The Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) provides evidence-informed assessment tools to help your organisation measure how children perceive their sense of safety and how your workforce perceives their skills in safeguarding children. The surveys form part of ICPS’s ongoing Children’s Safety Studies research.

If your organisation wants better safeguarding practices for the children and workforce in your organisation, these tools can help:

• Children’s Safety Survey
• Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Survey

Access to the survey tools and support is subject to a fee and a sign-up procedure.

Children’s Safety Survey

The Children’s Safety Survey measures children and young people’s perceptions of safety. It gives you an opportunity to hear directly from children about how safe they feel in your organisation by measuring the following:

• perceptions of safety
• confidence in adults and in your organisation to prevent and respond to their concerns related to child sexual abuse and other forms of harm
• barriers that restrict attempts to seek help.

During the survey period, you will have access to real-time results, and at the end, you will receive a report that will help you make decisions about how to improve the safety climate of your organisation.

For more information about the Children’s Safety Survey, download our prospectus (PDF, 886KB) or contact us.

Safeguarding Capabilities Survey

The Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Survey (Safeguarding Capabilities Survey) measures the capabilities of the workforce – staff and volunteers – in preventing and responding to safeguarding concerns. It gives you an opportunity to assess the capabilities, behaviours and attitudes of staff in relation to safeguarding children by measuring the following:

• organisational culture and awareness of policy and procedures
• confidence to act
• attitudes to prevention and agency of children and young people
• situational prevention knowledge and education.

During the survey period, you will have access to real-time results, and at the end you will receive a report that will help you identify where you need to change policy and procedures and how to improve the conditions of safety for children and young people.

For more information about the Safeguarding Capabilities Survey, download our prospectus (PDF, 636KB) or contact us.

Children’s Safety Studies

Children’s Safety Studies is an ongoing research project. It examines children and young people’s perceptions of safety in institutional settings, and adults’ capabilities in safeguarding children in their work with youth-serving organisations.

Listening to the views of children, young people and the workforce is a central element in understanding how to improve child-safe practice. Findings from the Children’s Safety Studies research project will inform further research, policy development and child-safe strategies.

Background to Children’s Safety Studies

The methodology for the Children’s Safety Studies was originally developed to inform the work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It informed their assessment of the effectiveness of prevention programs.

In 2014 to 2015, we worked with our partners, Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology, to develop an understanding of how children perceive safety and consider it within institutional contexts. Together we developed and deployed the Australian Survey of Kids and Young People survey (ASK-YP) for the Royal Commission Advisory Group. Survey scales were validated by Monash University, University of South Australia and ACU.

The survey was informed by focus groups with children and young people. It aimed to gauge the extent to which institutions met the safety needs identified by children and young people. The survey was conducted online and completed by 1480 children and young people across Australia. We presented the findings in a report, ‘Taking us seriously: Children and young people talk about safety and institutional responses to their safety concerns’.

Read more about the ASK-YP survey