Child Safety at St Catherine’s School

Keeping our students safe is our main priority at St Catherine’s School and something that we can never be complacent about. St Catherine’s is committed to being a Child Safe School and we have developed policies and procedures to review and manage risk factors in the school environment. In addition to our duty of care to monitor the social, emotional and physical health of our students, we abide by the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to protect the children in our care.

Since the Victorian Betrayal of Trust Report handed down its recommendations, which included seven Child Safe Standards for all organisations concerned with children, St Catherine’s School established a Child Safe Strategy. This comprehensive document, written in 2016 and reviewed regularly, includes an explanation of the Victorian Child Safe Standards and overarching principles which were created to protect children.

Standard One states that schools must embed a culture of child safety in the school. The Child Safe Policy, Child Safe Code of Conduct and the School’s procedures for responding to and reporting allegations of suspected child abuse are outlined in the Child Safe Strategy. Child Safe behaviours and compliance are a feature of risk assessment, staff recruitment, induction and ongoing training sessions.

The St Catherine’s School Child Safe Committee is now in its third year and has representation from the Early Learning Centre (ELC), the Junior School and the Senior School, as well as the Head of the Health Faculty and the School Counsellor. A focus of the Committee is to address Standard Seven, which relates to the empowerment of young people to know their rights and to have an understanding of how to report a safety concern, or indeed an allegation, to one of our delegated Child Safe Officers.

Keeping our students safe is our main priority at St Catherine’s School.

The Committee has created a Child Safe Reporting Flow Chart and sought student feedback on processes such as the design of a Student Rights and Responsibilities Charter. Student voice is an important aspect of this process in order to best meet student needs. The Committee has also sourced appropriate literature from the ELC through to young adult fiction to educate children about their rights in an age appropriate way. The Committee also considers the needs of our international students and boarders, whose safety and security is a vital aspect of our duty of care. International students are issued with a Student Safety Card with 24 hour contact numbers in case they find themselves in need of assistance. Year 12 students Ying (Stella) Liu and Yuwei (Sophie) Ying have also translated our Child Safety Reporting Flow Chart and the Evacuation Procedures into Chinese to ensure that the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students are met. Other key committees such as the Security Committee and the Occupational Health and Safety Committee are also pivotal to our risk assessment processes.

In addition to the completion of the annual Resilient Youth Australia Survey, which provides us with data revealing that our students feel a strong sense of safety at school, we have designed a Safety Survey for students in Years 7 to 9 and Safety Map activities for the Junior School students. These surveys and activities will assist us to gain ongoing feedback on how we can best monitor safety in the School.

A sense of safety is integral to a strong sense of wellbeing, empowerment and connection with community but it is a basic human right, which must be provided for children. Presentations to the students cover the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to ensure that they have a fundamental understanding of their own rights.

How Parents Can Help

Visitors’ Passes
Visitors to the Senior School Reception will have noticed that a new electronic visitor management system is being trialled to enhance student and staff safety in the School. All visitors to St Catherine’s, including parents, sign in electronically at Reception to receive an appropriate pass. As part of our risk management procedures and Site Security protocols, staff have been advised to approach anyone without a visitor identification to query the reason for their presence in the School grounds.

Working with Children Checks
‘The Working with Children Check assists in protecting children from sexual or physical harm by ensuring that people who work with, or care for them are subject to a screening process’.[1] All teaching staff, coaches and volunteers are required to hold a current Working with Children Check as part of their registration, employment or volunteering requirements, this includes taking part in classroom or excursion activities. The introduction of Working with Children Checks for parent volunteers in the ELC has been a seamless process that has been welcomed by parents.

Breaches of the Working with Children Check requirement have occurred in the past when some Senior School students have ordered take-away food deliveries, including Uber Eats. This practice has fortunately abated and we value parents’ continued support to discourage their daughters communicating with a member of the public who has not met the Working with Children Check requirements during the school day.

Further information about the St Catherine’s School Child Safety Strategy can be found on this link. Your support of these Child Safety requirements is much appreciated and will assist us in our endeavours to continue to provide an environment where your daughter feels safe and secure, which every child deserves.

Ms Merran O’Connor, Deputy Principal: Student Wellbeing