INNOVATIVE MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE

EIRA CITY COUNCIL, CASEY CITY COUNCIL, BRIMBANK CITY COUNCIL CHILD SAFE E-LEARN PARTNERSHIP

Child Safe E-learn Module Development

Following the introduction of new Victorian Child Safe Standards, an initial group of 16 councils embarked on an initiative to develop a child safeguarding e-learning module to support their collective need to equip staff and volunteers with the knowledge and skills to keep children and young people safe.

Implementation of new legislative requirements often results in duplication of effort across the Local Government sector. The objective of the project was to establish an inter-council partnership to meet these new legislative obligations collectively, making the learning relevant to the council context, and reducing the resource cost of the update.

After quickly growing to 22 councils participating, the module has since been adopted by 34 councils, representing almost half the Victorian Local Government workforce, helping them meet their legislative obligations and giving people the skills to recognise, respond to, and report incidents, allegations, concerns, and disclosures of child abuse, harm, or neglect.

Initiated by Casey City Council, it was determined that the involvement of both child safe officers and learning and development officers from each council would achieve the best outcomes. A Child Safe E-learn Working Group was convened to undertake an analysis of training needs and determine the project’s plan. As the subject matter experts, child safe officers led by Casey and Glen Eira developed the learning content while learning and development officers led by Brimbank converted this into an e-learning format that could be applied to multiple learning platforms.

In a successful example of inter-council collaboration, all councils in the partnership provided feedback that resulting in a fit-for-purpose child safeguarding e-learn module written and developed for Local Government by Local Government. This initiative is a demonstration of how small projects and even small councils working as a collective can create large impacts across the sector. With the implementation of Child Safe Standards being a relatively new area of practice with many councils not having the resources to recruit dedicated child safe officers to guide their implementation, such a collaborative approach has been an immense benefit to much of the sector.