A new era in child protection
Beth Blackwood
20 December 2017
The release on 15 December
2017 of the final
report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
is the culmination of an intense work agenda involving the forensic examination
of historical cases of sexual abuse of children in Australian institutions, one
to one sessions with abuse survivors, community consultations and a targeted
research program that aimed to both explain that abuse and prevent it occurring
again.
The Royal
Commission is to be applauded for its work. Australia also owes a debt of
gratitude to the survivors who came forward to reveal the impact of abuse on
their lives and the lives of their family members. As a nation, our
understanding of and attitudes to child safety have been dramatically changed
as a result.
A sobering statistic
to emerge from the Royal Commission is that over 31.8 per cent of the more than
8,000 survivors who attended private sessions with Commissioners were abused in
schools.
Criminologist
Michael Salter has commented
that the Royal Commission’s final report presents a ‘a socially and
historically contextualised understanding of child sexual abuse’. He points out
that the work of the Royal Commission means we can no longer characterise child
sexual abuse as ‘the problem of a deviant minority’, where the only available
response is ‘to identify and incarcerate those responsible’. Salter notes that
‘the Commission has made the prevention and identification of child sex offending
a collective responsibility’.
The Commission has
also made explicit what is to be expected of schools – and
school leaders – in shouldering that responsibility.
AHISA made five submissions
to the Royal Commission on a range of key issues affecting child safety in
schools. As AHISA’s CEO I also attended two roundtables on child protection and
was called to witness at a public hearing on criminal justice provisions. What
has been apparent in all our interactions with the Commission is that its focus
has not been simply to lay blame, but to identify the practices
schools must change or introduce to create safe schools and the support they
need to help them do that.
Already we have
seen in schools a wholesale revision of policies and procedures, with changed
practices in relation to the education of permanent and temporary staff and
volunteers on child protection and mandatory reporting, in the education of
students and parents on child safety and in corporate record keeping. This work
will be ongoing. One of the messages for schools driven home by the Commission
is that child safety is not just about institutional policies and procedures;
child safety must be embedded in a school’s culture. As all school leaders
know, building and maintaining healthy school cultures demands long-term
commitment and daily attention.
It is clear from
its final report and recommendations that the Royal Commission expects
effective protection of Australia’s children to be its legacy and a key measure
of its success. The Commission’s examination of historical cases of abuse in
schools has ensured that the safety of students will also be a measure of the
success of Principals and a determinant of their legacy in the schools they
lead.
A pdf of this article is available here .