The Y has always strived to be a safe place for children and young people

I want to acknowledge the incredible work all of our staff have done and continue to do towards keeping children and young people safe in our organisation.

The Y has always strived to be a safe place for children and young people, however out of the Royal Commission came the fact that we were simply not doing enough. Since 2013 the Y has learned, developed and continues on its path of ongoing improvement to ensure we provide safe places for children and young people. The Y continues to invest heavily in ensuring we find better ways to support our staff, children and young people and their families in our care and we are proud that we continue to be an accredited Child Safe Organisation through the independent body at ACF. 

It is because of our dedicated workforce ensuring they maintain their qualifications and training requirements, that they remain vigilant in regards to understanding and actioning areas or behaviours of concern through our extensive reporting process and being curious about how we can do this better that ensures we remain a Child Safe organisation. This is underpinned by an incredible leader in our organisation Geny Zambello who has taken on our Child Safe portfolio with a commitment beyond expectations. A true reflection of the work that we are doing is when another Council in Victoria contacts us for Geny to assist them with their Child Safe journey. We were also excited to have hosted our National Child Safety Team headed up by Phil Doorgachurn this week to talk about future work and improvements.

At the end of the day it isn’t about us, but about children and young people. We are excited that the Y has engaged young people and children throughout the country, both regionally and in the cities to understand what else we need to do to create a safe environment for them. It’s their voices that are the most important in this very important conversation.