Introductory Self-Assessment Tool for Organisations

This Introductory Self-Assessment Tool for Organisations is an educative tool that will help organisations learn about the National Principles and identify priority areas for improvement. The tool gives examples of what each principle might look like when implemented in practice, and prompts organisations to commit to taking concrete actions to improve their child safe practices.
How to use this tool

This tool should be completed by people in the organisation who are knowledgeable about the day-to-day activities, policies and procedures, staff and volunteer experiences in the organisation. These people exist at many levels of an organisation and we recommend that more than one person completes this self-assessment exercise, as a group or separately. If multiple people complete this tool separately, we recommend that you compare and discuss your responses to identify areas for improvement.

(Note: If you work or volunteer for a large organisation that provides a range of services, this tool will work best if you focus on a particular service or activity where individuals in your organisation interact with children and young people).

  • Read the statement and examples. You can hover over the words in bold in the statement to see examples. All statements are weighted equally.
  • Select whether the statement is true ‘always’, ‘most of the time’, ‘sometimes’, ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ in the Scale. You may find that some examples apply but some do not. You can answer that you ‘don’t know’ or are ‘unsure’. You can use the comment box to say why this is the case.
  • Complete steps 1 and 2 for all the statements
  • Once you have assessed your organisation against the statement, fill out the Next Steps box.
  • Fill out the Next Steps focussing in particular on the statements where you’ve selected ‘rarely’, ‘never’ or ‘other’. Fill out who will take these next steps and by when the next steps will be completed.
  • Use thea National Principles, their key action areas and indicators to help you consider future actions. Use this tool to review and monitor progress.

Completing this tool will involve making judgement calls about how often a statement is true, the relevance of the examples suggested and what future action you will take.

Principle 1: Child safety and wellbeing is embedded in organisational leadership, governance and culture.

q1.1 Leaders in the organisation model
attitudes and behaviours

What attitudes and behaviours might leaders model?

Leaders in the organisation:

  • Inform themselves about child safety and wellbeing
  • Make a public commitment to child safety and wellbeing
  • Put the best interests of children first at all times
  • Encourage all staff and volunteers of the organisation to value and ensure child safety and wellbeing
  • Support anyone to safely disclose their concerns and complaints
  • Are open to suggestions concerns and complaints
  • Respond to suggestions, concerns and complaints including by providing updates and outcomes.
that show they are committed to child safety and wellbeing.

q1.2 Staff and volunteers understand their
responsibilities

What might understanding responsibilities look like?

In the organisation:

  • everyone understands what they need to do to contribute to child safety and wellbeing in all areas of the organisation
  • there are named people to discuss practices and concerns
  • policies and procedures refer to additional information, support and contacts
  • responsibilities of all staff and volunteers are reflected in position descriptions.
for child safe practices and use this to inform their actions