Frequently Asked Questions about the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Framework

The Framework will add another layer of protection to Tasmania’s child safeguarding system, complementing mandatory reporting, criminal reporting, registration for working with vulnerable people and other sector registrations.

Organisations will be required to report to an Independent Regulator when there is an allegation of reportable conduct against one of their workers.

Institutions will be required to investigate those allegations and report to the Independent Regulator on their findings and next steps.

This conduct will include actions of a worker outside the workplace.

Organisations will be required to meet 10 Child and Youth Safe Standards and a Universal Principle embedding Aboriginal Cultural Safety).

This may require:

• internal education and training
• rewriting of procedures
• creation of new policies
• talking about safety with children and young people and their families and communities
• reconsidering the way ‘things are done.’

Organisations that engage in non-child-safe practices will be offered support from the Independent Regulator to fix those practices.

Organisations that choose to ignore recommendations of the Independent Regulator by continuing to engage in non-child-safe practices will risk financial penalties.

Information sharing barriers will be lifted to better protect children and prevent repeated questioning of victim survivors.

All organisations in scope will be required to contribute to the prevention of abuse and harm to children by complying with the Child and Youth Safe Standards and Universal Principle.

Most organisations will be required to comply with the Reportable Conduct Scheme.

The extent of impact depends upon what measures an organisation already has in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children and young people.

Some organisations will have many measures in place, in which case the impact will be minimal consisting of:

• oversight over their child safe measures
• an additional reporting obligation
• easier information sharing pathways.

At the other end of the spectrum, other organisations may not have seriously considered child and youth safety and in this case the impact will be greater.

It will mean that child safety will have to become a focus. Building a culture of child safety will require genuine and ongoing effort through training, policies, procedures and actions.

“It's a matter of culture change in the whole system.”

- Victim survivor of child sexual abuse in a Tasmanian institution.

They will participate in decisions affecting them.

They will have their rights protected.

They will be safer.

"In the past, individuals have been able to get away, scot-free, with not putting children first. But now, under the Framework, that’s going to change.”

- Victim survivor of child sexual abuse in a Tasmanian institution.

Existing processes relating to mandatory reporting, reporting to police and reporting to the Registrar of Working with Vulnerable People will still apply after the Framework comes into effect.

There remain several different legal obligations that require different people to report different types of child abuse.

This is because the action taken by police (to investigate crimes) will be different to the action taken by the Child Safety Service (to support families) and different again to the functions of the Independent Regulator (to oversee the Reportable Conduct Scheme to ensure safety of children in institutions).

Individuals will still need to comply with existing reporting obligations under the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1997, the Criminal Code Act 1924 and the Working with Vulnerable People Act 2013.

Where an investigation under the Reportable Conduct Scheme finds a reportable conduct concern about a worker was substantiated, the Registrar of the Working with Vulnerable People Scheme will be told.

This will mean that the Registrar can use this information to assess whether that person’s Registration to Work with Vulnerable People should be cancelled.

In some cases, the Registrar may be investigating a person for an act that is reportable conduct before it comes to the attention of the Independent Regulator.

The Registrar can update the Independent Regulator, who can then help the person’s employer manage the situation under the Reportable Conduct Scheme.

A person who holds a Registration to Work with Vulnerable People must still update the Registrar if they are found guilty of a relevant offence.

Each scheme has a different purpose:

An entity refers to organisations that must comply with the Child and Youth Safe Standards.

An entity means a relevant body who is:

In short, yes they will. All organisations that are required to comply with the Child and Youth Safe Standards (Standards) will need to have documented policies and procedures to meet the requisite benchmark of a child and youth safe organisation.

The Independent Regulator will however, provide advice and guidance on how all organisations, no matter the size, can comply with the Standards in a way that makes sense for them.

It is also important to note that the Standards are principle-based.

By that we mean that the Standards will be able to be put into practice in a range of ways.

This means that smaller organisations will be able to comply in ways that suit their level of resources.

In addition to the support and advice that will be available from the Independent Regulator, there are a number of templates and sample policy and procedure documents that are currently available on the national Child and Youth Safe Principles website.

Smaller organisations may choose to adopt these templates and simply modify them to suit the organisation’s requirements.

In relation to the query concerning the requirements for organisations to sufficiently meet the Child and Youth Safe Standards, other states such as Victoria and NSW have certain ‘compliance indicators’ that organisations must meet as a minimum, to comply with the Standards that operate in those jurisdictions.

The compliance indicators that operate in other states are based on the compliance indicators for the National Principles.

Like other states, Tasmania will also have compliance indicators in place that organisations must meet to ensure they are complying with the Standards.

The legal obligations that arise under the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Bill 2022 will not have retrospective application, but are instead designed to address the historical issues identified by the Royal Commission to ensure that those issues do not occur within organisations in the future.

Once the Framework comes into effect, organisations and their staff will be required to comply with the individual policies and procedures that are adopted under the Standards.

The intention of the Child and Youth Safe Standards is not to punish or criticise organisations for their past engagement or otherwise with child safety and wellbeing policies and procedures, but to encourage a cultural shift within organisations towards child and youth safety being of paramount concern.

It’s important to know that the Child and Youth Safe Standards are complemented by another key pillar of the Framework: the Reportable Conduct Scheme.

Under the Reportable Conduct Scheme, leaders of specific organisations that have a high degree of responsibility for children and young people, will be required to report to the Independent Regulator when there are concerns about conduct related to child abuse involving a worker.

Leaders of these organisations will need to report reportable conduct even if it happened in the past.

The conduct will not necessarily have to have occurred during the course of the employee’s employment at the organisation and may have occurred prior to the employee’s time of employment and prior to the commencement of the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Act 2023.

One of the key focuses of the Reportable Conduct Scheme is to place responsibility on leaders to report conduct when they become aware of it.

An ‘investigation’ can be described as an inquiry to discover and examine the facts of an allegation so as to make findings.

A reportable conduct investigation can be likened to a workplace investigation.

In your employment or volunteer capacity, you have likely come across a workplace investigation before.

For example, an investigation into an allegation of theft, an investigation into an injury that has occurred on a jobsite, an investigation into an allegation of bullying.

The Independent Regulator will provide further detailed guidance on carrying out an investigation.

An independent investigator is defined in the Child and Youth Safe Organisations Bill 2022 to mean an independent body or person that has appropriate qualifications, training, or experience, to investigate reportable allegations or reportable convictions.

There are companies that provide investigators for the purposes of investigations into allegations of misconduct.

The Independent Regulator will provide guidance on what appropriate qualifications, training, or experience those investigators should have.

This is likely to include experience conducting investigations involving children and victim survivors.

That should not be the case.

For example, if you were told of an allegation of misconduct by one of your employees or volunteer that they had commented on a student's breasts, you would ordinarily make inquiries into that allegation.

The Reportable Conduct Scheme is about making sure those inquiries happen, and ensuring they're done properly.

There will be an extra step in the investigation in having to inform the Independent Regulator of your findings.

These extra obligations are for the safety of our children and young people.

"The Framework is about putting children and young people first. Why shouldn't people be doing that?”

- Victim survivor of child sexual abuse in a Tasmanian institution.

An entity regulator is an existing body that is responsible for regulating or funding an organisation or workers within an organisation.

Once the Independent Regulator is established, the Independent Regulator will determine who is an entity regulator and publish a list on its website.

Government Agency can be entity regulators.

For example, it might be Children and Family Services within the Department for Education, Children and Young People in relation to an allegation against a parent in relation to their own child.

Other times it will be an independent body, such as the Teachers Registration Board in relation to an allegation against a teacher.

Once the Independent Regulator is established, the Independent Regulator will determine who is an entity regulator and publish a list on its website.