Child Safe Standards and the Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy

This is a short note to clarify the state of play as of June 2025 in Queensland.

The recent Child Safe Organisation Act (QLD) 2024 indicates the previous Working with Children (Risk Management and Screening) Act 2000 be renamed and the risk management element is to be removed. The Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy was a tool to be implemented every year in compliance with the previous WWC legislation. This was to be omitted from the WWC legislation.

The Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy had 8 requirements which, when used well, provided an opportunity to have a robust conversation across the organisation to discuss policies, procedures, practices, events, camps, carnivals and other special events. These discussions were particularly useful in identifying where children were going to staying over night or hosted overnight which are high risk activities to be considered in terms of child protection concerns.

On the whole, the Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy was treated as a static document that simply listed policies and procedures and some tools used to implement those. This wasn’t the intent of the legislation but it was mostly what I found when visiting organisations.

I thought the change in legislation would mean the Queensland Family and Children Commission (QFCC) guidance would replace the Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy with the new Child Safe Standards guidelines and provide a self-assessment tool as has happened in Victoria.

QFCC had provided useful guidance documents to support organisations to prepare for their scheduled compliance with the standards. In these documents, and based on current discussions, the Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy is to continue and be evidence toward compliance with the Child Safe Standards.

The state of play therefore – the new Child Safe Standards and the Child and Youth Risk Management Strategy will continue together.

If you would like assistance in preparing for the rollout of the Child Safe Standards, we’re here to help.

This is a fantastic opportunity to pause, review and refine the way all organisations create safe places, with informed and supported adults.

Let’s move beyond compliance to excellence.

Yvette