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The New Child Safe Module for the Northern Territory
This guide provides comprehensive details about the new NT Child Safe Program. This information is delivered in the following sections:
Purpose of the New NT Child Safe Program
Demonstration of the New Child Safe Program
Purpose of the New NT Child Safe Program
The new NT Child Safe Program has two purposes: It:
- replaces the current small number of child protection policies in the NT Child Protection Program with a new Program containing a full suite of child safe organisations and child protection policies, to help your school comply with new Non-Government School Registration Standards relevant to child safety and child protection, including the requirement to implement the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, as well as NT laws relevant to child safety and child protection
- sets out all policies and procedures in a new, user-friendly format (the “New Policy Format”).
Summary of Updates
Compliance with Non-Government School Registration Standards (including the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations)
In November 2023, we sent you an email explaining that, due to new registration requirements for non-government schools, in 2024 we would be preparing a significant update to both the NT Child Protection and the Registration Modules in response to these changed requirements.
The new NT Child Safe Module contains:
- the new NT Child Safe Program: an entirely new suite of policies and procedures designed to help your school comply with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and other Non-Government School Registration Standards relevant to child safety.
- a number of new learning courses on CompliLearn, including:
- national courses on child safety fundamentals, child safe codes of conduct and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations
- two courses specifically for the NT: one aimed at staff (and, if you choose, volunteers and contractors), and the other aimed at school leaders (such as governing body members, your school’s leadership team and child safety officers)
- additional functionality in Assurance, including a Child Safe Risk Register and an Information Sharing Register.
Demonstration of the New Child Safe Program
To assist you to transition to the new Child Safe Module, we are pleased to share with you an explanation and demonstration of the new NT Child Safe Program by Ideagen Policy Logic’s Principal Consultant – Child Safeguarding, Deborah De Fina.
Click here to access the recording. This recording includes an explanation of important aspects of the new Child Safe Program and a demonstration of both the Program on PolicyConnect and the accompanying Learning Courses in CompliLearn.
Implementation Pathway
To help schools successfully implement the NT Child Safe Program on PolicyConnect, we have developed the Child Safe Program Implementation Pathway. This is a step-by-step digital guide which will help you to make key decisions about the who, what, where, when, how and why of your Program.
It includes:
- a detailed overview of the Child Safe Program and its inclusions
- step-by-step instructions for how to contextualise the Program
- suggested change management, communication and continuous improvement strategies to help you successfully embed the Program
- practical tips and advice from our Child Safe experts.
The Child Safe Program Pathway can be accessed via the Training Hub, our customer training platform, where you can access on demand courses and guidance for getting the most out of your solution. If you aren't already registered for the Training Hub, see instructions for self-registering here.
Alternatively, you can access a preview of the pathway here.
Additional Resources
Implementation Plan and Checklist
We have prepared an Implementation Plan and an Implementation Checklist. These tools have been developed to explain the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and other non-government school registration requirements, and how the new Program assists you to comply with them. They also provide guidance on additional steps your school can take to get ready for the new Program and to embed it in your school’s child safe practices.
Policy Audience Table
To assist you to understand who at your school will need to know about the new NT Child Safe Program’s policies and procedures and relevant aspects of their implementation, we have prepared a Policy Audience Table.
This Table outlines Ideagen Policy Logic’s recommendations about which policies apply to, or need to be understood by, the different categories of people at a school, such as governing body members, leadership team members, staff (or specific categories of staff), volunteers and contractors. It also outlines our recommendations about which policies should be provided to the Registrar of Non-Government Schools for the purposes of registration/re-registration (i.e. which are relevant for compliance with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and other Non-Government School Registration Standards).
Child Safe Online Learning Courses
The Child Safe Program Learning Courses are now available on your CompliLearn portal. Although these should not be assigned to staff until you have contextualised and launched the new Program, you may wish to assign them to relevant governing body members and your school’s leadership team, child safety officers and compliance officers, to help them understand the new NT Child Safe Program and some of the contextualisation decisions that are required.
New Policy Format
The aim of the New Policy Format Update is to apply a more consistent formatting approach to policy content while giving you more options to add and change content to suit your school. This Update:
- moves all policies that are designed to meet Registration requirements to their own section, at the front of the Child Safe Program, making clear which ones should be provided to a regulator and/or approved by your Governing Body
- organises your policy content under a series of clear and consistent headings
- enables you to add or replace some of the content under headings in each policy and procedure with your own if you wish
- enables you to change the names of headings (e.g. changing “Procedures” to “Actions” if that suits you better)
- enables you to “globally” remove some subsections from all policies and procedures in the Program with one simple action
- redrafts every policy and procedure in simpler language, aimed squarely at the people who must comply with it
- reformats the Contextualisation Guide so that you can clearly see which contextualisation is required and which is optional.
Other Considerations
What will happen to the existing Child Protection Program?
The new NT Child Safe Program will eventually replace your existing Child Protection Program. In support of this transition, you will receive access to the new NT Child Safe Program on your PolicyConnect site in addition to your existing Child Protection Program.
Both Programs will remain on your PolicyConnect site until you have finalised your NT Child Safe Program. However, the visibility of the new NT Child Safe Program will be set to ‘hidden’. This enables your school’s PolicyConnect Administrators to view, contextualise and implement the NT Child Safe Program while your staff continue to access the Child Protection Program.
Eventually, Ideagen Policy Logic will turn off access to the existing Child Protection Program. You will be advised before this occurs, so that you can download it as a PDF for your records.
In the meantime, Ideagen Policy Logic will no longer update the existing Child Protection Program should relevant legislation change, because it is not compliant with the new registration requirements. All future updates will be to the NT Child Safe Program only.
Policy Administration
As part of the New Policy Format, you are required to include the “Policy Administration” subsection in your policies and procedures for the Child Safe Program. You should complete the related Policy Control/Administration Information Context Key at the bottom of each Ideagen Policy Logic Policy to include relevant details such as Policy Owner, Last Review Date, Next Review Date, etc.
Changing the Headings in Your Policies and Procedures
As part of the New Policy Format, you now have the option to change the headings used in the policies and procedures throughout the Program. For example, you could change the “Procedures” heading to “Actions” if that’s the preferred terminology used by your school. To see how, refer to the “Setting Your Policy Template” page in the Executive Summary of the Program.
Removing Subsections
In some cases, a subsection of a policy and procedure (e.g. “Related Documents” or “Responsibilities”) will not be relevant to that particular policy and procedure. Where this happens, as part of the New Policy Format, the default content under the subsection heading will be “This subsection does not apply”. You can add your own content to these subsections. Alternatively, you can remove all of these subsections entirely, with a single action. To see how, refer to “How to Remove ‘Not-Applicable’ Subsections” in the Contextualisation Guide.
Other Contextualisation Options and Requirements
There are a significant number of new contextualisation requirements included in this update due to the significant number of new policies and procedures required to comply with the registration standards/National Principles. In addition, as part of the New Policy Format, there are many more contextualisation options available to your school.
These are all set out in the Contextualisation Guide included in the Program. For more information on contextualising Ideagen Policy Logic policy content, please refer to the articles below:
Actions Required
- Non-Government Schools Registration Standards: Review the Additional Resources (described above)
- New Policy Format: Review the following article in the Ideagen Policy Logic Support Hub: New Policy Format Update on PolicyConnect
- Please accept the Update for Child Protection Program subscribers on your PolicyConnect site.
You do not have to accept this Update straight away. However, any subsequent updates to the NT Child Safe Program by Ideagen Policy Logic will be queued behind this Update.
- Review the Update in your Child Safe Program on PolicyConnect.
It is our experience, from other jurisdictions that have implemented the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations or similar standards, that it can take schools three to six months to complete the contextualisation and implementation process and transition to the new Child Safe Program.
Please be aware that, to comply with non-government school registration requirements, you should complete the transition to the new NT Child Safe Program and turn off staff visibility to the existing Child Protection Program, by 1 January 2025.