right to be safe, messages that are obviously delivered in an age-appropriate way, but they have the right to be safe, and then having those conversations with children within those different age groups because those conversations will look different.

But just an example, your 6-year-olds, for example, might not feel that safe going to the toilet block because they might be older kids in there. That could be intimidating, particularly if they've just started school. It could even be a Year One student that doesn't feel safe going to the toilet because maybe they've experienced bullying while they're at school. So that information's really important for educators tonight to facilitate what child safe practices do we need to implement to make sure these group of children feel safe going to the bathroom? And the other really critical thing when if an educator has information like that in that service, stop sharing that with the school, because I suppose keeping children safe is a shared responsibility. It's never just on you. And I think sharing that if you have a good relationship with the school is really important because that might be an issue that the school haven't identified. So then if we look at maybe the older children, that older age group are more likely to be online. We were talking earlier about all the different platforms that kids are on these days, so possibly older children might, if you had that safety conversation with them of where are you feeling safe? Who are you feeling safe with? Those older children might identify online. They're not feeling safe. So we know that, again, bullying can happen online. We know that online children can be accidentally or unintentionally exposed to things like pornography or graphic content that they haven't looked for maybe. Or even if they have looked for it, they could be quite shocked by what they've found. So what are the sort of safeguards you're putting in place around those on online spaces where kids are using their personal devices, not just school devices, when they're before and after school care.

Katey

But I want to ask you Rachel, what happens if children's voices aren't heard in those situations?

Rachel

Well, I suppose if children's voices aren't heard in those situations, you're exposing the children to risk. Sorry if you haven't, say, accounted for safety in the toilet block, which is we actually know from statistics that's actually a high-risk area. So if you haven't accounted for managing risk in the toilet blocks because peer to peer harm happens. So if you haven't accounted for that, children will be harmed while they're under your care. So that's why it's so important to have these conversations and embed the feedback you're getting from children into your risk management, planning your child safe practices. It improves your practice as educators and it makes your service safer and kids will feel safer and want to come. Because if children aren't feeling safe, they'll most likely, and research shows that they'll be telling their parents they don't want to come. They'll tell their parents, I don't feel safe.

Katey

Yeah, yeah. Perfect. From an OCG perspective, what kinds of things would you be looking for that shows an early years or an outside school hours care setting values and promotes Voice and Choice?

Rachel

So if I was to be going into services, which I have visited a lot of services, I think going to the service face-to-face does tell me a lot more than just having a conversation on the phone. So stepping into a service, whether it's family day care before and after school care or vacation care or long daycare or preschool, they're all different.

But the one thing that I will look for is how are the educators interacting with the children? What does that look like? If you've got a child who might be having a challenging moment or a meltdown, how’s that educator responding, and how does the team support that situation as well? So what teamwork is happening to make sure that child supported and heard? Because usually when a child is having one of those moments, they are distressed or trying to communicate something and it's about how are you responding to that and respecting that. And that goes across age ranges. So, you know, you could have a 2-year-old that might not be toilet trained yet because that's again on a spectrum having, you know, absolute refusal to change their nappy, for example, how does that educator go about having that conversation with the child because you want to promote bodily integrity, consent, all those things that do, the foundations your putting through your program to make sure all children understand that, how do they navigate that? So a good example of that particular example, if the child didn't want their nappy changed navigating that people do it in different ways. But you know, it can be saying, and it depends on their language abilities as well, but it can be. All right, I'll give you another minute. I'll come back and check another strategy. Might be all right. I might know who do you want to change your nappy and I might pick their favourite educate or it could be you want a toy? You want to hold a toy while we do it? And it's about working with them, not trying to push them to do something they don't want to do.

Similar with older age groups. If you've got, you know, a child in your preschool setting that really doesn't want to engage or do something, how can you include them in a way where they they're comfortable, they're respecting their choice around what they participate in. And I have seen that with children, a service out in western Sydney, a child on the spectrum would sometimes experience some sensory overload. They'd non-verbally indicate they'd want to go outside. They were lucky enough that they had an environment where they could open up the doors and the child could go out to reregulate onto the deck area, and then they could come back in and join. So it was never about forcing that child to, ‘No, sit down, it’s at Circle Time. We're going to go through the days of the week and what the weather's like’, and it was never forcing the child into that sort of situation. So they’re the sort of practices I'd want to say. And coming back to what I said earlier, and this relates back to that, that obligation and mandate so ah, I would love to see services be able to tell me how they've included children's voice perspectives and decision making in their programming in relation to safety. So if a service could say to me, look, we did a bit of an activity with children and children in say, this age group identified, they didn't feel safe in this particular area. So we reviewed it and we've remodelled that room to open it up, for example. So we've adjusted our space to respond to that child's concerns. The other thing is, yeah, changing your risk management like, so if kids if people go out on excursions, for example, having a conversation with kids about, is anyone worried about, you know, we're going to be out on the road or we catching public transport. So unpacking that and if you do have individual children expressed concern about that, that's reflected in your risk management plan before you go out on the excursion, for example. So it's really about, it should be reflective, not just doing your day to day practice but in your written documentation. So services ideally should be able to demonstrate that they're hearing children's voices empowering children. Children are part of the decision-making process in that service in a number of different ways.

Katey

Okay. So we're going to start to wrap it up, but before we finish, I want to talk about the kinds of support that are available resources that you guys have found helpful in your day to day practice, things that the OCG can provide or any other resources that come from that kind of government space. Angie, I might start with you. Any particular resources that you've used to educate yourself and the team around Voice and Choice, anything that you use for the children that's particularly helpful?

Angie

Yeah, of course. So we have our early childhood Australia Learning Hub, we have the e-safety modules with all our team, make sure we are up to date with them. We started, well, I started with my room coordinator team with the Child Safe Self-Assessment, which from there we were able to identify which standards we need some support on and things. Then from there we actually incorporated that into our room coordinator weekly meeting. So I meet with them once a week, with my leadership team, and from there we're able to actually discuss the standards, which is one per month and maybe to unpack it, and then it goes back to our team and then it incorporated to our curriculum and collaborative reflections as well. That's more for the educators side of it. And then obviously within the firm, we've utilised things from the Office of the Children's Guardian, we've utilised the Bravehearts organisation with resources from there and then using like a lot of forms of literacy such as books and music with the children, which has helped them in an appropriate way to understand more about consent and protective behaviours.

Lisa

I'm just from a family day care perspective. We we have our schemes to share lots of amazing information with us. They will reach out to the Office of the Children’s Guardian, various resources that they will drop down to us in many different forms. So it could just be bite sized little chunks, areas of focus each month that we can use every day. But I think the big thing for me and family day care is you do work in isolation, so it can be hard to understand what best practice is. If we talk about the nappy issue, you can kind of hear about that. And they could be a family day care educator listening to this now going, Well, how does that work? Because I know that child will say no. It's a real practical ideas of how to get through that. So, for instance, I would give a timeframe. Okay, you're not finished changing. We're going to set a timer for 5 minutes and you tell me within that time when you'd like it changed. They can come to me and other real strategies like that. So for me I would collaborate online with our families, educators or just educators generally. And so that's a constant evolving learning experience for me. And I will reflect on everything I do by someone hearing from other educators. So that's where I make really fast progress in my daily practice. I'd say.

Rachel

And I think that collaboration with educators is a really crucial learning point because some services on this child's safe journey started 3 years ago and some are only just starting now. So I think sharing experience and skills is really important. I did visit one Wagga service where they had a new grad fresh out of uni, didn't know about any protective behaviour resources. She built a protective behaviour program for her service, for the children that was relevant for the, that community that she served, which was incredible. So she, fresh out of uni, obviously had all the literature that she could build it herself, and she did it beautifully with, you know, a letter home to the parents explaining what they were doing before they did it, so everyone was on board. And again, you had that generalisation. So you can actually build things yourself.

However, there are a lot of resources out there that you can use. So the OCG runs the SAFE Series, which is for children nought to 6. So that's a free resource. So you just have to go to the training that the OCG runs and then you'll receive the books and a guide on how to use it. A relatively new thing they've done is there's now a recording for SAFE Series information session for parents and carers. So if you do plan on running the SAFE Series at your service and you want to update parents on, well, this is what we're doing and this is what it is and this is why we're doing it, you can direct them to that recording at the OCG so parents can listen to that. The other thing we have that's a fantastic resource is our empowerment and participation guide. So if you're new to this space and your thinking, all right, podcast has got me thinking about it, but I have no idea where to start, if you flip to the back of the empowerment chord, there's these beautiful tables for different age ranges on how to tailor empowerment and participation. And I think that will be a really helpful starting point for people who aren't really sure or confident on what we're talking about just yet. A few other things that I suppose I've found and I think are really useful are that it's, again, it's free on YouTube, use it safely, but there's the Teeny Tiny Stevies do this really beautiful song of ‘I'm the boss of my own body.’ They've got lots of other songs as well on there that help educators, I think, in different areas of development as well. But that's a really fun way. It's a safety message through song and dance, which is so beautiful for those younger kids because it's so catchy. Like it gets stuck in my head. I love it. The other thing is there's lots of resources like Educate to Empower is a website where there's lots of resources on there.

If there are resources that you do require to spend money on, for example, I'd suggest you go to your local library, look up what's relevant for your community because it might not actually fit with your service. So if you found some good resources and they do cost some money and you know, everyone's on a budget, everyone's got a budget, they're going to do a bit of research and buy resources. If you're going to invest in, you know, books on protective behaviours, because a lot of services say, I've done SAFE Series and I want to extend, I want to keep building. So that's when you might start looking outside of that and build on your resource base with children across the age ranges.

Katey

Angie, Lisa, Rachel, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I know this is going to be a really great episode and we've got lots of content in here for educators that are really looking for support on empowering children and promoting voice and choice. So thank you. Thank you. Rachel Thank you. Angie Thank you. Lisa Thanks, Katie. Katey Thank you to Angie, Lisa and Rachel. You can go online anytime to the Office of the Children’s Guardian website and access free tools and resources to help children be safe. Just click the Training and Resources tab. Do you want to know how well you're doing with applying the Standards? Why not try the Child Safe Self-Assessment? Managers and leaders, as well as employees or volunteers, can spend 30 minutes answering a few basic questions and then be sent a tailored response showing what they're doing well, any areas of improvement and how they can access resources to help them. Don't forget that the child safe self-assessment and all the OCG's training resources, including the SAFE Series Protective-behaviours Program for 2-to-6 year olds are completely free. My name Katey Street. Thanks for listening.

Rhonda Livingstone is ACECQA's National Education Leader. She leads the teams responsible for promoting and recognising quality educational programs, practices and policies and supporting the sector and authorised officers in implementing and administering the National Quality Framework.

Rhonda's extensive involvement in the National Quality Agenda reforms saw her contribute to the development of the National Quality Standard and its guide, assessment and rating tools and processes, the training and testing program for regulatory officers and the refresh of the nationally Approved Learning Frameworks.

ACECQA's Approved Learning Frameworks matching game - https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-11/Match%20the%20glossary%20terms%20game%20FINAL.pdf

ACECQA's Kahoot! quiz instructions - https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-02/Kahoot_Instructions_February2019_0.pdf

ACECQA's Guide to the National Quality Framework - https://www.acecqa.gov.au/national-quality-framework/guide-nqf

ACECQA's Starting Blocks - https://www.startingblocks.gov.au/

The Alannah & Madeline Foundation - https://www.alannahandmadeline.org.au/

Australian Human Rights Commission - https://humanrights.gov.au/

Australian Institute of Family Studies - https://aifs.gov.au/

Be You - https://beyou.edu.au/

Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child - https://digitalchild.org.au/

Child Safe Self-Assessment - https://cssa.ocg.nsw.gov.au

Department of Education: Educator resources - https://education.nsw.gov.au/early-childhood-education/working-in-early-childhood-education

Emerging Minds - https://emergingminds.com.au/

Guide to the National Quality Framework - https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/about/guide

Office of the Children’s Guardian resources - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/our-resources 

Reconciliation Australia resources - https://www.reconciliation.org.au/

If you are looking for support on how to improve your child safe practices, or to speak to a child safe officer, contact childsafe@ocg.nsw.gov.au.

Have a concern or a complaint about a child-related organisation? Contact us on (02) 8219 3600 or through our form - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/contact-us 

Katey Street

Hello and welcome to this podcast from the Office of the Children's Guardian, funded by the NSW Department of Education under its Safety and Quality Practice Program. The name of this episode is Voice and Choice, the importance of empowerment in early childhood and school -age care settings, and we've split it into 2 parts. This first part explores how both national learning frameworks that cover quality program delivery in early childhood and school age care settings – Being, Belonging and Becoming and My Time, Our Place – have recently been updated to promote empowerment opportunities through Voice and Choice and held these links to the NSW Child Safe scheme.

The second part released separately focuses on how the changes in the frameworks will directly affect early education and care policy and practice to promote voice and choice in early education and care settings.

Since 2012, there have been 2 national approved learning frameworks available under the National Quality Framework for Early Education and School Age Care and both of these were refreshed in 2023 following a partnership and assessment process with Macquarie University on behalf of all Australian governments. The NSW Government introduced the Child Safe Scheme and the 10 Child Safe Standards in February 2022 as a framework for organisations to keep children safer. Standard 2 places a particular importance on empowering children, which fits well with the pedagogy of child-centred learning in the National Quality Framework and the values of modern educators.

My guest is the perfect person to explain the updates in the frameworks and what these mean for the practice of the early education and care professionals.

Rhonda Livingstone is the National Educational Leader with the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority, or ACECQA, the name you’re probably more familiar with. Rhonda was a key player in the update of the early years learning framework. She also leads the teams responsible for promoting and recognizing quality educational programs, practices and policies and supports the sector and authorized officers to build a shared understanding of and commitment to implementing and administering the National Quality Framework and continuous quality improvement. Rhonda's extensive involvement in the national quality agenda reform saw her contribute to the development of the national quality standard and its guide, assessment and rating tools and processes, the training and testing program for authorised officers, and the refresh of the national approved learning framework.

So Rhonda, let's kick off with a very big question. Can you give me some background on how the curriculum update was developed?

Rhonda Livingstone

Firstly, I'd like to thank you, Katey, and the team from the Office of the Children's Guardian for inviting me to speak with you today. I'm really excited to have the opportunity to talk about the approved learning frameworks and in particular the importance of giving children a voice and choice in decisions that affect them. And in relation to the background to the curriculum updates, as you know, we have 2 nationally approved learning frameworks – Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework and My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care. Both frameworks outline principles and practices and learning outcomes that guide educational leaders and educators in their curriculum decision-making. And in 2021 Australia's 9 education ministers commissioned an update of the frameworks, and we know that the 2012 frameworks still held relevance as they proved integral to the success of the National Quality Framework for close to a decade, and throughout the stakeholder consultation it was determined that we needed to bring current and contemporary practices and research in line with the frameworks. So these documents just required an update. Katey So when you say contemporary practices, what kinds of things are you referring to here? Rhonda Just thinking about how the sector has grown and developed in the time since the NQF implementation in 2012 we just recognised that the approved learning frameworks needed are refreshed to bring them in line with what we were seeing in the sector. And a good example of that I think is embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and it's just so refreshing to see services and children, you know, acknowledging in genuine and authentic ways the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional custodians of the land. and that is one of the areas that the frameworks were strengthened in.

Katey

Now obviously everybody in early years is very passionate about bringing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, cultures, experiences into learning experiences for the children of Australia, so obviously there was a lot of consultation in terms of bringing that to life within the curriculum. How did the consultation process work there?

Rhonda

There was lots of consultation. A national consortium led by a partnership between Macquarie University, Queensland University of Technology, and Edith Cowan. They were engaged by a sequel on behalf of the 9 governments to deliver the 2021 National Quality Framework update. The project was delivered over 3 stages. So stages one and two included a literature review, surveys, and stakeholder feedback on the discussion paper. And these stages highlighted the strengths of the original learning frameworks and identified areas where they could be improved. So potential areas for improving the original frameworks were explored in the discussion paper and they aimed at strengthening the connection between the frameworks and the national quality standard in areas such as transitions, sustainability, theoretical approaches, critical reflection, inclusion and the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of being knowing and doing as I mentioned earlier. And the third stage was a pilot of the framework, and that happened across 16 really diverse services, and the rich feedback gathered from the involved services informed the final version of both frameworks. And the original national learning frameworks have remained in operation alongside the updated framework. frameworks and the updated frameworks will be mandated from 1 February 2024 and so this has really enabled approved providers, educational leaders, service leaders and educators a whole year to transition to the new frameworks.

Katey

Okay, so when we think of voice and choice in the curriculum in early years daily practice – from my experience, I know the experience of a lot of people listening to this, voice and choice is something that early years educators really value we do very well we try and get the children involved as much as possible in their learning opportunities – so between the original learning framework and the new one, what were kind of the aims in terms of pushing the envelope on the voice and choice aspect there? Rhonda I think a strength of the National Quality Framework for me is that the view of children as capable and competent agents of change, decision makers, educators and children were consulted in the first and second stage of the project. There were almost 3,500 responses to the online survey, 65 responses to written submissions and children and young people's voices – so children aged between 2 and 12 years – were presented through drawings and written responses and we received almost 160 responses as part of that process to ensure that we had children's voices in that process, and young people’s as well.

Katey

Fantastic. Were there any submissions from children that surprised you?

Rhonda

There were some amazing examples of practice that really, I guess not so much surprised me, but inspired me. There was one example of some children in a service and they had made a relationship with a neighbour who was elderly, and she was unable to pick the fruit from her plum tree in the backyard and the children nurtured that relationship and they would go down and collect the plums, came back to the service, made plum jam and gave Ruby back some plum jam – so a great example of sustainability, and as you know in the approved learning framework, the refreshed version, they look at the broadened view of sustainability so not just environmental but also social and economics. So that was a great example, I thought, of children being active citizens in their community but also giving back to their community.

Katey

That is really wonderful. What a gorgeous example. Now what about when you spoke to the educators, the people on the ground, what were they looking for from an updated framework?

Rhonda

There was a lot of support for the framework. It was still considered to be fit for purpose and still considered to be a flexible guideline to empower them to use their professional judgment in terms of curriculum decision making but I think also, I think there's a valuing of the frameworks because they acknowledge that educators and service leaders know their children and their families and their communities better probably than anyone else and they're empowered to meet the standards and implement the frameworks in a way that's genuine authentic and relevant for those stakeholders.

Katey

Beautiful. I can tell that really inspires you hearing from our nation's educators and being able to see what they value in their practice.

Rhonda

I think it is amazing across the early childhood sector, and just recently I've had a couple of opportunities to showcase the work of educators and service leaders. One was in Portugal for the European Early Childhood Research Association where some members of the consortium and my colleague Craig and I talked about the refresh of the early years learning framework. And we had such positive feedback from our international colleagues around the work that's happening in Australia. And, you know, I want to call out and acknowledge the hard work of educators, service leaders, educational leaders and approved providers. I think they have done an amazing job and I know it's been a tough year, tough couple of years with COVID but what we saw during those difficult times was an amazing commitment not only to children and families but also to communities as well.

Katey

Fantastic. You mentioned a bit of a travel there over to Portugal. Did you take inspiration from any learning frameworks from across the world at all in terms of updating our one?

Rhonda

Certainly in the literature review, there was a review of many international curriculums and I've talked with colleagues across the world and of course it's all contextual. It needs to be relevant for the children and the families and the communities and the culture and every service is different but we have certainly drawn from a lot of those different learning frameworks and I know in the when we were developing the national quality standard I had the privilege privilege to visit Reggio Emilia. for example, and just looking at the approved learning frameworks and the national quality standard, you can see elements of that curriculum framework. And for example, educational leaders reflect that sort of pedagogistic approach in Reggio Emilia. So certainly, the frameworks have been informed by the exciting work that's happening internationally as well. Katey Yeah beautiful. Now in mainstream education we've also just had an update of the K-12 curriculum there. How does our new early learning framework, is there any crossover with the mainstream curriculum at all?

Rhonda

That was one of the terms of reference of the consortium when they led the review process to look at the alignment with the Australian curriculum, the version nine. And so a lot of work was undertaken to ensure consistency of language and that early childhood was seen as part of their education continuum and contributing significantly in terms of language, supporting children during their critical years of life, but also acknowledging the importance of the transition to the schooling sector.

Katey

Absolutely. So maybe if we just go back to consultations that you had on your global travels, what kind of feedback did you have from educators overseas about our own practices, our own frameworks?

Rhonda

So the anecdotal feedback that we received at the European Early Childhood Research Association conference in Lisbon was that Australia was a world leader in many aspects of the work, not just the approved learning frameworks, but also recognizing the work that is happening across the sector and across governments and with approved providers in terms of the workforce strategy and planning for a high quality sustainable workforce as well.

Katey

That must make you very proud.

Rhonda

I think, again, it is down to the work of educators and service leaders and educational leaders and the commitments of governments and peak organisations and organisations like ACECQA that have demonstrated a commitment to quality in early childhood education and care and it's exciting to see that that commitment has lasted over more than a decade and seems to be getting stronger.

Katey

Would it be accurate to say that we're in the middle of some active social change around developing the early years sector and I guess increasing the level of professionalism as other people see it?

Rhonda

I guess the number of reviews that are currently underway suggests that there's a lot of interest in early childhood education and care and thinking about quality, accessibility and affordability for families as well. So it's really exciting that I know it's been hard work for the sector in terms of lots of work responding to these reviews but I think it's a really positive thing that governments and others are showing their commitment to the early years and their and school aged care and also developing a really strong evidence base to inform decisions which will impact on the sector for decades to come.

Katey

And in terms of that impact for the children that are living that and going through and being part of the reviews and being part of this updated curriculum what do you hope is going to be the impact on them?

Rhonda

I think it's really empowering for children and you know I think that children are our future and if we listen to them they have such insightful wise offerings in terms of what early childhood would look like into the future and school aged care I think it's really important to listen to their voices and as I mentioned they were captured in the drawings and they identified through that process the importance of play and relationships on the overall engagement with the service and close to 80 children identified that activities in the program was the most important thing for them. So I think again I call out to the educators and service leaders for the work that they do in making those programs so engaging and interesting but also supporting children's learning and development.

Katey

I think that's a really important point. We know that play is very important in terms of developing learning and understanding of the world in early years and we also know that relationships with children are important in terms of empowering them. But how do play and relationships actually work together to benefit children's empowerment?

Rhonda

I guess it's really important for educators to have strong, respectful, genuine partnership relationships with children. It's not a one -way. You know, I see them as co -constructors of knowledge and learning and also, you know, recognizing that that the guidance and direction and planning that educators and service leaders do to ensure that play is meaningful and every learning opportunity, whether it be through a play or a routine experience for a child, the learning opportunities are maximised in that process.

Katey

My next question is about, um, is about getting into detail of the framework. So what are some of the ways in which the updated framework supports children to be active participants in their learning?

Rhonda

I guess the practices of learning through play and intentional teaching combine to reflect the modern understandings of the child and the educator and how they work together to intentionally support play and and learning and development. And during the third phase of the update, the consortium piloted the potential updates in 16 early childhood education and care and outside school hours care services across Australia and they were really diverse services and they engaged with educators and children and young people to gather their feedback on the proposed changes. And that feedback was used to inform the recommendations to government and a sequel on areas of improvement and how the changes would be best implemented. And throughout that stage, 316 approved providers, 106 educators and approximately 160 children and young people were involved in providing feedback in that process. And one example of the rich feedback was shared by a family daycare leader and they expressed the need for children to be actively involved in assessing and documenting their own learning. And that was shared by a family daycare leader and they expressed the need for children to be actively involved in assessing and documenting their own learning. And that was reinforced by the children's feedback, which stated that they really enjoyed being able to share what they liked and what they wanted to have included in the learning program.

Katey

Fantastic. And that's a really great lived example of how we're involving children in decisions that affect them, right? Why is that so important for educators to do that?

Rhonda

I think it's really important because capture the voices of children has ensured a genuine respect, recognition, and acknowledgement of children's views on decisions that have a direct impact on them.

Katey

Fantastic. Now in the original framework and now in our update of the framework, we've got the phrase capable and competent learners. What does that actually look like in our early years space?

Rhonda

To me that's one of the most exciting things about the National Quality Framework. When I did my initial training many, many, many, many, many years ago there was a, you know, a fairly deficit model of the view of the child looking at their needs developmental needs and planning around that and to me this is a much more strength -based, positive way of looking at children and acknowledging their rights, but also their capacities to be agents for change. And we've seen that in many, many examples. I catch the ferry into Circular Quay every morning, and I look up and see the Aboriginal flag flying on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I think about the children who, you know, many people advocated for that but some children in a preschool service wrote to the Premier and acknowledged the importance of flying the flag and so there are many, many examples I think of in our communities where children's voices have been taken seriously and they have made significant impact, improvements to communities which I think it's great to celebrate those and that's one of the things that I really enjoy in my work is that we get to tell those stories and to acknowledge that incredible contribution that they're making as active citizens in their communities but also agents for change.

Katey

What a lovely story, I got goosebumps when you were telling that. That's amazing. And what a fantastic thing for children to be a part of and to be able to see their thoughts and views reflected in their world, in their community. Fantastic. That's amazing. Now I just want to pop over to learning outcome three specifically because it interests me not just in terms of involvement children as being active participants in their learning but also in the well -being space. There's been a lot of focus put on trauma -informed practice in the early years, in recent years, and in school aged care and understanding it and encouraging it to help children who have been affected by trauma access learning better. So what does that, what does trauma-informed practice look like in the National Quality Framework?

Rhonda

I guess some wellbeing has been a focus of the frameworks since they were developed and implemented way back in 2012 and the frameworks continue to draw on the robust Australian and international evidence that confirms that early childhood is a vital period in children's continuing learning development and well -being and of course keeping children safe and secure is at the forefront of our work in the education and care sector and it's reflected in the National Quality Framework and it's reflected in the legislation and the best practice framework as well in terms of the NQS. In the recent National Quality Framework review governments decided to introduce some additional specific measures to improve child safety and meet community expectations in terms of the wellbeing of children. And these changes ensure the NQF remains current and that approved providers and services embed the child safe principles into their organisations and into their service operations as well. And along with the refresh, there's a recognition that some children who attend services may not have experienced safe and supportive family environments. And in response to this, educators enact trauma-informed practices to enhance and support children's learning and development. And I guess when we talk about trauma-informed practices, practice it's being, it's a responsive approach that's made possible by awareness of the impact of trauma on children's learning development and wellbeing. And it also includes recognising the signs and symptoms of trauma in children and responding by making places and relationships feel safe and supportive to children and helping children to develop their capacity for emotional regulation.

Katey

It might feel to some educators like a big responsibility to upskill in that area. So for educators that feel they do need a bit more support where can they find some professional development to help with that?

Rhonda

There's lots of organizations that provide professional development and also I think having networks of services and educators and service leaders to share information with other professionals I think promotes that holistic and consistent approach to enhancing children's wellbeing. We know the importance of wellbeing for educators as well as children and families and there are lots of examples of organisations that provide training, for example the Office of the Children's Guardian, the Australian Human Rights Commission has information on their website. A big shout out to the Be You program and the Emerging Minds program. The Australian Institute of Family Studies also has some really useful information and I know the Alannah & Madeline Foundation are also looking into trauma-informed practices and supporting educators in the important role that they play.

Katey

Fantastic. I like that you mentioned the Office of the Children's Guardian resources there. Fantastic. And of course we've got the inclusion for the first time in the early years framework of personal safety strategies being taught to children. What are your thoughts on the OCG SAFE Series program? How do you think that fits in with teaching those strategies?

Rhonda

I think it's a great professional development opportunity and I would really encourage educators and service leaders to reach out to the enormous amount of supports available and even regulatory authorities, state and territory, regulatory authorities have information on their website to support this important role that educators and service leaders play in children and families' lives. The Office of the Children's Guardians SAFE Series Protective-behaviour Program is a great example of a resource to support educators and service leaders, particularly in the Learning Outcome 3. I just wanted to share a recent example of Trauma -Informed Practicing Act action that's demonstrated in Warawee Care Center and their implementation of their WIRED and WIRED stands for Wellbeing, Inclusion, Resilience, Equity Development. The WIRED plans at the service represent a significant shift in the approach to supporting children with mental health concerns. The same is true for children with mental health concerns. collaboration with families, psychologists and professionals from the Child Youth Mental Health Service at Hornsby Hospital devised an approach focusing on applying self-regulation processes. And these plans created safe environments which fostered understanding, nurturing, and support for children. And I think through this example, the service demonstrates their responsiveness to children's trauma, mental health and wellbeing. And the plans developed through the WIRED program support children to feel safe and emotionally secure and further develop their capacity for self-regulation.

Katey

Fantastic. So it's a beautiful example there of extending children's understanding and self -awareness. in terms of wellbeing. How do you develop self-awareness for children, you know, very young children?

Rhonda

We have children from 6 weeks old in some long daycares. How do you develop that in younger children? I guess just working closely with the families and being aware of the undertaking those professional development plans and will help build awareness of signs and symptoms to look for in terms of supporting children but having those rich meaningful respectful relationships with children and with their families as well I think really supports educators to be aware of the symptoms and also be aware of the supports available to support children.

Katey

Fantastic, and that awareness and support can come from many different professional development avenues as we've mentioned. Absolutely. So how do we know that the new version of the National Quality Frameworks will have a positive effect on early years education and outside school hours care?

Rhonda

We are seeing the impacts of the implementation of the approved learning frameworks. When you think about the assessment and rating data, we now have 90% of services meeting or exceeding the national quality standard. And as you know, the Approved Learning Frameworks fall under Quality Area 1, which has always been the most challenging for services to meet. And to see that now 90% of services are meeting or exceeding gives me real that educators and service leaders are committed to implementing the frameworks and whilst we don't have specific measures for children, we know that children from all of the research, we know that children are benefiting from rich programs and curriculum decisions being made by highly skilled and trained teachers, educators and service leaders.

Katey

Fantastic. And will the assessment and ratings process be impacted at all by the update in the frameworks?

Rhonda

As I mentioned from the 1st of February 2024, the approved learning frameworks will be part of the assessment and rating process. So, I imagine that all of that will be affected. officers when they're doing the undertaking assessment and rating visits will have lots of conversations with educators and service leaders about how they're strengthening their documentation, how they're embedding that cycle of planning, how they've identified the changes that need to occur as part of implementing the updated framework.

Katey

Fantastic. So we should be expecting educators to understand the new frameworks and be able to demonstrate how they're implementing them. So in terms of evidence, what kind of evidence are you looking for as an our national educational leader and what kind of evidence will the assessment and ratings officers be looking for?

Rhonda

I think the guide to the National Quality Framework is a great resource for educators and service leaders because the NQF is such a transparent process, there's no hidden agendas. And in the guide there's lots of examples of what an authorised officer might want to observe, what they might want to discuss and what they might want to cite in terms of documentation. And having been involved in developing that guide many, many years ago, we were focused on ensuring that it wasn't seen as a checklist and that's why we used words like "might" because it is about empowering educators and service leaders to be able to articulate what they are doing in their services and showcase the great work that happens at the same time or day for children and families and just being confident to talk about that. And we particularly put it in that order observed because quality practice you'll observe in in services but there are lots of things you necessarily observe like leadership and governance, and so having those rich conversations and then then backing that up with the documentation. So for example, when authorised officers collect information against the observed discussant site, they will triangulate that information because for example, you might have the best policies in the world, but if they're not being implemented or not understood by educators and not resulting in positive outcomes for children, then they're not having that desired effect. So it is important, I think, for educators and service leaders to think about how they'll demonstrate it in a genuine and authentic way, drawing on their professional knowledge, but also their knowledge of the children, the families, the community and the context to think about examples to share with authorised officers.

Katey

I think that's really important. Yeah, and I like the way that you highlighted observations there because not all staff members in early years or outside our school care situations are responsible for documentation but everyone could be responsible for child safe practice and empowerment practices. So in terms of observations what would you like to see going into an early years setting or for children?

Rhonda

I think that, yeah, as I mentioned one of the key changes is strengthening Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and I see that when I visit services. I see children leading acknowledgement of country. I've had children explain to me the colours of the Aboriginal flag. I've seen children sharing information with their families about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and doing and being and I also see children leading learning and taking leadership roles in their services and reflecting some of those changes that we see in the frameworks.

Katey

So are you expecting a significant significant change in educator behaviour from the updates in the frameworks?

Rhonda

I think that the fact that it was just a refresh and it's building on what's already happening in the services, I think it is empowering for educators to have access to contemporary up-to-date information to inform their practices and their programs and I think that's exciting. I've been really inspired to see the level of engagement from educators, educational leaders and service leaders over the last 12 months in embedding the changes that have occurred in the approved learning frameworks. Looking at, you know, know, what that means in terms of their practice and programs and the level of engagement and positive feedback, I think, too, has been inspiring.

Katey

And if there's any educators listening that are a bit nervous about the updates, not sure where to start, do you have a message for them? Rhonda I just think give it a go. So have confidence in your knowledge and your skill and your wisdom. Reach out to others, maybe in your organization, it might be your educational leader or director or coordinator, but also have a look on the ACECQA website and other websites because there is lots of rich information to help you on this journey and help you build your knowledge and skills. But I do think it is important for educators to reflect on this. on the amazing achievements of the previous 12 months and to be courageous in embracing these changes which are, in the scheme of things, pretty minimal and build on the great work that's already happening in services across Australia.

Katey

Just to finish off our conversation then around empowerment and voice and choice within the National Quality Frameworks and the updates that have been applied and ready to get going in February 2024. What is next for educators and providers? Where can they find that support? Where can they expect to go in the next 12 months?

Rhonda

At ACECQA, we've developed a whole series of resources. We've got some information sheets that unpack the principles and practices and the learning out for both the early years learning framework and the My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care. But we've also developed a Kahoot! game and a matching game to raise awareness of the changes with the approved learning frameworks. But also state and territory regulatory authorities have some resources as do other peak organizations. So there's lots of freely available resources to support educators and service leaders in this important journey.

Katey

Fantastic. Can you tell me a bit more about the suite of resources that ACECQA have available?

Rhonda

Absolutely. We've worked on a number of different resources to support educators and service leaders understand and implement the changes to the approved learning frameworks and they're all accessible from the ACECQA website. They include information sheets on the vision, the practice and principles and learning outcomes, as well as a really helpful summary table on the changes that occurred as part of the National Quality Framework Review. And we've developed a set of information sheets on other topics related to each of the 7 quality areas as well as educational games, case studies and some videos. And we'd really encourage everyone to, if they haven't already done so, subscribe to the ACECQA Newsletter. It's a great opportunity to share stories of educators and service leaders who are doing amazing things in the sector, and we'd encourage people to follow our Facebook page to make sure that they're receiving the most up-to-date information on the resources that we have to offer and can I also suggest you check your state and territory regulatory authority website because that's another great source of information and as the regulators for quality and compliance they will be able to provide state and territory specific information to support services. And finally, we always welcome and encourage educators, educational leaders, providers, service leaders, children and families to reach out to ACECQA for information, guidance and resources under the National Quality Framework. We've also got a Starting Blocks website for families and that's a great source of information for educators and service leaders in supporting families as well.

Katey

Fantastic, and we'll put all of the links to all the ways that educators can find professional development support and all the ways that people can contact ACECQA in the show notes for this.

Rhonda

Thank you again for the invitation to speak Katey. I just love talking about the approved learning frameworks but also it's a great opportunity to acknowledge the work that happens every day in services across Australia and the commitment of educators, educational leaders, service leaders and approved providers. Thank you.

Katey

A real pleasure Rhonda, thank you.

Thank you to Rhonda Livingstone. You can go online anytime to the Office of the Children's Guardian’s website and access free tools and resources to help children be safe. Just click the Training and Resources tab. Do you want to know how well you're doing with applying the standards? Why not try the Child Safe Self-Assessment? Managers and leaders, as well as employees or volunteers, can spend 30 minutes answering a few basic questions and then be sent a tailored response showing what they're doing well, any areas of improvement, and how they can access resources to help them. Don't forget that the Child Safe self -assessment and all the OCG's training resources, including the SAFE Series Protective-behaviours Program for 2- to 6-year-olds, are completely free. All the resources we've discussed in this episode are in the show notes. My name's Katey Street, thank you for listening.

Meg Mendham is the CEO of Community Connections Solutions Australia. Meg has over 30 years’ experience in the early childhood sector, including as an educator.

Angela Gillespie is a senior manager at Connect Child & Family Services. Angela was the winner of the 2023 Early Childhood Australia Barbara Creaser Champion Award.

Brittany Taylor is a Child Safe Officer in the compliance team at the Office of the Children's Guardian.

Office of the Children’s Guardian resources - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/our-resources 

Child Safe Self-Assessment - https://cssa.ocg.nsw.gov.au

Contact us for support on the Child Safe Standards, training events and more - https://ocg.nsw.gov.au/contact-us 

Simon Luckhurst

Hi, and welcome to this podcast from the Office of the Children's Guardian, funded by the NSW Department of Education under its Safety and Quality Practice program. Today we'll be looking at the NSW Child Safe Scheme in the context of Early Childhood Education.

For listeners who aren't aware of it, the NSW Government introduced the Child Safe Scheme in February 2022. The scheme means organisations must be able to demonstrate their commitment to child safety by employing the 10 Child Safe Standards handed down by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. If organisations and workers and volunteers are applying the Child Safe Standards, children are safer from harm and abuse. While many organisations understand what it means to keep children safe and are also meeting many requirements under their National Quality Framework obligations, the Scheme is designed to ensure all aspects of child safety are maintained and improved. We've got a great panel today to explore what this means for early childhood education organisations and educators.

Our guests today are Meg Mendham, the CEO of Community Connections Solutions Australia, and also board member, advisor and executive with over 30 years’ experience in the early childhood sector, including as an educator.

Angela Gillespie, a senior manager of the Blue Mountain Space Connect Children and Families organisation. Angela was the winner of the 2023 Early Childhood Australia Barbara Creaser Champion Award.

Our third guest is Brittany Taylor, a Child Safe Officer in the compliance team at the Office of the Children's Guardian.

So, Meg, first question for you. What do you see as the benefits of the Child Safe Scheme and how do you think it helps to keep children safe?

Meg Mendham

Simon, the Child Safe Scheme really brings child safety to the forefront for everyone. In early childhood we're very familiar with Child Safe Standards, child protection processes and procedures, but the Child Safe Scheme really actually broadens responsibility across community, across lots of organisations. It doesn't matter what environment you're working with children, we should be all ensuring that children are safe.

Simon

Is that because it uses the Standards as a basis?

Meg

Applying the Standards strongly aligns people's expectations around child safe behaviour and also child safe interactions and working with children.

Simon

Angela, What do you think of the Child Safe Standards? How do you think they work to keep children in early education safer?

Angela Gillespie

Yeah, I think building around what Meg has said it is around seeing child safety as a governance obligation and it's around building that culture within your organisation, that children's safety and wellbeing is at the forefront in a holistic sense rather than when we've previously looked at it as child protection. It's allowing that to be a much bigger piece where we're understanding all aspects of children's safety and their wellbeing and how we actually develop that in our teens and build capacity so that we can have children being as safe as possible.

Simon

Angela I'm sure everyone working in early childhood education is passionate about keeping children safe anyway, so beyond regulation and compliance, do you think the Standards really dovetail in with that desire for educators to keep children safe?

Angela

Yeah, I think it does, and I think it contextualises that it's more than just around what educators may have previously seen as safety, but is around how do we empower children to understand their own rights within a space and also around the competencies of children to manage and take safe risks. It gives educators those tools as well as a framework to reflect critically on those aspects.

Simon

At the OCG we talk about child protection, but we also talk about child safe. Sometimes we say that child safe is, you know, what happens to keep children safe. Child protection is often what happens after children aren't safe. Do you say the Standards working within both those kind of frameworks?

Angela

I do think obviously there's some overlap there, but for me, the biggest change is around that proactivity for organisations. So rather than as critically responding to something that's happened and it being about reporting and notifying it is around, how do we introduce risk management strategies to reduce chances that children will be in an unsafe circumstance?

Simon

So Meg, how do you ensure the staff of your member organisations are familiar with the Child Safe Standards?

Meg

The way that we work with our member organisations is across all areas of governance and management, and our vision is really around best practice in governance and management in early childhood and the focus of working with the Child Safe Standards is ensuring that all staff, all management committee and all educators and people in leadership roles actually understand what a child safe environment looks like. They also understand what their responsibility is as an individual, and also what they understand the expectation of other people will be about providing a safe environment.

Simon

You, as early childhood educators and organisations, you've got obligations both under the Child Safe Scheme and under the NQF. Do you see both things working together or is this, you know, yet more work for time for educators?

Meg

When the Child Safe Principles were first introduced you know a few years ago early childhood really looked at this as something that certainly provided opportunity for improvement that built on practices that they already have under the National Quality Framework. We don't see that they compete with each other. We rather see that there's a complement there. And I think the Child Safe Standards allow for a broader conversation where educators can talk more broadly around what child safe environments look like with families and communities and with other visitors to an early childhood centre. So I don't think that there is is a competition there or a requirement to do additional work. I think there's a really strong alignment.

Simon

Meg, are you able to speak a bit more to that and in the way of acknowledging that a lot of educators are time poor and so that it's the system is designed to support them rather than to make it harder for them.

Meg

Simon, the way that educators are able to engage with the 10 Standards really align with their work under the National Quality Framework. We acknowledge that there is an additional responsibility, and educators do need to take on extra work around learning the Standards and aligning them with the National Quality Framework and I guess the OCG and other resources that are available online really support their learning and in fact accelerate and extend the knowledge around what that looks like now, and if that wasn't there, I think there would be challenges in how they're bringing themselves up to speed on the 10 Standards, as well as being able to talk about them with other educators and families.

Simon

Yeah, and I guess I'm hearing you say that there's acknowledgment that a lot of educators are time poor, but the Standards and the NQF hopefully will work together and make it easier for people rather than make it more difficult for them.

Meg

Indeed. And that has been our experience so far for all educators and all services that have really embraced the Child Safe Standards, that they do see these things working together quite complimentary.

Simon

So, Angela, speaking of people having conflicting priorities, how do you provide training for your staff on their Child Safe Scheme obligations and their understanding of the standards?

Angela

Yeah, for us, it actually starts at recruitment. So we'll begin to kind of assess what a candidate's understanding is of the Child Safe Standards throughout that recruitment process and have targeted questions within that process as well. And then it moves on to induction. So we'll have staff complete mandatory modules in the Child Safe Standards. We've got a digital system, helps us monitor those acknowledgments as well as the standard mandatory reporting modules.  Every staff member has a organisational induction with me and I talk about how the Child Safe Standards fit into our direction as an organisation and where that fits in within maybe aspects that that staff member doesn't see within their own particular program so that they can see our overarching commitment to that. Also, in that first initial induction phase is where will go through the Code of Conduct that we've developed in relation to the Child Safe Standards. Staff have the time to review that, ask any questions before they sign off on that, and that's another area where we may see there might be some extra capacity that we need to address if we've got candidates that have come through without the right understandings. We do have a standing agenda items to discuss child safety, child protection and individual children. All our teams have monthly team meetings and that's really important for us because it does open up that space where we might have informal opportunities of things that have been on staff members’ minds where we can then dive into what does that mean when we're viewing things through that Child Safe Standards lens. And we will revisit them so a lot of those initial modules that people do during their induction will be renewed over a one-year or 2-year process so that they keep going back to them and reflecting on them, but also within our other processes that we're doing things like identifying key practices for self assessment, lots of our practices around child safety and the Child Safe Standards are raised within those particular processes as well. So for us, the Child Safe Standards are very much woven into much of the work that we are already doing. And so we do have some targeted areas where we build professional learning on, but it is a thread that we see happen through all of our work in our programs.

Simon

And that kind of answers my next question, which was it sounds like, you know, it's great you've got staff training and support really embedded in services, by the sound of it. How do you manage sort of the conflict of interest between ongoing training requirements and duties of work on the floor?

Angela

Yeah, I mean, we're very fortunate to be a not-for-profit organisation, so we know that our teams are our biggest asset and their capacity and what they add to our programs are far greater than any other resource that we can bring into a service.   So we actually prioritise that. Staff have dedicated time off the floor to complete training and it is around looking for those opportunities of how do you do that and where does that fit into the scheme of where the direction that your program is moving into in terms of quality improvement and being able to prioritize it.

Simon

Brittany, can you tell us a little bit about, what's a monitoring assessment?

Brittany Taylor

So a monitoring assessment is a process where we assess how an organisation is complying with the 10 Child Safe Standards. And to do this, we look at an organisation's policies and procedures so that documentation and we also conduct a monitoring assessment interview, which is a conversation with the organisation to understand how they're implementing the 10 Child Safe Standards in their daily practices, and also any challenges that they might have with implementing the standards as well.

At the end of the monitoring assessment process will be issuing a monitoring assessment report and that will outline our findings of how the organisation is implementing the Standards. And it may also contain some guidelines or some recommendations for how an organisation can improve. Now, if we do issue recommendations, that's a bit more of a formal process. So under the legislation, an organisation will be required to respond to these recommendations and we'll be giving a reasonable timeframe for this to occur as well. We do also have enforcement measures under the legislation that we can use, however, will only be using these if an organisation is unwilling to engage in the process with us or if we identify a significant risk of harm to children.

Simon

Now, the OCG does have the capacity to undertake enforcement actions that include fines and things like that. What's the preferred way for the OCG to proceed? Do you like going straight to fines? Or what do you do instead?

Brittany

Absolutely not. We do not like going straight to fines, so we're definitely taking a more capability building approach to compliance. And that means that we're working with organisations to understand the challenges that they might have and how they can overcome those to successfully implement the 10 Child Safe Standards.

Simon

And in terms of capability support, do you say, you may need to develop this policy a bit further or do you want to access Jane's any learning or here's some other, I mean, how do you go about capability support in that in that space?

Brittany

So it could include anything you've just mentioned, Simon, so we could suggest that they need to write a specific policy and implement it in their organisation, make changes to policies, it could involve us recommending that they distribute policies to staff or undertake specific practices. But we also provide in our monitoring assessment report, links to resources from the OCG website. So links to eLearning, links to the fantastic handbooks and resources that the team have created. So organisations are very supported throughout the process and we also check in regularly with organisations throughout the process as well to ensure that they're comfortable with the monitoring assessment process and that they don't have any questions.

Simon

Do you physically knock on people's doors? Are you ringing people up? You're organising online meetings? How do you, how does that process happen?

Brittany

It really does depend. So at the start of the process, organisations can expect a phone call from us or an email scheduling that phone call. And then when we do conduct a monitoring assessment interview, we generally try to do that face to face at the organisation's premises. And this gives us an opportunity to see how a child's safe practices are being implemented on a day-to-day  basis. So we do like to do a walk through of the service and just see how things are going, see how educators are interacting with children and see the physical environment of the space.

Simon

And do you look out for any one particular Standard, for example, in particular? Is there something that you're  really honing in on or are you looking at things in general?

Brittany

It really does depend. So the Standards that we select for assessment will depend on our pre assessment research of an organisation. So it could depend on if we receive a specific complaint or if we identify something through looking at an organisation's website or through looking at information that we do hold at the OCG as to what Standards we will select for assessment. I will say we do view Standard 1 as being very important as we think that good governance and good leadership are really essential to embedding that child safe culture in an organisation. So this is a standard we do regularly look at for organisations.

Simon

Angela, are there any Standards in particular that you think support the philosophy of your organisation?

Angela

Well, I would say all of them support our philosophy. What probably speaks to us, in a values perspective, is Standard 2 around empowering children. So we have a core value of celebrating every child, as well as tuning in and connecting values that are across our organisation.  And so that's really important for us that as an organisation, we we celebrate individual children, no matter their background, their competencies, who they are, but that also our teams know that to give the space to tune in and connect with children. And I think for us that's very important into how children are empowered to have their own agency to speak up about matters that are important to them.

Simon

And, you know, Standard 2 is about empowerment. Obviously, the the age of the cohort that you work with, you know, that's pretty young to be giving them a whole lot of decision making. But you're telling us a nice story before about how one school that you work with supports children and I guess it empowers them in the way that it does that you want to do you want to tell us what they do?

Angela

Yeah. So, yeah, I was just kind of speaking about how one of our programs in particular, but it's not unique to one program really assesses the possibilities in their spaces. So for this particular site, they have one large classroom and one smaller classroom. So by being able to tune in and connect with children, the staff there are very attuned to when children may need to be in a smaller group and be able to kind of regulate with the smaller group of peers rather than being part of the main group. And children are able to request when they want to do this. Or it may be that educators are responding to cues that are provided by children. And in particular, that approach was used with a child that was showing anxiety at pick up time as as he was watching other parents arrive to collect their children. And the staff could notice that his anxiety was escalating as more and more children were collected. So they developed a strategy for that child to kind of move into that smaller space from around 2pm, where he selected his own group of peers that that came and played with him.  And then just lessened an area that was a significantly anxious period for him. So it is around staff being able to know that they can tune in and respond in innovative ways to children's needs. And I think that's really important and it's a factor that I think is something we need to promote within the Child Safe Standards as well.

Simon

And I guess if something, anything, was troubling that child in a small environment like that, they'd be much more able to to talk about it, maybe feel more comfortable to talk about it than they would in a in a in a space with a lot of other children.

Angela

Yeah, absolutely. It is around how do we hone those strategies that really build connection and safety and security for children and that they are connecting with familiar adults who they've got those pre-existing relationships with? We know that's where they're true feedback from children who are in a younger age group is going to come about programs, and it gives that opportunity for educators to really be able to address what makes children feel safe and comfortable and happy in our programs.

Simon

And if we were to look at Standard One, which is the Standard on leadership and governance beyond, as you've done, winning awards, how do your organisations, leaders and managers demonstrate sort of compliance and following the values of Standard 1?

Angela

Yeah, for us, it really comes back to the heart of children being viewed as equals citizens with rights. And that's something that all our leaders very consistently reflect on with teams. And it's one of those areas that we do kind of pose and say, if this was an adult in this situation, would this be an appropriate response? And so that's a lens that is very much mandatory for one of our leaders is is to view children as citizens with equal rights. And so they'll go through professional learning that helps build their understandings of that. We also still go back to what our teams image of children is and address any things that might be coming out of that around kind of constructs, prejudices and bias as well. We've got robust policies and procedures in place and can be quite systematic also around the governance. We've really focused on our recording of safeguarding concerns as well, being very transparent so we now have an online system that allows for even the slightest concern to be recorded by any staff member through using QR codes that then pings up to only certain managers. So that decision making on the next step is not left up to one person alone to think, is this something we need to pursue further? So we've got lots of things in place that are around the requirements of our leaders to really demonstrate that commitment to Child Safe Standards.

Simon

So, hey, innovation, fantastic. Can I just break down a little bit about how those QR codes work? So educators get their phones out and that instantly takes them somewhere.

Angela

So they don't use their own phone because that's one of our child protection measures.

Simon

Note that, Brittany.

Angela

So we don't allow personal phones to be in classrooms, but we do have organisational iPads that are used for various purposes. So we have QR codes on the wall that leads our staff to a variety of forms that come through a system that we use code Folio, which for us it works really well because we can actually manipulate those forms for whatever purpose we need them to be manipulated for. So it will open up a form for them, they will write down their concern about that particular child. It will then ask if they think that child is at risk of harm. If they say yes or unsure, directs them to the mandatory reporting tree, to Child Story, and then they're asked to attach a PDF of that MRG if they if that's what it's requested that they do, I then as a senior manager, get an alert that that report has been made by a team member. And if there were any conflicts that that staff member had with me, seeing that we've got other avenues where they could have that form put through a different way. But it just means then that I'll review it and it might be that staff member only knows that piece of the puzzle about that particular child. I may be aware of other pieces that are going on for that child's life and as well as there may be things that I've got the experience to know that that may be a sign of something more significant, that a less experienced staff member may not have that view yet. So it works really well for us. We also use that to kind of review of are we underreporting on issues that might be happening and we'll relay that with statistics and kind of go, well, if we know this is the prevalence of things that are going on in our community and this is the amount that we've got reporting on, is that now an area that we need to focus on, talking with our teams about just to make sure that our reporting is matching? And and it was something when I first came into the sector, we were having exercise books hidden in filing cabinets to make notes on children that maybe no one else ever saw that those particular notes. So it is around addressing the lack of transparency I think that we've had with things that may not be a clear indicator that something's happening for a child, but they are those little things that tell you as an adult that knows that child well, that something is off in this situation at the moment.

Simon

And does that apply to other adults and other educators as well? Because I know that, you know, you may see someone do something very minor, but someone else has also seen something very minor and someone else has seen something also minor, but put them together and you can start to have a concerning pattern of behaviour. Is that sort of reporting encouraged also?

Angela

Yes. So and it does allow for all kind of aspects of concern. So if they had a concern about the way someone was interacting within one of our spaces, they'd be able to use that form to report on that as well. So that we may have gotten a few reports of of even if it was a casual educator that is not as involved in some of our processes and so yes it does pull all of those pictures together. I's got a search function that I can search for that particular child's name and see any report that someone has lodged. And it will go across our system. So there's been any significant notifiable incidences in regards to accidents and injuries it'll also pull that up so we're able to pull together a much bigger view of some data that's being recorded on that particular child.

Simon

How I mean, your how does your system go about pulling together a picture of what may turn out to be an unsafe person and how do those little bits of the jigsaw puzzle get fitted together?

Angela

Yeah, so my role is to review those reports and so it will be me kind of looking at going, there's a few concerns here about someone.  And then we would undertake an internal investigation to see if there's more here to substantiate anything. And then we follow the various notification processes and get advice for where we go to next. With that, once we've started to build a bigger picture of what might be happening.

Simon

Now, Meg, we've got onto this topic by looking at sort of the Standards in general and sort of how people may have a particular resonance to one or the other. Is there a Standard or Standards that speak to your personal feelings about child safety, or would you support all of them as well?

Meg

Simon, I think all 10 are really important and on the back of Angela's response, you know, certainly number 2 around empowering the child is really important but to expand on the Standards so we're not covering the same information. I'm a real community developer at heart. So Standard 3 where families in communities that are informed and involved, I think is really important because that expands that engagement with the Standards beyond the walls of what I call beyond the gate of the early childhood service. We actually want child Standards and best practices to be embedded in community in all environments with children. So number 3 is really, really important to my heart when we're talking about community. And number one from an organisational point of view is fundamentally what CCSA is about and child safe and safety is embedded in organisational leadership, governance in culture. That is where we support the management committee, the leaders in management of the service, and also the families to understand that this needs to be embedded in everyday practice, in conversations, in policies and procedures, but most importantly, it's something that builds in their culture every day.

Simon

It's interesting that you both pick Standards 2 and 3, because traditionally they're some of the ones that organisations struggle with the most, I mean, how do you support organisations to understand their commitments under Standard 3? How do you how do you how do you get families and communities involved? Meg I think what's most important for an early childhood service is to understand that families have have their rights and responsibilities upheld in the environment. I think we should break down those barriers of they've entered our world into an early childhood service rather, this is part of the community. So we actually want to be engaged and committed to uplifting people's knowledge around Child Safe Standards so that when families are engaging in sporting environments or church groups or other social activities, that they can actually be more heightened and aware around what Child Safe Principles should be wherever children are. It's not just within the early childhood service. So actually empowering educators to be able to talk to families about what Child Safe Standards are about and not seeing it as a fear factor, rather, that it's a social enterprise that is actually delivered back to community.

Simon

And is that the most effective way that you've found to to upskill, I guess, families and communities, just direct communication from educators or do you do other things? Do you do videos, for example, or fliers or how do you communicate with those stakeholders?

Meg

When we're working with the organisations, we want them to really think about the best way of how they engage with community. We want to make sure that it's culturally sensitive, culturally safe and appropriate. It's also around getting educators that might attend fairs or actually, you know, a fundraising event to be actually confident to talk about the Child Safe Standards. And if that's happening within the service where there's a strong commitment and there's a safe space to raise conversations and concerns or opportunities, then that confidence actually is going to come out in community when educators are actually out there working. And that really needs to start from the governance and management responsibilities of the leaders in the organisation. It should be embedded in the strategic plan right through to their policies and procedures. And as Angela has talked about today, the recruitment of staff, but also within the enrolment process of engaging with with families through an enrolment interview at the end of the start of the year.

Simon

That seems like a good place to come to you, Brittany, we’re talking about sort of what underpins an organisation's understanding of the Standards and child safety. A lot of organisations have something like a Statement of Commitment to Child Safety. How important is it for organisation to have something like that, Brittany?

Brittany

I'd say it's very important. As you said, it's the document that underpins the organisation's commitment to child safety and how they plan to enact the 10 Child Safe Standards. I'd say what's also important is how they distribute that information. So is the Statement of Commitment on the organisation's website. Is it displayed in the service? Is it given to parents? Is that information communicated to children in child friendly ways? I think it's all well and good to have the documents, very important document, but it's also about how you distribute that information as well.

Simon

And Meg, how do you support organisations to have a statement,  and more than that, to employ it, to use it to make sure it's not some bit of paper sitting on a shelf, but is actually something that that people are aware of and apply?

Meg

Mmm, I think that's a really fundamental issue that we have in early childhood services coming back to our time poor, you know, exercise before where how do services develop something? How do they all consult with families and management committees and educators and community? And I guess this is where a Code of Conduct that has been developed fundamentally drives part of that work for them already. But it still needs to be organic. And that engagement needs to come from within the service. So we really work with the management committee and the directors to understand the language behind the Child Safe Standards, to understand what the commitment is that they're actually making, but to review and monitor and assess that commitment regularly. We're very familiar with reflective practice in early childhood under the National Quality Framework and the Early Years Learning Framework. But we really need to see this across all areas of responsibility and whether it be Work, Health and Safety or a Code of Conduct for the Child Safe Standards, I think language is really powerful and then that actually is responded to with behaviour and processes that actually in organisations on a daily basis.

Simon

And is that something also that you can engage with families and communities and get them involved as well?

Meg

Indeed. And I guess, you know, as Brittany has alluded to, a true commitment to a Code of Conduct should include all stakeholders. It's not a document that should only sit with the management committee or the approved provider or the leadership team. It really needs to be organically grown from elders within the community and of the people that have that commitment to children being safe, whatever environment that they're in. So I think that that consultation process and that I guess building of words and sentences and then to a whole Code of Conduct is really important and is a whole of organisation responsibility.

Simon

And applying that, that that Code of Conduct, making making sure it's lived. Angela, speaking of applying things, policies, everyone has policies for this and that it's really important in the environments we're talking about that those policies are applied. How does your organisation or how do you support organisations to not just have good policies, but apply those policies and put them into everyday practice?

Angela

Yeah, absolutely, so for us, we have a pretty robust process of making sure that all staff have read and acknowledge policies and procedures and then will regularly revisit them. So it is around kind of referring staff to what is the appropriate policy that they should be following. Also, if we're ever investigating any particular concerns or incidents, it is the testing of that policy. And was it clear enough to give the staff the appropriate guidance? And I think as an organisation providing governance to our programs, you know, we've got to be open to the accountability that maybe that policy wasn't strong enough and take the feedback on how we need to maybe tighten some of the wording or the procedures within that. In regards to the Child Safe Scheme, we actually undertook the self-assessment process with a group of staff who were able to express interest in being part of a working group and that gave us a really diverse slice of our workforce because we've quite diverse programs where we're not only centre-based, but we've got community-based programs as well.

Simon

I'll just interrupt you there, was that the OCG’s Child Safe Self-Assessment? Just so we’re clear. Thank you.

Angela

So, yes, yes it was. We have many self-assessments, don’t we?

Simon

So if you're not aware the OCG has a Child Safe Self-Assessment tool which is available for free from our website. I'll talk more about that towards the end of the pod. But yeah, sorry to interrupt you.

Angela

That's okay. Yeah. So we undertook that process, which was really great to highlight the work that we were already doing, which I think fits to the question around time management, because there is a lot of dovetailing that that can happen with the obligations under Child Safe Standards and work. I think particularly in early childhood education, where we've had a pretty strong regulatory and legal framework for quite, quite a long amount of time. So a lot of those strategies and practices are actually already there and it can confirm for services the work that's already been done. And then it gave us also the insight into where improvements needed to be made and and how we actually articulated different things. Because I know with child centreed reporting, the original wording of that felt quite intimidating for some of our staff. When you're talking about children from 6 weeks old, what does that mean? And then it was around being able to actually look at the strategies that we use using pre-existing resources. So we've used the SAFE Series for quite a long time, the OGC’s SAFE Series, to help children understand about their rights for child protection and how they can speak up for themselves. So it was that work to kind of say, well, what have we already got in place? Where do we need to improve? And do we need to look at some of the work that we're already doing differently.

Simon

Without revealing too many secrets, is there something that you were surprised to find that people thought they were doing really well at, or something that you thought people would be doing better?

Angela

I think what are what became apparent to us, things that had been in policies for long time that we thought may have been accepted as standard practice. That process highlighted for people who felt that their work sat a little bit outside of of the norm of our work, hadn't applied those particular practices to what they were doing. So it did for us really highlight the need of, how do we talk with our teams in face-to-face settings, to really dig in to things that we may have taken for granted, and that often with policies, people will look at things and go, that doesn't really apply to my work. So how do we make that really specific and have those policies articulate in enough detail when people might be doing work that's a little bit outside of the norm, which often happens within our sector as we innovate.

Simon

Another thing that people want to embed, I guess in their day-to-day practices is risk management. And the Standard that speaks to risk management is Standard 8. It plays a huge part in keeping children in organisations safe. It has 2 parts – it has physical and online. Angela, I'm going to ask you, how does your organisation assess its safety to children in physical spaces?

Angela

So we've put a lot of focus into our staff building capacity to understand robust risk assessment and how they can apply a risk benefit lens to what we're doing with children. So we've got also through our Folio system, a risk assessment tool where educators and teams can look at particular activities that they might be doing and apply risk assessment to that to be able to make a decision about what we need to do and also have clear mitigations in place. Because for us, it's not that we won't allow a particular activity to go ahead, but that we've got the appropriate mitigations that will ensure that children are safe during that activity. And then we have probably a lot of standard things that most providers have where we've got daily checks of environments to ensure to ensure that safety is upheld. We think about the equipment that we select, that it's appropriate and fit for purpose and and how we can actually upskill our staff to assess that, because I think we can have lots of things seen on social media and things like that where actually all of the context of that particular equipment or set up being used, educators don't realise behind that.  And then really it is around just understanding what is an appropriate risk to have in place for children. We have a 2-person policy at Connect, so no one is ever left alone with children. I think that's that's really vital to be one. It helps people be accountable for their decision making that's going on, but also it minimises those risks to children and educators.

Simon

How does that risk management tool that you're talking about interact with sort of spontaneous teachable moments, I guess?

Angela

Yeah, so we have our teams actually do a full environment risk assessment, so they will risk assess the entire outdoor yard. So that may be looking at the dry creek bed and water pump and really think about all of those mitigations that we need in.  If children are engaging in those activities and being able to assess what's high risk, what's low risk, what's high supervision, what's low supervision, so that then actually the knowledge around specific activities as they unfold is actually in place, rather than doing an individual risk assessment for each separate activity, so that children can really explore their curiosities and educators have that repertoire of strategies to be able to ensure safety.

Simon

Meg, online safety is still something emerging for many of the children of the age group that we're talking about and, you know, many of them are still to be young, to be accessing devices. However, most services are now using online platforms to communicate with families and showcasing images of children on social media. So how can services go about mitigating the risk to children in the online environment?

Meg

Simon, this is an area in early childhood that continues to evolve and also highlights some of the unmanaged risks at the moment and early childhood is continues to grow in the use of technology and actually looking at online images and also how online activity is embedded in the organisation. I think having a really clear policy about the engagement of online online activities is a priority. This is both a responsibility for the management committee and the staff and the families alike. We actually need to bring families into this conversation, and that's really important. Member organisations need to be really focused on identifying and managing the risks when issuing and using appropriate devices in the education program, not allowing the use of personal devices, as Angela's just talked about, knowing when a device should be used and for what purpose is a device being used. Establishing effective monitoring and reviewing processes are all elements in keeping and protecting children in these environments, and also staff. We need to look at this as a 2 sided, how and when to use images of children seeking permission and monitoring these those permissions is fundamental in the usage of children's images. And that's what we really need to consult very closely with families and seek the advice and I guess input into what the education program looks like and where their children may appear online or where they may not. I think creating a policy that identifies when and where to use this advice, is what activity looks like online and what it doesn't involve. And I don't think we talk about enough of what we shouldn't be doing. And I think we really need to be clear because when we're looking in a risk management framework right now, we actually should be assessing the impact of some of these risks. We often look at the risk and then we look at the controls, but we're not looking at the impact and if we start to really unpack the impact of online activity involving children, it is actually far greater than we can ever really comprehend right now. So I think from an education point of view, we really need to assess the use online activity and the devices in the in the room, in the learning environment with children. And is it appropriate all the time? I know that we're moving well, we have done for many, many years and this is really obvious in capturing every moment of a child's development through the day and that learning environment. But is it actually necessary? Do we need to move back to actually storytelling with the parent about experiences and things that have happened? And that, again, involves the family and the parents to understand what's going on in the day, but also to identify those subtle child safe practices that are embedded in the educators world every single day. You don't get to capture that in a photograph, but you get to tell that in the story.

Simon

There is, there's a lot of people who think it's not real if there’s not a photograph. As a storyteller myself, it's great to hear you talk about story because stories existed, you know, pre-dated physically drawn things by millennia. So, yeah, let's get people back to storytelling and and it makes it more real for people to, I think- Have you seen examples without going into specific details of where there's been something happening in the online space and that and what have you had to do to rectify it?

Meg

Well, certainly we work with organisations to make sure that they're aware of what's going on in their space. And the most common activity that we see is portfolios that are uploaded through, you know, software packages that families can access. And that in principle is a really great way to capture and communicate what's going on in child development. But there's the cyber security risk, there's controls, there's a responsibility for the parent to also be aware whether there's other children in those images or in that footage that they're seeing, and then they're sharing that with other family members.  So this is what I was I was talking about before. The impact is actually quite great when we start to look at the risks involved in it. And I think there's an element of fear at the moment. And I think this is where the Child Safe Standards actually encourage them to build confidence, to have a conversation around online activity. It's not a yes or no that yes, we're doing it or no, we're not. But if we're involved in online activity, how are we going to make sure that the Child Safe Standards are embedded in that and looking at, you know, Child Safe Standard 3 about how are families involved in that decision making, but also, more importantly, how are children involved in some of those decision-making activities? And we see children often saying to the educator, ‘What are you doing? Can I have a look at that?’ And that's actually one of those moments of involving involving the child and the use of the image and in the learning environment for the child to actually have a say about that.

Simon

Well, Brittany, with your Compliance hat on, how does it feel hearing these kinds of things and what you know, the level of level of detail and and level of enthusiasm that people have for ensuring that children are kept safe like this?

Brittany

I think it's fantastic. It's what the child's high standards are all about in the end. And I think the great thing about the standards is the idea of continuous improvement, as you said, like improving on practices, not just letting things stagnate. And I think we're in an ever changing world, ever evolving world, especially when you factor in the online environment so I think it's fantastic to hear that level of enthusiasm for keeping children safe, especially as practices continue to grow and evolve.

Simon

Potentially not everyone has that level of enthusiasm, which organisations are you initially going to target for assessment?

Brittany

So it's a great question. We do have a variety of ways.  We can receive reports of concern through our website from anyone. Any member of the public can submit a report of concern about an organisation. We can also receive internal referrals from within the OCG, or we can look at emerging sector risks and trends to select organisations for an assessment. So it could be any one of those 3 factors that could come in to selection.

Simon

And when you say, ‘Something internal from the OCG,’ where would you be getting reports from from within the OCG? How does that work?

Brittany

So it could be from our reportable conduct team or our Working with Children Check team. Obviously different areas of the OCG work with organisation. So any area of that OCG that works with an organisation they could refer that to the compliance team.

Simon

What if someone doesn’t want to comply with a monitoring assessment, is there anything the OCG can do there?

Brittany

Yes, well that’s where our enforcement measures would come in. So under the Legislation we can engage an organisation through a Compliance Notice or an Enforceable Undertaking. And that’s a bit more of a legal process where we would encourage, strongly encourage, the organisation to engage with us. As I said, we don’t want to get to that process so we would encourage all organisations that are contacted for a monitoring assessment to engage in the process and to look at it as an opportunity for that continuous improvement and a learning opportunity and we find that’s when organisations really do get the best out of the process.

Simon

Meg or Angela, are you hearing from any educators, if they had issues with the scheme or the Standards, what would you recommend to them that they do?

Meg

Certainly we have engaged with the OCG in several platforms. Obviously, you know, in our Coffee Conversations, online learning and also a face-to-face rural and remote forum where there's learning and an opportunity to engage. But certainly we advocate for referral and directly engaging with the OCG. Obviously the amazing array of resources that the OCG have, we encourage educators, management, committee directors and also families to visit that site to actually start to understand what the Child Safe Standards are actually about.

Angela

Yeah, and similar we’re referring staff to the resources and helping them to build their capability. And that's actually across our whole organisation s o that's everything from our finance team and people and culture team to actual delivery staff as well, understanding what the organisation's obligations are as well. And they've found particularly the videos very useful at explaining different aspects of the scheme.

Simon

I mean obviously we're working with the ECE directorate at the moment to provide specific resources for your sector so in a short amount of time we're going to have things like eLearning videos and animations and other resources as well that people can access and all for free. Question for Meg and Angela: if there are educators listening and they have concerns about something happening in their practice, what advice would you give them?

Angela

I would always advise that they should first try and talk to someone in the management of their program. If they're feeling that they're not being heard, then to use the referral pathways through the OCG and the NSW Department of Education, who can follow up on on any concern or inquiry that they have.

Meg

And similarly, in our information line where we support management committee and directors, we encourage people to really have a look at what is their concern based on, also what is the context, so that they're starting to unpack that perspective themselves, looking at the internal policy and applying that. Often we find that there is a policy or procedure there, but people aren't aware of it so when they do find something that they're uncomfortable with or concerned about, they they do need to be encouraged and be confident to go to those policies and procedures. And that may involve, you know, looking at external support to actually make a report or to unpack that information, but also looking at those environments where people feel safe to continue to talk about these.

Simon

And Brittany, can they contact the OCG if they've got problems?

Brittany

Absolutely. Absolutely. So we do have a function through our website where anyone can submit a report of concern. We have a general inquiries line that you're welcome to call. Or if you do have a contact within that OCG, feel free to email them and they can refer your question to the right place.

Simon

That brings us to the end of today's podcast. Thanks to Meg Mendham, Angela Gillespie and Brittany Taylor. Don't forget, you can go online any time and access free tools and resources to help children stay safe from the Office of the Children's Guardian website, just click the Training and Resources tab. Do you want to know how well you're doing with applying the standards? Why not try the Child Safe Self-Assessment? Managers and leaders can spend just 30 minutes answering a few basic questions, and then they'll be sent a tailored response showing what they're doing well, what they need to improve, and how they can access things to help them. Don't forget the Child Safe Self-Assessment and all the OGS training and resources, including the Safe Series Protective Behaviours Program for 2- to 6-year-olds, are completely free. The show notes will contain links to where you can find them. My name is Simon Luckhurst. Thanks for listening.