Child and Youth Safe Behaviour Resources for children and young people

The Department is pleased to launch resources to help children and young people understand the behaviours that they should expect from our staff:

• We respect you.
• We put your needs first.
• We help you understand information.
• We explain your rights.
• We report concerns about your safety.
• We involve you.
• We use your ideas to improve.
• We listen to you.
• We create welcoming spaces.

Members of the public and Health workers can access a suite of free printable colouring in handouts and posters from our publications page Child Safety and Wellbeing resources and publications | Tasmanian Department of Health. 

Alongside these resources, the CSW Service has developed stickers and education resources for staff that will be promoted to health services from July 2024.

Project Background

This project supports the Department’s Child Safety and Wellbeing Framework (the Framework) and the Tasmanian Child and Youth Safe Standards (the Standards). Standard One requires at a minimum, a Code of Conduct is in place to outline expected behavioural standards and expectations of workers. 

This project and the above behaviours sit alongside legislated requirements of Department of Health (DoH) worker behaviour as outlined in the State Service Code of Conduct, as well as professional practice standards. They have been developed with input from DoH workers, children, young people and their families to articulate the behaviours they can expect from DoH workers as the Department works to being a child safe organisation. 

The CSW Service thanks and acknowledges everyone who contributed to this process, as well as those who supported the team in developing the content and design of resources - particularly the input of the Department’s Children and Young People Advisory Group (CYPAG), the Health Literacy team, and Futago graphic designers.

The CSW Service will promote the CYSB resources via their existing educational offerings to staff (such as their face to face and online training programmes), as well as through in-person promotion to individual teams (on demand) and hosting monthly engagement stalls in each of the major hospitals – the latter where members of the public and workers can access resources and learn more about this work.

Feedback from children and young people

In some of the new resources, the CSW Service has embedded information about how children and young people can provide feedback to the Department. All feedback received via this campaign will be handled within existing CSW Service business rules, including:

• escalating complaints via the Department’s General Enquiries Form | Tasmanian Department of Health;
• actioning any safeguarding issues as per usual Departmental processes, including fulfilling Mandatory Reporting obligations and reporting inappropriate/unsafe behaviours via the Department’s Reporting Inappropriate Behaviour Form
• sharing practical improvement suggestions with relevant work areas for their consideration.
• informing future CSW Service projects.

More information

For more information about the Department’s efforts to hear and learn from children and young people, see Engagement with children and young people | Tasmanian Department of Health

Enquires about the CYSB project and related resources should be directed to [email protected]