Child Safety Decision Making Model

What is a Decision-Making Model?

A decision-making model is a guide that assists an organisation to reach a decision on a particular concern. It provides logical steps for a team to make decisions and reminds the team of issues to consider.

A Child Safety Concern response is essentially a decision that an organisation needs to make about how it will respond to a Child Safety Concern. When used appropriately, a decision-making model can maximise the quality of an organisations decisions, and improve their responses to Child Safety Concerns.

Response Flowchart

We have created a Child Safety Response Flowchart for your convenience. It is a diagrammatic representation of the sequence of steps for you to take to assist your organisation to respond to a Child Safety Concern.

Response Decision Making Steps

• Child Safety Concern. 
  • Recognise.  A person recognises a concern.  This could be a member of personnel, member of public and can include children.
  • Raise. A person who recognises a concern raises the concern with the organisation.

• Initial Assessment. An assessment to determine initial responses to a Child Safety Concern and whether there is a need for further assessment, such as Child Safety Needs, Misconduct or Impact Assessment.

• Optional Assessments
  • Child Safety Needs Assessment. An assessment of a Child Safety and Well-being needs in order to create an appropriate care plan for the family and/or school. 

• Misconduct Assessment.  Assessment of concerns of misconduct of an employee or volunteer, to decide if an allegation of misconduct is substantiated or unsubstantiated.

• Impact Assessment.  Assessment of impacted communities and individuals in order to determine appropriate and compassionate administrative responses.

• Implementation. Implementation of any approved administrative outcomes.

• Response Closure.  Formal closure of a Child Safety Response. 

• Appeals.  Appeal process for people to appeal the outcome or process of a Child Safety Response.
  
  
• Response Review.  A formal review of an individual Child Safety Response.