Resources
A Guide For New Dance Teachers
This guide helps new teachers navigate their way through finding a job, interviews, contracts, pay, industry standards and much more.
What does it mean to be committed to child safety?
To be an organisation that is committed to child safety, many important steps need to be taken. Codes of conduct, child safe policies, risk assessments, action plans, training, robust HR practices and communication with children, staff and families to name but a few. If you are committed to child safety at your dance school, you are committed to putting the needs and safety of children first.
Values of a dance school
running a business that services children carries with it great responsibilities. To protect the physical, emotional and psychological health of young people we must understand how keep them safe. We must have a commitment to children and ensure we provide safe spaces for them to learn in. What do you value when providing services to children and young people? On what foundations are your business built?
What is the answer?
In an unregulated industry we are limited in references to answer the question, can i touch my students? However within the context of child safety it is important to always consider the child's wellbeing both mentally and physically. Rules and boundaries must be implemented to keep children safe.
The Victorian Child Safe Standards
The Victorian Minimum Compulsory Child Safe Standards are a compulsory framework that supports organisations to promote the safety of children by requiring them to implement policies to prevent, respond to and report allegations of child abuse. It is compulsory by law that all organisations that work with children implement these standards. All dance studio in Victoria should have implemented these standards into their organisations. It is an excellent framework for any organisation in Australia to adopt to protect children from harm.
The National Principles for Child Safe Organisations
The National Principles reflect ten child safe standards recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and are the vehicle for giving effect to recommendations relating to the standards. Every organisation that deals with children in Australia should have adopted the National Principles for Child Safety and implemented them into their studios. If you were to ask a studio owner that you work for about the principles, their response would allow you to very quickly ascertain if they know about them and have implemented them.
Convention On The Rights of the Child
Thirty years ago, world leaders made a historic commitment to the world’s children by adopting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – an international agreement on childhood. It is an international legal framework that outlines the rights of all children.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
The Royal Commission held 57 formal public hearings during which it heard evidence about child sexual abuse within institutions, from 1,200 witnesses over 400 days of hearings, across all Australian capital cities and in several regional areas. These case studies focused on how institutions have responded to allegations and proven instances of child sexual abuse.
Case study 37 inquired into the experiences of children who received dance instruction at RG Dance Pty Ltd in Chiswick NSW, and former students of the Australian Institute of Music in Surry Hills, NSW, between 2002 and 2011.
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