Bring Forward Your Child Protection Training to Keep Children Safe

All around Australia, restrictions that were implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus are beginning to be lifted. Businesses are beginning to be able to re-open, working from home arrangements are being wound back and for many people, life is returning to ‘the before times.’ At the same time, this means that children and young people are also returning to schools, returning to early education and childcare, returning to out of hours school care, and returning to their extracurricular activities.

PCA does not wish to diminish the good news that is children returning to these services and activities, however it is important to keep in mind where children and young people are returning from. Some children have spent 10 weeks or more away from formal education and child-serving organisations which means for many of those children, they have largely been invisible to the wider community. And for some of those children, the only place they are safe and protected is in the very environments they have not been able to visit.

As children and young people return, it is more important than ever that staff and volunteers know and are attuned to detect the signs of abuse and neglect and understand their role and responsibility to act to protect children. Many organisations provide induction and annual or semi-annual training on their child protection requirements and expectations.  For those organisations, it may be worth reviewing your professional develop plans and calendars to bring this training forward if it is not planned for several months.

If your organisation is resourced well enough to host your own in-house child protection training on a Learning Management System, it may be as simple as requesting all staff to undertake the refresher before the end of the month. For other organisations though, this process may be more difficult and you may need to contact external training providers to book training and for the next little while, this training will probably still need to be provided remotely via a virtual classroom.

In some states, such as Queensland, the government department responsible for child protection may offer a limited number of free sessions to the community. These sessions are publicly funded and made available to the entire community. It is not appropriate or acceptable for an organisation to book out these sessions and prevent the wider community from accessing them. These sessions are great for small providers that genuinely cannot afford professional development or people seeking to do independent learning to gain additional skills.

For organisations which are looking to book child protection training, PCA offers a range of packages which can be delivered face-to-face (subject to compliance with restrictions) and virtually. We recommend our 2-hour Child Protection Training which covers:

• Prevention of abuse and neglect

• Recognising early warning signs and indicators of abuse and neglect

• The types of abuse and neglect

• Mandatory reporting obligations

• Responding to disclosure

• A brief introduction to Child Safe Organisations

This session is also able to be modified and run for 2.5 hours and include training on your specific child protection policy and procedures. For more information on PCA’s training packages, visit our Product Services web page.

In recognition that organisations are still recovering from the financial impact of coronavirus, PCA is overing a 15% discount on all ‘off-the-shelf’ training sessions, for virtual delivery, which are confirmed and paid, before the end of financial year. Training is able to be booked for delivery next financial year under this discount as long as they are confirmed and paid before June 30, 2020.

To find out more about PCA’s training packages, click here.