FACS has recently developed a comprehensive and practical kit that will be beneficial to every member organisation. The kit includes the most up to date research, practical advice and conversation ideas to help NGOs respond to child sexual abuse. It also includes a range of resources that can be taken out and used with children and families.
FACS and ACWA are joining together to ensure wide distribution and use of the kit.
The kit can be made available to the NGO sector at a very affordable rate through a bulk purchase.
In addition, to support the use of the kit, ACWA and FACS will organise briefings and further information to help NGOs use the kit with children, families, suspected offenders and the community.
ACWA's conversations with the Office of the Senior Practitioner leads us to suggest one per team as a minimum would be recommended. While it will be available online, it is not easy to read in online format.
Information about the distribution and briefings will be forthcoming.
Express your interest to purchase kits:
ACWA invites you to indicate the number of kits you anticipate your organisation will wish to purchase. To ensure we can accurately estimate the number of kits the NGO sector will require please fill out the form on the right of this page and submit by the 12th May, it is estimated that each kit will cost $100.
Details about the purpose and contents of the kit below:
The kit:
The kit responds to the Royal Commission’s concerns about the knowledge, skills and confidence of practitioners to recognise and respond to child sexual abuse.
The kit aims to improve the capacity of practitioners to keep children safe in a challenging area of practice where child sexual abuse is suspected but not confirmed. The advice provided in the kit is evidence based. It is supported by two literature reviews written by FACS: ‘Child Sexual Abuse- What the research tells us’ and ‘Child sexual abuse and disclosure- what the research tells us.’
Although the kit has been developed for FACS practitioners, almost all of the information is relevant to all practitioners who are working to keep children safe in circumstances where there are worries about child sexual abuse. The kit is particularly relevant to NGOs and other government departments who are working with children who are at risk of being targeted by child sexual abuse offenders, including children who are known to the child protection system, children in out of home care, children with a disability and Aboriginal children.
The kit contains an overview and nine chapters:
- Safety planning
- Risk assessment and casework
- Working with children
- Working with children who display sexually harmful behaviour
- Working with young people at risk of sexual exploitation
- Working with parents
- Working with the suspected offender
- Working with Aboriginal children, families and communities
- Working with the criminal justice system.
The kit will be made available on the FACS public website in a way that makes it easy to use, accessible and searchable. However, the majority of the resources are only available in the hard copy version of the kit. Evidence from the early evaluation is also showing that practitioners respond well to the hard copy version and find it easy to take out individual chapters and resources to use in their work with children and families. We believe that hard copies of the kit showcase the resource at its best, and are most likely to lead to interest and uptake.