From policy to practice in child safety: Making person-centred, trauma‑informed, culturally safe support the norm

No child or adult should be retraumatised by the very system designed to help them. But when services are stretched, frameworks are fragmented, and good intentions aren’t matched with practical supports, this is very much a risk.

The challenge is large in scope and urgent in nature. It’s estimated that one in four Australians aged 16 years and over has experienced child sexual abuse, a stark reminder that the quality, safety, and consistency of responses matter at population scale, not just case by case.

In September 2023, the National Office for Child Safety (the National Office) launched the Minimum Practice Standards: Specialist and community support services responding to child sexual abuse (the Standards), a national framework built to be victim- and survivor‑centred, trauma‑informed, and culturally safe. Nous was engaged to make those principles usable in the real world: simple to pick up, adapt, and sustain, even in the smallest services.

This award-winning work set out to change the reality om the ground: to take the nationally endorsed set of standards and turn them into everyday practice across Australia’s diverse service landscape responding to child sexual abuse.

“This project was about turning national principles into everyday practice,” says Principal Brenden Carriker. “When tools are easy to adopt, care gets better, faster.”

Service providers told us that they needed more than guidance: they needed ready‑to‑use, editable materials that would reduce administrative burden and help them practise the Standards in context. These contexts varied: rural, regional, and metropolitan; mainstream and specialist; culturally specific providers; variable bandwidth and staffing.

To capture the diversity of the sector, we invited participation via an Expression of Interest and brought together 59 participants from 52 organisations – ranging across jurisdictions, geographies, service types, and client cohorts – alongside experts, peaks, and governance representatives. 

Participants self‑assessed sector maturity against the six Standards and identified recurring pain points and challenges: uneven awareness of the Standards; limited time for research; challenges accessing training; gaps in cross‑service connections; and the practical difficulties of delivering inclusive services in regional and remote settings. Several also flagged board and governance‑level appetite, clarity around long‑term outcomes, and administrative load as additional barriers to sustained uplift in line with the Standards.

Co‑design and prioritisation led to a suite of 17 resources that translate the Standards into daily routines, supervision, governance and communications. Four streams emerged:

• Good‑practice policy guides and templates touching upon privacy, informed consent, client referral, and information sharing, kept deliberately high‑level and fully editable so services can localise quickly and reduce admin burden.
• A communications pack – poster, pamphlet, explainer presentation with facilitation guide, an animated video, a website landing page/sitemap and a rollout plan – that would allow leaders to brief teams, boards, and community partners effectively.
• Supervision and reflective practice tools, including an individual reflective journal and a group worksheet aligned to the Standards, to embed continuous learning and safeguard quality.
• A monitoring & evaluation (M&E) toolkit that provided step‑by‑step guidance to help services track what matters and demonstrate improvement over time (forthcoming, staged release alongside related materials).

Services responding to child sexual abuse operate within overlapping national and state frameworks. We therefore designed the toolkit to align rather than duplicate, and used plain language, adaptable formats, and a train‑the‑trainer facilitation approach so organisations can embed the Standards within the frameworks they already follow. A practical example is the communications presentation, which includes optional activities to help teams map where the Standards intersect with their existing obligations, reducing duplication, clarifying responsibilities and making uplift feel achievable amid day‑to‑day pressures.

Each resource was iterated with users through one-on-one usability testing. We clarified audiences, simplified language, separated bundled assets into standalone files for ease of use, and added facilitation activities so service leaders could run practical sessions in staff meetings without external support.

An additional objective for the project was to engage and consult with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs). Nous facilitated conversations with six organisations (including ACCOs and services with >80 per cent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients) focused on how government should engage and what supports would be most useful to enable implementation of the Standards. Participants emphasised culturally tailored tools, cultural supervision, relationship‑based engagement, and in‑person interactions with decision‑makers as critical for success. 

“The National Office didn’t publish a static toolkit,” says Carriker. “Instead, we co‑designed a living suite with the sector and built in feedback loops to keep it useful.”

Policy makers know that national reforms live or die in the details of implementation. The National Office is taking a staged rollout approach: uploading resources and running targeted sector communications and a virtual launch. Ongoing feedback loops are designed to keep the suite living and responsive. Early engagement is promising with over 120 practitioners joining the virtual launch to explore the resources: a sign of sector appetite to make the Standards real in day‑to‑day practice.

Scale matters. With hundreds of specialist and community support services operating nationally, open and editable resources mean even small, remote, or culturally specific providers can pick up, adapt, and use the tools immediately. This frees scarce staff time for client care while lifting governance, reflective practice and communication of the Standards.

The tools and resources developed through this project offer a foundation for ongoing improvement and adaptation. As service providers continue to implement the Standards, there will undoubtedly be new insights and lessons to be learned. It is essential that we remain open to these developments, continually refining our approach to ensure the highest standard of care. The journey towards a better future is ongoing, and it is one that requires the commitment and collaboration of all involved.

The work we undertook with the National Office represents a significant advancement in the support provided to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, helping to advance a key recommendation from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. By developing a suite of tailored resources and tools, we are not only helping implement the Minimum Practice Standards but are also setting a precedent for how policy reform and service provision can be enhanced through collaboration and innovation.

Others have recognised this achievement. In October 2025, Nous and the National Office were named Australian Good Design Award winners in the social impact category for the project, with the jury describing the work we did together as "inspirational".

“The real measure of success is simple,” says Carriker. “More victims and survivors experiencing safe, culturally appropriate, trauma‑informed support, wherever they seek it.”