Processes for raising concerns and complaints are responsive, understood, accessible and used by children, adults, families, carers, communities, and personnel.
Physical and online environments promote safety and contain appropriate safeguards to minimise the opportunity for children and adults to be harmed.
Policies and procedures document how the entity is safe for children and adults.
This includes implementing an effective complaints management system, maintaining best practice records management, ensuring concerns are responded to promptly and sensitively, supporting victims and respondents, and managing and communicating risks across ministries. Creating and maintaining safe physical and online environments for children and adults at risk occurs when personnel are proactive in recognising and mitigating safeguarding risks. Putting in place policies and procedures that place the safety and wellbeing of children and adults at risk at the centre of our thinking is a focus of these three Standards.
—ACSL, National Catholic Safeguarding Standards: Safeguarding children and adults at risk, Edition 2, 2022, p.8.