Child safety policy

The City of Sydney is committed to safeguarding all children’s sense of wellbeing and rights to reach their full potential and to keeping children safe from harm and abuse.

We work to empower children to find their own voices and understand that children play an important role in creating vibrant, positive communities, and are our communities of the future.

We recognise that disrespect, harm and abuse can have long-lasting effects on healthy development, and that these can lead to serious lifelong consequences. We know that abuse that occurs within an organisational context is not just a problem of the past, it continues today. The City of Sydney has zero tolerance of child abuse in our organisation.

We are working to embed the NSW Child Safe Standards into our organisational leadership, governance and culture and by adopting strategies and acting to put the interests of children first and keep them safe from harm.

At the City of Sydney:

− We want children to be safe, resilient, happy and empowered.

− We want children to be connected to each other, community and culture.

− We respect and uphold children’s right to privacy.

− We support and respect children of all ages, cultures, religions, education levels, children of diverse sexualities and genders and children with disability.

− We are committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, the cultural safety of children from culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and to providing a safe environment for children with disability.

− All allegations and safety concerns are treated very seriously and consistently with our robust policies and procedures.

− We have legal obligations to contact authorities when we are worried about a child’s safety, or where there is an allegation against one of our employees or volunteers, which we follow rigorously.

− We are committed to preventing child abuse by identifying risks early and removing and reducing these risks.

− We have robust human resources and recruitment practices to reduce the risk of child abuse by new and existing employees and volunteers.

− We work closely with our contracted service providers to ensure the services they are delivering on our behalf are child safe.

− We are committed to regularly training and educating our employees, volunteers, senior leaders and councillors on child abuse risks and obligations to prevent abuse and respond appropriately.

− We are committed to continually improving our child safeguarding policies and practices through scheduled policy reviews, audits and by closely examining our policy and practice following any child safety incident or report.

− We have specific operational procedures in place that support everyone working at the City of Sydney to achieve these commitments.

This code of conduct applies to all City of Sydney early childhood education and care services, libraries, community centres, recreation centres, pools, tennis centres and venues for hire.

It outlines the behaviours required of all employees when engaging with or working in the vicinity of children and young people.

Anyone using City of Sydney facilities or services must:

• treat children and young people with respect and value their ideas and opinions
• act as positive role models in their conduct with children and young people
• avoid any unnecessary physical contact with a child or young person
• report any suspicions based on reasonable grounds that a child or young person is at risk of significant harm to a City of Sydney employee or the Child Protection Helpline on 132 111
• contact NSW Police if a child is at immediate risk of abuse on 000 (triple zero).

Anyone using City of Sydney facilities or services must not:

• shame, humiliate, oppress, belittle or degrade children or young people
• unlawfully discriminate against any child
• engage in any activity with a child or young person that is likely to physically or emotionally harm them
• initiate unnecessary physical contact with a child or young person, or do things of a personal nature for them that they can do for themselves
• be alone with a child or young person unnecessarily and for more than a very short time
• develop a ‘special’ relationship with a specific child or young person for their own needs
• show favouritism by giving gifts or inappropriate attention
• arrange contact, including online contact, with children or young people outside of the City of Sydney’s programs and activities
• photograph or video a child or young person without the consent of the child and their parent/s or guardian/s
• work with children or young people while under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs
• engage in open discussions of a mature or adult nature in the presence of children
• use inappropriate language in the presence of children.