Session One: Wednesday, 9 August, 2023. 9:30am – 12:45pm       Session Two: Thursday, 10 August, 2023. 9:30am – 12:45pm

If you work in statutory child protection, or with children and young people living away from home, this is a workshop that you cannot afford to miss! The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a significant process that led to the unearthing of key learnings about how to protect children from sexual abuse in institutions. The Commission established the risk of sexual abuse for children and young people living away from home can be only too real. To protect children in care from sexual abuse practitioners need to be knowledgeable about the dynamics of sexual offending as well as being able to assess the risks of sexual abuse across 4 key dimensions; and then implement safety strategies across the 4 domains of safety. The safety of children in family-based care is the responsibility of all professionals involved in a child’s life. Practitioners need to know what they are looking for and must have an openness to seeing it.

In this workshop you will learn about the dynamics of child sexual offending, the 3 typologies of offenders, the process of child grooming and the 4 dimensions of risk and safety for child sexual abuse when children live away from home. Practitioners will walk away from this workshop feeling empowered about how to strengthen the safety of children in the family-based care context.

Who should attend: Foster and Kinship Care Support Workers, out-of-home care workers, Specialist OOHC workers, Residential Youth Workers, Statutory Child Protection Workers, Team Leaders and any professional connected with family-based care.