Child empowerment

Guidance on Child Safe Standard 3: Empowering children and promoting their participation in early childhood services.

Early childhood

To comply with Child Safe Standard 3, you must:

value and promote child participation
inform children about their rights and encourage the importance of friendships
ensure children understand the complaints process and how to raise safety concerns for themselves and others
ensure children take part in decisions that affect them
ensure children take part in decisions that affect them.

You must comply with all elements of Child Safe Standard 3.

Child empowerment

Standard 3 focuses on creating a culture that:

values and promotes child participation
informs children about all their rights
encourages the importance of friendships.

Children should:

know about their rights
take part in decisions that affect them, and
be taken seriously.

Child Safe Standard 3

Read the full text of the Standard and its elements.

Children are empowered about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously

Early childhood services must comply with all the following elements of this Standard:

Children and young people are informed about all of their rights, including to safety, information and participation (3.1).
The importance of friendships is recognised and support from peers is encouraged, to help children and young people feel safe and be less isolated (3.2).
Where relevant to the setting or context, children and young people are offered access to sexual abuse prevention programs and to relevant related information in an age-appropriate way (3.3).
Staff and volunteers are attuned to signs of harm and facilitate child-friendly ways for children and young people to express their views, participate in decision-making and raise their concerns (3.4).
Services have strategies in place to develop a culture that facilitates participation and is responsive to the input of children and young people (3.5).
Services provide opportunities for children and young people to participate and are responsive to their contributions, thereby strengthening confidence and engagement (3.6).

Implement Standard 3

The way that services implement Standard 3 will be very different between:

outside school hours care (OSHC) services
services for preschool children.

All information and engagement should be age-appropriate. Even young children can be included.

You can use:

visual aids
posters
infographics and
videos as appropriate.

Implementing this standard includes:

engaging children and explaining their rights and responsibilities in an age-appropriate way
recognising the importance of friendships and peer support
enabling children to take an active part in creating a safe culture
ensuring all staff and volunteers:

are aware of signs of harm
offer ways for children to express their views, take part in decision-making and raise their concerns.

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Benefits of empowering children

Empowering children improves child safety. Children are more likely to speak up when they feel respected and confident they will be listened to. Their opinions can also help improve policies and practices that keep them safe.

Supporting friends and peers

Children benefit from strong friendships.

They often view their friends as their main source of:

support
information
advice and help. Support children to raise concerns about the safety or wellbeing of their friends.

Communicate in a respectful and age-appropriate way

Train staff and volunteers to uphold Aboriginal cultural safety. They should respect the identity and culture of all children at the service.
Train staff and volunteers to provide child friendly ways for children to:

express their views
take part in decision-making
raise their concerns.

Educate staff and volunteers about children’s rights. This includes the 4 guiding principles in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Inform children of their rights in a way they can understand

Inform children of their rights and special protections including the right to:

live and grow up healthy
have a say about decisions affecting them
get information that is important to them
be safe and not harmed by anyone
be treated equally.

Provide age-appropriate and accessible information to children, including:

how the adults in the service should behave
how to safely raise concerns for themselves and others
the Charter of Commitment under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
the work of the Commission for Children and Young People
the service’s Child Safe Environment Policy (Child Safe Environment policy)
the service’s Code of Conduct.

Empower children to contribute to service life

Display attractive and easy-to-read posters promoting children’s voice and agency.
Invite children to provide feedback on service-wide decisions. Take their views into account.
Involve children in consultation processes and tell them about their impact on decision-making.
Offer children different ways to communicate. This could include writing, drawing, or physical ways to communicate.
Discuss commitment to the child’s voice with parents and the child at enrolment. Remind children too when they start at the service.
Organise orientation activities focused on activating children’s voices.
Document children’s participation in activities that contribute to the life of the service.
Show that the service listens to children by acting on their concerns. Note that what might seem unimportant to an adult may be important to a child.

Empower children to raise their concerns

Give children information about the service’s complaints processes.
Offer children a variety of ways to raise concerns such as:

suggestion boxes
surveys or
talking to a trusted adult.

Make sure children have formal and informal opportunities to have their say on safety issues.
Highlight children’s views in your information for the community. Quote children where appropriate.
Create opportunities for all child voices by being aware of:

discriminatory barriers
over reliance on the input of child leaders.

Establish protective factors

Teach children practical protective strategies, including:

what to do when they feel unsafe
phrases they can use to raise an objection
pathways for raising safety concerns, and
safe behaviours when using digital technology and the online environment.

Provide a range of age-appropriate picture books, fiction and non-fiction that include:

children’s rights and empowerment themes
cultural and linguistic diversity
neurodiverse characters and people with disability
diversity in sexual orientation and gender, where appropriate.

Support all children to identify trusted adults and friends they can talk to about a concern. This could be at the service, at home or in the community.
Empower children with the knowledge that adults are accountable.
Empower children with the knowledge that children have a right to safety.
Provide contact information for independent child and youth advocacy services or helplines.

Strengthen peer support for safety and wellbeing - for school aged children

Display posters acknowledging sexuality and gender diversity. Identify safe spaces where children can go if they need support.
Discuss healthy boundaries for friendships.
Point out that the risk of harm can occur in:

child-to-child interactions
adult-to-child interactions.

the Bully Stoppers program may be relevant for school age children in OSHC services.

Further ideas for reflection

Are there any practices that disempower children? If so, take action to change them.
Do you provide regular opportunities for children to have their say about safety issues?

Are all children able to fully participate at the service?
Is your service fully accessible to children with additional needs?
If not, how can you support their participation?
Can you provide more opportunities to strengthen their confidence and engagement?

How can you encourage a culture of participation and respond to what children say?
How can you talk about child safety issues with children in an age-appropriate way?
Are all staff and volunteers confident to recognise and act on any signs of child abuse and harm? Provide support and training to develop these skills.
Do all staff and volunteers understand child rights? Provide support and training to develop these skills.
How can you help children:

support their peers
challenge bullying
challenge isolating behaviour?

Consider offering age-appropriate sexual abuse prevention programs for children**.**

NQF Child Safety Guides

The guides focus on creating, maintaining and improving a child safe culture in early childhood services. They include:

information on each Child Safe Standard
case studies
questions to guide reflection
additional reading and resources.
Download the guides and extra tools

The two National Child Safety Guides are the:

NQF Child Safe Culture Guide
NQF Online Safety Guide. There are also additional resources:
NQF Child Safe Culture – Self-assessment and risk assessment tool
NQF Online Safe Culture – Self-assessment and risk assessment tool
Child Safety incident response template – Responding to complaints, concerns, allegations and disclosures
Reporting and Responding Schemes tool. Download these resources at Child Safety, together with links to additional ACECQA resources about child safety.

Additional resources

Understand the Standards

The Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP) have information for all types of organisations that must comply with the Child Safe Standards. This includes:

CCYP | Resources and support for the Child Safe Standards
CCYP | Translated resources about the Child Safe Standards Note: information isn’t tailored for early childhood services.

Possible next steps

Read more about implementing the Child Safe Standards(opens in a new window) in early childhood services.

Early childhood education and care

Updated 26 March 2026

Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority (VECRA)

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Child empowerment

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