Children's Safety Survey

The Children's Safety Survey gives you an opportunity to hear directly from children about how safe they feel in your organisation by measuring the following:

• perceptions of the culture and climate of safety within the organisation
• confidence in adults and confidence in your organisation to respond to their safety concerns
• things that help or hinder them from seeking help.

The Children's Safety Survey measures children and young people's perceptions of safety. It is an empirically validated and reliable survey tool that measures their confidence in adults and organisations and the extent to which they believe that their interpersonal safety needs are being met.

During the survey period, you will have access to real-time results. At the end of the survey period, you will receive a report to help you make decisions about how to improve the safety climate of your organisation. You are also invited to review your results in terms of how they align with the Australian National Child Safe Principles using a tool we have developed. Read more about the tool.

Scenarios as a tool

In addition to asking general questions about how safe children and young people feel, the survey also invites them to respond to scenarios describing situations where a child or young person may feel uncomfortable or unsafe. The scenarios describe interactions that might cause children some discomfort or 'set off alarm bells' or are ambiguous about whether a boundary has been crossed. They are set in education, child welfare/community services, sporting and religious settings - organisations choose two scenarios that suit their context.

Other features:

• scenarios include behaviours that are not explicit or clearly identifiable, building on our research that children and young people hesitate to report their concerns when they don't have 'concrete evidence' or are not good at identifying grooming or other potentially harmful behavior. Read Our Safety Counts
• organisations have the option to change the gender of the 'potential victim' (i.e., the young person) without changing the nature of the scenario
• only males are represented as engaging in the potentially concerning behaviour, reflecting the fact that the majority of child sexual abuse in institutions is perpetrated by men.

Below is a sample of two hypothetical scenarios that children respond to in the survey.

Education setting

Sport setting

These scenarios are abridged versions - click here to see the full descriptions and links to demonstration versions of the survey.

More information

Read more information about the Children's Safety Survey, our prospectus and survey results:

Children's Safety Survey prospectus

Children's Safety Survey results 2018-19

Children's Safety Survey results 2018-20

Children's Safety Survey results 2021

Contact us if you would like to help develop new scenarios. Or click here to register your interest in the survey and we will get back to you. You are also invited to review your results in terms of how they align with the Australian National Child Safe Principles using a tool we have developed. Read more about the tool.