Dear Church Leader,
Thank you for considering this Safe Church Health Check.
Baptist Churches of NSW & ACT are committed to modelling the love of Christ by promoting physical, emotional and spiritual safety in all that we do. As part of this commitment, we have prepared this Safe Church Package to assist your church in becoming a place that promotes the wellbeing of all people. We strongly encourage you to consider the contents of this Package and to use the material provided to prepare your church for the Safe Church Health Check.
We recognise that the growing number of recommendations and legal requirements may leave you feeling apprehensive or overwhelmed. We are confident, however, that the Safe Church Health Check will support you as you navigate these challenges. Our heart is to equip and support local churches for ministry and so we have sought to provide suggested structures and resources to reduce the burden on you as much as possible. However, your local church leadership will need to take some steps to implement these Safe Church practices as appropriate to your local church context. We encourage each local church to delegate this important task to appropriate individuals. The church pastor is not necessarily required to undertake these tasks themselves.
In 2013, the Australian Government authorised a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission) in response to community concern about widespread reports of cases where Australian institutions failed to protect children from child sexual abuse. The work of this Royal Commission has emphasised that members of the public, children, young people, parents, carers, families and communities should be confident that organisations working with children provide safe environments.
The Royal Commission recommended 10 Child Safe Standards. The Child Safe Standards collectively show that a child safe organisation is one that creates a culture, adopts strategies and takes action to promote child wellbeing and prevent harm to children and young people. In February 2019, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to endorse National Principles based on the Child Safe Standards. The NSW government has indicated that compliance with the Child Safe Standards will soon become mandatory for all organisations that provide services to children, including churches. Accordingly, the Safe Church Health Check has been designed to assist churches to meet the Child Safe Standards.
In addition to potential legislative implementation of the Child Safe Standards, churches have existing legal obligations when it comes to providing activities and services to children and young people, including:
- Common law and statutory duties to take reasonable precautions to prevent child abuse
- Requirement to ensure that people doing certain defined work hold relevant clearance checks;
- Reporting to government authorities in accordance with their obligations, if any, under:
- Mandatory Reporting Legislation
- Reportable Conduct Legislation
- Criminal Legislation
- WWCC Legislation in NSW
- WWVP Legislation in ACT
The Safe Church Health Check is a comprehensive review tool which will assess your church’s Safe Church Practices against identified minimum standards for compliance with these various legal duties. Of course, mere legal compliance is not our aim, rather we hope to promote a culture that reflects the love of Christ, loves and protects individuals, and fosters missional engagement with local communities.
There are a range of resources relating to the Safe Church Health Check available on our Creating Safe Spaces webpage:
www.creatingsafespaces.org.au/schc
If you have any further questions please contact our Safe Church Coordinator Katie Watson on
schc@nswactbaptists.org.au
Rev Jonathan Bradford
Ministry Standards Manager
Dr Katie Watson
Safe Church Coordinator