Child Safeguarding Policy

Brian Stockwell11:38

Sure. So, Councillor, I don't think that question is relevant to that matter. I think it's something we can do off. OK. So, we have got to move a motion to go back in understanding order. Do we have a seconder? Councillor Finzel. All those in favour? That's carried unanimously. Okay, we're back on then to discussing the General Committee Meeting minutes dated 13th of April, 2026. Do we have a mover? Moved, Councillor Wilkie. Do we have a seconder? Councillor Wilson. I'm presuming there's no debate. All those in favour? That's unanimous. We don't have any presentations, nor do we have deputations, so we move on to section 7, where item 1 is regarding the Council's child safeguarding policy, and I presume we have the Director, Kerri Contini, in support. Stop. Good morning, Councillors. Which I believe is Jamila McCoy, our inclusion coach and our manager of sport and active work. Who would like to do the executive summary?

So, this report seeks Council's approval to adopt the child safe guiding policy in response to new legislation obligations applying to all local governments from October 1st of 2025, including requirements under the child safe organisations act of 2024. Council provides a wide range of services, facilities and spaces that are regularly accessed by children and young people. Until now, child safety has been managed through existing governance, risk management and operational practices. Recent legislative reforms now require local governments to have a dedicated organisation-wide child safeguarding framework and policy. Proposed policy sets out a clear and consistent approach to safeguarding children and young people who use Council facilities and services. It builds on work commenced last year bringing Council's child safety arrangements together into a single framework that meets legislative requirements and community expectations. Queensland family and child commission have already recognised the approach that Noosa Council has taken in child safe practices including Council's leadership in implementing these new standards and requirements.

Think critically we've had individual facilities and services responding to the various parts of legislation and Council as an entity has not been identified as an entity that has to apply broad principles. The child safeguarding policy, the new legislation require names and requires Council to have in place policies to apply the framework so it provides a higher level guideline it does require some additional controls that we've all measures that we've not had in place before so for example it looks at the blue card requirements and it expands those blue card requirements from what we had previously not in a great way because we've always taken a very responsible approach to blue card and probably implemented blue card where we didn't need certainly didn't under legislation we thought was good practice what this also does is it increases our mandatory reporting responsibilities for a number of positions across Council where staff form the reasonable belief that a child might be subject to harm. Question.