Children's Policy Domain
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All SA Health policies that are overdue for review remain in force and continue to be applicable until they are rescinded or updated, irrespective of their scheduled review date.
Scope
The Children’s Policy Domain encompasses all matters relating to child protection and child policy within SA Health.
Purpose
The purpose of this Domain is to:
- Ensure a system-wide approach to effectively demonstrate the strong commitment of SA Health to children’s safety, protection and wellbeing and emphasise the importance for the organisation of maintaining child safe and consumer friendly environments.
- Ensure staff awareness of the requirements, standards and processes that apply across SA Health in relation to the safety and welfare of all children.
- Ensure the necessary frameworks, systems and processes are in place to achieve compliance that all staff and services take reasonable care to protect children and young people from a reasonably foreseeable risk of harm and that avenues exist for reporting and escalating compliance concerns, issues and non-compliance.
- Ensure clarity of staff roles, responsibilities, and performance expectation in relation to staying alert to the welfare of children or young people and compliance to safeguard and promote the outcome that children and young people be kept safe from harm.
- Ensure governance arrangements are in place to oversee systems that prevent and/or minimise the risk of any harm against a child or young person occurring and management of compliance.
- Ensure governance arrangements are in place to oversee staff members obligations to report and respond to all incidents of suspected or alleged harm to a child or young person.
- Ensure compliance with relevant state and national legislation and policy requirements to safeguard the health, wellbeing, safety and protection of children and young people.
Principles
- We apply a consistent system-wide approach to establish best practice and ensure all children have the right to feel safe and protected when accessing health services.
- We are working to ensure that all children and young people in South Australia are effectively and consistently provided with the services they require for their safety and wellbeing, thereby helping to provide them with the best start in life and a better future.
- We will influence organisational culture to ensure staff, no matter their role within SA Health, value children and their views and are committed to taking action to keep children safe from harm.
Custodian
Chief Child Protection Officer