Keep children in faith-based communities safe
Take the stress out of verifying volunteers, lay leaders and clergy Working with Children Checks. Remove uncertainty by automating verifications to keep your faith-based community or institution compliant.
Faith-based organisations across Australia continue to play a huge role in caring for the most vulnerable in our society.
Faith organisations in Australia represent at least 30 per cent of our civic society, according to the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC).
Australia has better safeguarding structures than many nations. Yet we still have an outrageous problem.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed two critical areas of concern that the Working With Children Check seeks to address amongst leaders and participants in faith communities:
- The need to change the culture from “Child sexual abuse could never happen in my faith community” to “Child sexual abuse can and does happen in faith-based communities, and everyone needs to be mindful of preventing it and ready to report it”.
- The need to remove “blocks” when somebody raises a concern with a faith leader and that leader is either not mindful of the possibility of child sexual abuse occurring, perhaps even disbelieving about this or doesn’t believe it is their responsibility to take the concern further.
This is why all appointed faith leaders, staff, and volunteers in churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, and organisations have Working With Children Checks.
Australian state governments are seeking to both broaden awareness of child sexual abuse and assist individual faith leaders at all levels of authority in taking responsibility to report concerns, suspicions or known child sexual abuse.
Faith-based organisations may be aware of these requirements and check before a leader or volunteer is appointed. Some organisations may even verify accreditations before they expire, but the verification process is typically manual, time-consuming and happens inconsistently. Oho proactively validates accreditations every week so people with newly revoked or expired certifications are flagged and won’t be involved weeks and months later.
Faith leaders set the example in what they do or don’t put in place to make their faith community safe.
As a leader of a faith-based organisation, you will know your legal obligations to ensure children are protected from harm at your events.
More importantly, the “why” for what you do is likely a heart for loving families. Oho ensures you continually create the safest possible spaces where each child can thrive.
Certification processes for working with children suffer from various shortcomings that can lead to unsafe people being involved in your children’s activities.
Active monitoring with Oho means weekly verification of these certifications and rapid notification of accreditation changes. You can sync this information with your people system in a sensitive manner to ensure that the right people are alerted, and those involved are protected.
88% of parents support a technological solution that could help monitor and alert service providers in due time (according to The Australian Child Safety Check Study).
