Safe Church Health Check
We have now had 19 churches satisfy all the requirements of the Safe Church Health Check and an additional 40 churches have submitted an application and are making final amendments. These are a diverse range of churches, including suburban, rural, regional, CALD, new, established, large and small churches but all share a commitment to Safe Church practice. We are encouraged by the commitment across our movement with nearly 200 churches who have already engaged with the Safe Church Health Check process by adopting policies and/or seeking advice about specific legal requirements.
Creating Safe Spaces
The Standards team are preparing for a meeting with all our Creating Safe Spaces presenters on 3rd November, where we will discuss some updates and improvements to our training resources. Would you please pray for our presenter team as they continue to engage via Zoom and to support churches in developing Safe Church practice? This is crucial but challenging work, and we appreciate the commitment of our presenters.
Extended WWCC
Working with Children Checks that were due to expire between 27th September 2021 and 26th January 2022 have been automatically extended by 3 months. This includes any WWCC that were originally due to expire between 19th July and 27th September 2021 and have already been extended. Please see the ocg.nsw.gov.au for more details.
NSW Child Safe Scheme
The NSW government is moving forward with its proposal to make the Child Safe Standards mandatory for all organisations working with children, including churches. The legislation to implement the Child Safe Scheme has already passed the lower house but was stalled in the upper house by the cancellation of Parliament due to Covid. The government listened to our initial representations and has now included sporting organisations in the scheme and removed mandatory guidelines. We have continued to make representations to members of government to ensure that the bill in its final form adheres to the content of the Child Safe Standards as developed by the Royal Commission and does not add elements that might adversely affect religious freedom.
More Insights: News can be found at https://nswactbaptists.org.au/insightsnews/#gen1kupdates