CHILD SAFETY STANDARDS FOR CONGREGATIONS
Frequently Asked Questions
General
There are many reasons why the Child Safety Standards (CSS) are important:
- When we care for children and keep them safe, we are following Christ’s mandate. We must always remember that children bring their own unique vulnerabilities, and they rely on safe adults and protective cultures to keep them safe. Keeping safe is not something that children can reliably do on their own.
- We have a synodical responsibility to protect and care for our children. Our LCA Synod has acknowledged that children are a precious gift from God; they are to be nourished and nurtured in their spiritual life within the church; their needs must be considered by all boards, councils and committees; and they are to be cared for and protected by maintaining and promoting a culture of safety in all areas of the church, congregation and its activities. In addition, the objects of the constitution of the church include a requirement that children are to be protected from all physical, psychological, sexual and spiritual abuse.
- We also have multiple legal responsibilities relating to child safety. We have a duty of care to keep children safe, and this duty of care sits with our church councils and leadership teams. We are also required to abide by various laws in each jurisdiction that relate to mandatory reporting, failure to report, failure to protect, reportable conduct and working with children type checks.
- And finally, we have important regulatory responsibilities in relation to compliance with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations across each of our Australian jurisdictions.
Yes, all congregations of the LCA in Australia that have children participating in regular worship, prayer, children’s ministry or any other activities involving children are expected to complete a Child Safety Self-Assessment and submit a Child Safety Standards Action Plan once every three years. If you do not have children in regular attendance, you may be eligible to fill out a Child Safety ‘No Children’ Assurance. Please check with your Professional Standards team or email css@lca.org.au
No, congregations that do not have children in regular attendance are currently not required to do a Child Safety Self-Assessment or prepare a Child Safety Standards Action Plan. Instead, congregations without children are asked to provide an assurance that they appreciate the special vulnerabilities of children, that they understand the importance of the CSS and their responsibilities to keep children safe and, should their circumstances change, that they will commit to implementing the standards in their congregation.
If you are unsure whether your congregation fits this category, and you need clarification, please contact the Professional Standards team or email css@lca.org.au
The Child Safety ‘No Children’ Assurance can be completed through the online portal on the CSS webpage.
You need to complete a Child Safety Self-Assessment and prepare a Child Safety Standards Action Plan for your congregation once every three years by the due date set by the LCA Churchwide Office.
The council or leadership team plays an important role in successfully implementing the Child Safety Standards in your congregation or parish.
To fulfil the requirements of Standard 1, strive to establish a child-safe culture within your governance and leadership teams, as well as across your congregation or parish. One way you can demonstrate this is by positively embracing the Child Safety Standards and viewing this work as an important part of your mission and ministry with children and families.
This means that our councils and leadership teams must do everything possible to model a child-safe culture by communicating child-safe messages and implementing child-safe practices.
This is up to you, and it very much depends on what will work best for your parish and its congregations.
You may decide to undertake a combined Self-Assessment of all congregations and prepare one Child Safety Standards Action Plan for the parish as a whole. If you choose this approach, your assessor would report to your parish council or leadership team who would then, in turn, take responsibility for developing and approving the Child Safety Standards Action Plan. The parish council would also take primary responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the plan and its regular review.
However, you may decide that your congregations are quite distinct, with diverse needs and differing demographics. In this situation, you would probably be best placed to conduct separate Self-Assessments and prepare separate Child Safety Standards Action Plans for each of your congregations.
Or you may decide to do a combination of the above.
You may also decide to appoint separate assessors for each of the congregations or, alternatively, appoint the same assessor across all congregations.
It really is up to you to tailor the process to best suit the needs of your parish and congregations.
We suggest you discuss it at your parish council and congregational council meetings before you make the decision.
Also, don’t forget that you can always contact Professional Standards to talk it through.
This is a learning process for your congregation designed to help you do two things:
- identify how well you are going
- develop a plan to help you progress.
So, with this in mind, we have a two-step process:
- a Child Safety Self-Assessment to help you understand your strengths and identify where there might be gaps
- a Child Safety Standards Action Plan to help you identify actions to fill those gaps.
Then, there is, of course, also stage three, where you put your plan into action!
This may happen from time to time – we apologise and will try to fix it quickly.
Please give us a call or an email to let us know so we can get on top of this.
Call 0491 011 643 or email css@lca.org.au
Safe Church Training and the Child Safety Standards are complementary to each other. Completing the requirements for both of these will help your congregation to be a safe and welcoming place for all the children in your congregation as well as for any other vulnerable members.
It is important to undergo the Self-Assessment task every three years.
This is because things will have changed since your last Self-Assessment, such as changes to staffing, volunteers, members and attendance. In addition, your child safety priorities may be quite different now, particularly if you have completed many of the actions from your previous Child Safety Standards Action Plan.
Also, a new assessor may bring fresh eyes to your congregation’s work and may notice further areas for improvement.
We hope so. Just like your Self-Assessment has highlighted areas where your congregation has gaps and priorities, we are learning more about how this process might be improved to better support each congregation. We are continuing to spend some time refining the process.
We hope not – this would be very sad. After all, Matthew 19:14 encourages us to not hinder our children coming to Jesus – he really wants to be accessible to all. Children bring a unique energy to the church, which can be such a blessing.
It is important to remember that the Self-Assessment will not be a lot of work if your congregation is small and/or if you don’t have many children attending or any children’s programs.
No, not at the moment – we are waiting for further news following the New Zealand Royal Commission, so you do not need to do a Self-Assessment or Child Safety Standards Action Plan for now. However, if you would like to complete a Child Safety Self-Assessment to see how your congregation is going, and then prepare a Child Safety Standards Action Plan, you are most welcome to use these resources. Contact Professional Standards Officer Denise Muschamp at pso@lutheran.org.nz if you have any questions.
Yes, you are correct, the LCA Child Safety Standards are different in their wording and style from various state-based child-safe standards. This is because we have tried to tailor the LCA standards to the faith-based, and volunteer-based context. We have also tried to keep their implementation simple and user-friendly by adopting a self-assessment, learning-based approach, and not seeking a rigorous evidence base at the congregational level.
For now, we encourage you and your congregation to focus on the Child Safety Standards – the Self-Assessment, Child Safety Standards Action Plan and its implementation. We believe this will cover the ground required for fulfilling your state’s child-safe standards, despite the differences in order and wording. We will review the Child Safety Standards regularly to ensure they align with each state and territory’s requirements.
In updating the Child Safety Standards, we have considered the wording of these state-based standards. There are now additional elements in the Child Safety Standards, which specifically address ways to improve safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait children. We will continue to monitor how the Child Safety Standards measure up in each state and territory and keep you informed.
The Self-Assessment
Remember, this is not an audit. It is a learning process for you to self-assess your congregation’s progress towards becoming a child-safe congregation. Having an external person do this is less likely to be helpful to the congregation and less likely to create a sense of ownership of the things you find and the actions you agree to.
Also remember that because this is a learning exercise and not an audit, it is not a test. Your Self-Assessment findings will not be scrutinised by the district or churchwide teams. In addition, the data from your Child Safety Standards Action Plan is your information for you to embrace and implement. At the district and churchwide level, this information will only be used to identify trends, changes and progress at the district and churchwide levels.
We could try to find someone for you, but because this is a learning exercise for your congregation, it is much better if you can find someone from within your congregation to do the Self-Assessment.
If you are lucky enough to have people in your congregation with professional skills who may have worked in areas like teaching, law, health and safety, social work, or business management, perhaps approach them to see if they might be interested in donating their skills for the Self-Assessment. They may be people who don’t often volunteer but are attracted to a short and defined task.
Yes, absolutely.
Having more than one assessor or even a group of assessors allows you to discuss things, share ideas and share the load. It is also supportive and collaborative.
We have lots of tips for you. Please refer to the Self-Assessment and Child Safety Standards Action Plan Guidelines, which can be found on the CSS webpage. You will also find ideas in Suggestions and Tips for Child Safety Assessors and the Self-Assessment video.
Our most important tip is to remember that you are just gathering information and making suggestions. You don’t have to get everything right, be the expert, or have all the answers. It is a learning exercise for you, your leadership team, and your congregation as a whole.
So, keep it simple!
Our second most important tip is to consider doing Level 1 Safe Church Training and maybe even Level 2. This will help you be familiar with the LCA policies and procedures and language used within the Child Safety Standards. And finally, don’t be afraid to contact us if you have any queries at all!
If you are serving the church as an assessor and doing your best to fulfil the role properly, it is difficult to see how this could get you into any kind of legal trouble. As you gather and collate information about your congregation for the assessment, you may become aware that the congregation has a long way to go to meet the requirements of the Child Safety Standards. Please remember that you are not personally responsible for what you find or how the leadership responds to the assessment. However, it is important that your assessment is as accurate as you can possibly make it. So, if you find anything that worries or concerns you, don’t be afraid to provide a low rating. It is also recommended that you add your own comments to inform the leadership about exactly what you think needs to be addressed.
Your congregation’s leadership is already responsible for all aspects of safety in the congregation. The Self-Assessment is a good tool to highlight areas that may need improving and for the leadership team to prioritise actions that need to be taken immediately, for example, putting ministry activity on hold where the leaders require working with children type checks but do not yet have them. In any future legal action involving your congregation, the Self-Assessment should be seen as a positive step towards improving safety.
Ask your council and pastor to help you by promoting the Self-Assessment throughout the congregation. It is important that everyone knows that the Self-Assessment is happening and what to expect. They also need to know about you – who you are and what you will be doing.
The leadership team has an important role in keeping the congregation informed about Child Safety Standards – and about why a Self-Assessment is helpful, what is involved and what to expect.
As a member of the leadership team, there are many ways that you can let your congregation know – via your bulletins or newsletters, your webpage if you have one, or your social media pages, during worship, or on the noticeboards.
You may wish to support the assessor by asking the congregation to pray for the assessor as they go about this important task.
You could also ask Sunday school teachers and youth leaders to communicate this process to their ministry groups and provide assistance to the assessor by facilitating the conversations that need to happen.
The council or leadership team should take responsibility for appointing an assessor, supporting the assessor, and informing the congregation.
Please refer to the Child Safety Self-Assessment and Child Safety Standards Action Plan guidelines located here on the Child Safety Standards webpage for more information and tips for chairs and leadership team members.
We have tried to make the online portal as simple and user-friendly as possible.
Once you have gathered all your Self-Assessment information, give the online assessment tool a go – hopefully, you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to fill in.
To help you as you prepare your Self-Assessment, we have developed a 'Notetaker'. This is a Word version of the Self-Assessment tool, which you can print out and scribble on while you do your interviews. You can also use it on your laptop if you wish. You can find the Notetaker here on the Self-Assessment Guidelines webpage.
Once you have finished all your conversations with key people and have all the information you need, you can enter the information into the online portal.
Remember, the more information you provide in your Self-Assessment and the better the quality of your proposed actions, the better the quality of the initial plan will be.
Once the assessor has completed the Self-Assessment online and pressed ‘Next’, all your Self-Assessment information will be emailed as a PDF to the council chair and the assessor.
The Self-Assessment information is not emailed to the district or churchwide offices. It only goes to the chair and the assessor.
Also remember, as the assessor, you don’t have to complete the Self-Assessment in the online portal in one sitting. You can enter your information in stages as you gather it and save your information for later using the ‘Save and Continue Later’ function. This will email you a link to use to access your partially completed form.
As the assessor, you should receive an email with a copy of the Self-Assessment immediately after you press ‘Next’. It is a good idea to check your junk mail folder first. If you still cannot find the email, contact the CSS Implementation Support Officer (0491 011 643 or css@lca.org.au), and we will try to retrieve your information. Alternatively, go to the top black bar on the LCA website and select IT Help; you can then submit a ticket to the IT team requesting support.
We are working on creating this resource; it is coming soon. In the meantime, you will find some ideas in the LCANZ Learning Hub and the videos on the Child Safety Standards webpage.
Our CSS Implementation Support Officer may be able to help you by updating your link. Please email css@lca.org.au or call 0491 011 643, and we will see if it can be restored. Don’t forget to include your old link and the name of your congregation.
The Child Safety Standards Action Plan and implementation
It is the council’s responsibility to develop the Child Safety Standards Action Plan using information gathered in the Self-Assessment.
It is important that the council scrutinises the Self-Assessment information, carefully considering the ratings the assessor has recommended and the next steps or proposed actions the assessor has suggested.
For more detailed information and tips for councils in developing the Child Safety Standards Action Plan, please refer to the guidelines, which can be found here.
Remember, this is a learning process. The rating is only designed to help your congregation identify your strengths and weaknesses, know your child safety gaps, and where you need to improve.
That is why it is important to be as honest as possible in allocating your rating – in the Self-Assessment and the Child Safety Standards Action Plan. Giving yourself high ratings in all areas and all elements will not be helpful to you, in the long run, if they are not accurate.
Yes. We would really prefer you to use the online portal. It is very simple to use, and it has been designed to allow you to enter your information quickly and seamlessly while also allowing us to collate and analyse all the data across all congregations. This, in turn, means that we will be able to prepare district-level and churchwide-level child safety reports for our district church councils/board and our General Church Board.
Importantly, it also means we will have readily available information for our regulators if we are asked to provide it.
Please check with your assessor first to see if they have kept the email with the link and can forward it to you. If not, call the Professional Standards team, and they will try to find the link for you or support you to get back on track.
Yes, absolutely! The council has the final say over the rating given on the Child Safety Standards Action Plan. Your assessor may have wanted to be encouraging or not too harsh in their marking. Remember that when developing your Child Safety Standards Action Plan, it is very important the council scrutinises the Self-Assessment information thoroughly.
Similarly, your council might decide that the assessor has been too harsh in their rating – again, it is important that your council scrutinises the Self-Assessment information carefully and makes good decisions regarding its validity.
Remember, it is also important to provide a rationale if changes are made and document these in the council minutes. There is space to record any changes the council wishes to make on the Self-Assessment PDF, and in the online portal, you will be asked to confirm that the council approves the rating or change it as required.
Not at all. A very low rating is a sign that your congregation has a little bit of work to do. Please remember a lot of this will be very new to some congregations.
A low rating may also be a sign that an element may be difficult to apply in your context.
Low ratings will also guide the district and the LCA about what resourcing and help congregations may need. This will shape how we can best support your congregation.
Several resources are available here on the Child Safety Standards webpage and at the LCANZ Learning Hub resources tab. If you are looking for something specific and cannot find it, why don’t you let us know, and we will see if we can help you?
We are also developing additional resources – watch LCA eNews for notices about their release.
It’s important to ensure your Child Safety Standards Action Plan is manageable and achievable for your congregation. You have a three-year period to implement the actions you have agreed to. So no, you don’t have to get everything done straight away or all at once.
We suggest you prioritise the elements you rated low in, and then stagger the rest over the next three years.
For example, if you discover that some of your volunteers are out of date with their Safe Church Training or haven’t got current working with children type checks, these are very important and should be prioritised. You would want to get these issues fixed first as a priority before you work on anything else.
If you have also identified that you want to make your congregation more child-friendly and talk to your children and young people about how they feel about coming to worship, then you might want to focus on these issues next.
Remember, as you create your plan, this should not overwhelm you or your congregation. If you feel overwhelmed, perhaps you have overreached when deciding upon your actions.
Try to make the actions achievable and remember to prioritise.
You don’t need to have 50 actions in your Child Safety Standards Action Plan. You may only have a few. This is okay.
When the time comes to do your next Self-Assessment, this will be the time when you can celebrate the changes you have made even if you have only moved halfway to where you thought you could be. It will also be a time to revisit your actions – if some are outstanding, it is okay to move them forward to your next Child Safety Standards Action Plan.
It’s okay to be stuck. Just email us, and we will do our best to help you sort it out!
Contact css@lca.org.au or the Professional Standards team.
Child Safety action plan deadline approaching
If they haven’t already done so late in 2024, all LCA congregations should now be undertaking a self-assessment and preparing their round 2 Child Safety Standards Action Plan.
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Lutheran Church of Australia
197 Archer Street North Adelaide SA 5006
08 8267 7300 or 0491 011 643
css@lca.org.au
