In 2019 Catholic Education introduced the Child Safe Advocate role in all of their schools. The role has been put in place to ensure the safety of all children in our schools is maintained and to support schools with the administrative tasks that now exist, such as Working With Vulnerable People checks. As the Child Safe Advocate, I have attended meetings outlining best practice in the teaching of Protective Behaviours for students, been introduced to the Child Safety Standards that are currently being launched nationally and had an opportunity to look at policies in place to ensure the safety of all students. 

In Term Three our school will be teaching Protective Behaviours to our students using current resources from Educate to Empower Publishing. We understand that the content of Protective Behaviours can be confronting for some students and are therefore keen to ensure there is ample opportunity for our families to engage with the content before lessons are taught. To achieve this, we will also be sending out an overview of the program including links to videos of the books so that families can preview the content well in advance. The school will then elaborate on the overview by providing home lesson information each week in the newsletter with the plan to have students receive the lesson the following day or Monday of the next week. That way parents will have the opportunity to discuss the program and specific lessons with their children in advance or each Thursday night.

We hope this will ensure our students are given the greatest opportunity to learn about protecting themselves in a safe, comfortable environment. 

Luke Donnelly