Link – Protecting children from abuse in organisations needs leadership and cultural change
This seems important-
“There is an important message we should be hearing from the research published by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: leaders play a vital role in keeping children safe in their organisations.
But this message isn’t getting the attention it deserves, from the media or organisational leaders. Instead, we hear about expanding screening processes.”
I see this with communities and parent groups just as much as we see it with organizations that cater to kids. The instinct is to “weed out” the bad people, but there’s absolutely no way to do that. Wouldn’t we be better off creating an atmosphere that simply makes it more difficult for it to happen? This article talks about things like creating an environment where being alone with a kid would be frowned upon, etc. I think we’d do well to expand this thought process out to our families and communities. Make it less about screening out the bad people who we already know about, and more about creating an atmosphere where it’s difficult for any adult to get access to kids, difficult to groom kids, and easy for kids to talk about anything that makes them uncomfortable. Make it likely that an offender would get caught, and you’ll have less offending.
Seems logical to me.
