The Office of the Children’s Guardian (OCG) is an independent NSW government agency working to create safe places for the 1.6 million children and young people across NSW.

The OCG’s role is to:

• promote child safe practices
• regulate organisations and people who provide services to children
• educate organisations about their responsibilities
• facilitate cultural change in organisations and the community to create safe places for children.

Building Child Safe Organisations

To support the development of child safe organisations, the NSW Government has adopted in principle the ten Child Safe Standards from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Royal Commission identified that the best way to keep children safe, is for organisations to build a child-safe culture. This is what the Standards aim to achieve. The Early Childhood sector may be more familiar with Child Safe Principles, and these are based on the same Child Safe Standards.

Support is available

To support organisations to build and embed a child safe culture, the OCG has a new team working with specific child-related sectors. For the Early Childhood sector, the contact is Rachel Norman.

Organisations can contact Rachel to seek guidance in implementing Child Safe Standards and provide important information about developing training and resources for their sector.

Additionally, Rachel is running information sessions on changes to the Children’s Guardian Act and will be offering workshops on the Child Safe Standards this year.

There is also free training and resources on the OCG website.

To get in touch:

Email: childsafe@kidsguardian.nsw.gov.au

Phone: (02) 8219 3600