2021-22 Statement of Compliance
This statement outlines the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s (Commission) commitment to child safety, the outcome of the entity’s annual child safety risk assessment and compliance with the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework in the 2021-22 financial year.
The Commission is committed to keeping children safe and to promoting and maintaining a culture that does not permit or tolerate child abuse, neglect, or exploitation.
Despite having limited interactions involving direct or indirect contact with children, the Commission recognises that we all have a role to play in ensuring their safety.
Risk assessments
The risk assessment requirements of the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework have been incorporated into the Commission’s overarching enterprise risk management processes.
The Commission’s enterprise risk management framework is based on ISO 31000:2018 Standards and the Commonwealth Risk Management Policy.
Our enterprise risks are reviewed monthly and reported to the Commission’s Executive Leadership Group and feature as a standing item at the Commission’s (approximately) quarterly independent Risk and Audit Committee meetings.
Risk Owners are assigned responsibility for specified enterprise risk categories, which may include any potential contact with children and young people, evaluating any risk of harm or abuse, and appropriate strategies to manage those identified risks.
Our approach supports our leaders and their teams to identify any potential adverse events within the Commission, assess the likelihood and impact of their occurrence, and devise mitigation strategies in the event of their occurrence.
As the Commission’s activities rarely involve direct or indirect interaction with children our overall risk rating is low.
Education and training
Making information, education and training available for our staff is important in ensuring a child safe organisational culture.
The Commission aims to have a workforce that understands and upholds key principles of working in a child safe environment. This is achieved by requiring staff to regularly engage in a mandatory training across a range of relevant topics including integrity, the duties of officials and the APS Values and Code of Conduct.
Commission staff also have access to a wide range of relevant online training resources, including E-learning programs for aged care workers with modules on families and visitors.
National Principles
The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations set out a consistent approach for organisations to create and maintain organisational cultures that foster child safety and wellbeing.
The high‑level principles allow flexibility in implementation, recognising the variety of organisational types, sizes and capacities.
The Commission addresses the National Principles through a variety of mechanisms and processes including our risk assessments, education and training as well as through the terms and conditions of our delegations and procurements.
By implementing the National Principles, the Commission is aligning its approach to child safety with other Commonwealth entities and giving children the same level of safety regardless of which entity they interact with.