Safeguarding children

At Goodstart we’re committed to ensuring children can grow and thrive in safe learning environments where they can feel safe, be safe and to be heard.

Keeping children safe requires a strong child safe culture and that means investing in professional development for all educators and teachers. It means having educator eyes on every child in every centre every day.

Goodstart embeds child safety into everything from how we create our learning environments to how we recruit, train and supervise our people – we go beyond compliance, but we know we must remain vigilant and continue to look for areas of improvement.

You can learn more about the actions we take to safeguard children from abuse, neglect and harm on the pages below.

Keeping children safe and protected

Our commitment to safeguarding children

We’re actively implementing best policy and practice to help ensure children can feel safe, be safe and are heard.

Child Safe Standards and Reportable Conduct Schemes

While the National Principles are a nation-wide each state has their own approach to keeping children safe.

Child safe policies

Goodstart has a range of documents that guide the actions of every employee to ensure that children feel safe and are safe from abuse, neglect and harm.

Our Child Protection Advocates

Our volunteer Child Protection Advocates in all states and territories play an active role in safeguarding children from abuse and neglect.

Report a safeguarding concern

We encourage any concerns relating to the safety, health or wellbeing of a child or children at a Goodstart centre to be reported to us.

Safety Commitment

Safety starts with each of us - but at Goodstart it is more than that. Empowering all children and Goodstarters to feel safe and be safe is who we are and what we do.

Feel Safe, Be Safe: Protective Strategies

Protective strategies empower children with the knowledge that they have a right to feel safe and be safe all of the time and they can talk to a trusted adult about anything.

Requirements for visitors

At Goodstart, we take safeguarding children from abuse and harm seriously. This is why we place a number of entry requirements on visitors, students, volunteers and contractors in addition to state-based legislative requirements. Please note that you cannot be granted entry to a Goodstart centre without fulfilling the below requirements.

In the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Goodstart moved swiftly to implement the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations - as part of this every Goodstart centre follows strict policies and procedures to keep children safe and is proud to be the recipient of the ‘Child Safe Organisation’ award at the esteemed Queensland Child Protection Week awards in 2023 and 2024, for our Nominated Supervisors program and our innovative approach to our Mandatory Safeguarding Children Training Program respectively. In 2024 Goodstart was also a finalist in the SA Child Protection Awards in the category Outstanding Service Award – Sector Development for our Protective Strategies Kit and a finalist in the AITD Training Awards for our Mandatory Safeguarding Children Training.