Child Safety Policy

MSA is committed to Child Safety:

• MSA has zero tolerance for child abuse
• MSA actively works to listen to and empower children
• MSA has systems including the Member Protection Policy (below) to protect children from abuse, and will take all allegations and concerns very seriously and respond to them consistently in line with our policies and procedures
• MSA is committed to promoting cultural safety for Aboriginal children, cultural safety for children from culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and to providing a safe environment for children with a disability

We ensure we maintain a Child Safe environment in many ways, some example of this are:

MSA has adopted the Australian Sailing Member Protection Policy - see below. This policy and our Child Safe Code of Conduct (also below) ensure we have Procedures for dealing with issues and concerns.

The MSA Secretary is our appointed Child Safety Officer contacted via minnowsailing@gmail.com to assist with any concerns regarding Child Safety.

All MSA staff performing child-related work have Working With Children WWC checks as do our Volunteers who work with Children. This is a part of the procedures we use to decide if our workers and volunteers are suitable for a particular role and we continue to monitor their behaviour around children.

Child-related work is defined as:  Work within one or more of the occupational fields defined in the Act where the contact with a child is unsupervised, direct, and part of a person’s duties.

We encourage all Volunteers to complete a WWC check – it is free for volunteers.