Safety

The Anglican Church is committed to helping keep our children and young people, as well as their leaders safe. We want to foster best practice policy at all levels of ministry. It is our responsibility and greatest joy to foster church communities that are safe, welcoming and inclusive. We honour and respect all members of the body of Christ, and are called to ensure that our churches are safe for all.

Vulnerable Children's Act
The Vulnerable Children's Act, which came into force on 1 July 20, requires organisations to ensure that those working with children understand the nature of abuse and neglect.

All churches must now also develop policy for:

Defining and Identifying Abuse and Neglect
Dealing with Disclosures of Abuse
Recording, Reporting and Responding to Suspected Abuse

Each diocese is responsible for ensuring safe practice when working with children, young people and vulnerable adults. All (paid and volunteer) ministry personnel must have a thorough understanding of best practice their diocesan safety policy. Safety training for all leaders in general safety, boundaries, protection and abuse is required, along with a current police check (form below). All checks and training is to be repeated every three years.

Forms and information
How to do a safety check - Please contact your Diocesan bishop's office to get this processed.
Police Vetting Form (updated 2017)
Children's worker Safety Checking - Oranga Tamariki
Safer Recruitment, Safer Children - Oranga Tamariki
Working with children - Oranga Tamarki

Safety Resources
IMPORTANT: We are in the process of reviewing and updating our Safety policies and documents, including the ones listed below. We are working closely with with several diocese to ensure they have good safety structures in place. Please get in touch if you have any questions, and we can put you in contact with your local safety officer.

SafeHere
SafeHere (formerly known as ChildSafe) aims to improve the safety of children and young people in a range of organisations across Australia and New Zealand. Through Strandz, the Anglican Church has become a partner with SafeHere and we are encouraging parishes to consider using a safety management programme, one of which is SafeHere.

SafeHere includes both printed and online resources to help you manage safety in your parish or ministry unit for children, young people and vulnerable adults.

SafeHere works at a parish level and a Diocesan level to store information about staff, volunteers, police vetting, risk management forms for programmes etc. Go to the SafeHere website to find out more www.childsafenz.org.nz

Resources

Communicating with Parents and Caregivers
Keeping Kids safe online - NSPCC resources

Keeping Kids Safe
Keeping Kids Safe is the best-practice policy document for safety with our children and young people prepared by the Diocese of Christchurch. Keeping Them Safe is now used in conjunction with SafeHere.

Click on the following link to download the document. Keeping them safe policy. (pdf)

ABC for people working with Children
Guidelines for volunteer leaders, paid workers, and Parishes working with children and young people in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand. Provided as a benchmark to the seven dioceses in the Anglican Church in New Zealand and endorsed by the Tikanga Pakeha Ministry Council.

A project of the Anglican Diocesan Youth Staff tikanga pakeha 2004 and revised in 2008.
ABC Safety Guidelines 2008.doc (251.50 KB)