Safety Committed
Safety Committed is a campaign that encourages childcare centres in the ACT to follow best practice in prioritising children’s safety. This campaign aims to prevent accidents and injuries, by providing guidelines for how childcare centres can be made more safe.
Our goal is to make children in the ACT safer by reducing these hazards and risks.
We want to encourage families to start these conversations with their childcare providers, using these questions to guide their discussion of child safety. They provide a reasonable standard of safety strategies in childcare centres.
The statistics show that there are too many preventable injuries and accidents occurring in childcare centres in the ACT. There were 254 serious incidents in ACT childcare centres in the 2023/24 financial year, and the incident records released by the Legislative Assembly show there is a massive safety crisis happening in the childcare sector. With this campaign, we aim to reduce unnecessary risks that could cause injuries, by promoting basic safety measures for childcare centres. We hope to amplify discussions around injury prevention strategies through the Safety Committed campaign, and encourage adherence with the regulation and law.
Children deserve care that goes above and beyond the National Quality Framework (NQF), and the Safety Committed pledge guidelines aim to extend this to best practice. These guidelines may be used in addition to the voluntary Self-Assessment and Risk-Assessment tool provided by the NQF. We also seek to encourage compliance with the ‘paramount consideration’ – a legal duty that ensures children’s safety is the ultimate priority in the operation of childcare centres.
Safety Committed Guidelines
Download complete list:
“We pledge to be Safety Committed by prioritising the safety of children at all times in our operations. We pledge to go above and beyond the national and territory standards in our injury prevention.”
If your centre has not already been contacted about the Safety Committed campaign, please reach out to shop@kidsafeact.com.au for more information and to register your compliance.
To become Safety Committed, download the Safety Committed guidelines from the Kidsafe ACT Website. If you have answered yes to each question, please email shop@kidsafeact.com.au and confirm that you are in compliance with each guideline question. We will then add your organisation to our list of Safety Committed centres.
You also may use the Safety Committed badge, on the condition of continuing to be compliant with the safety criteria. You must immediately stop use of the Safety Committed name and badge, and notify us, if you cease to be compliant.
Safety Committed is not an accreditation. Regulation of the childcare sector in the ACT is completed by Children’s Education and Care Assurance (CECA) under the ACECQA guidelines and legislation. In addition to meeting obligations under the Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations, childcare centres also need to consider other applicable policy and legislative requirements, e.g. obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (ACT). Furthermore, Safety Committed is not an endorsement, recommendation or regulation. Kidsafe ACT does not actively monitor compliance with the Safety Committed standard and is not responsible for any misrepresentations nor conduct breaching these guidelines.
