Mr BAYLEY - Thank you, Ms Jack. It mightn't be a question for you, but I am also interested in external providers being brought into schools. I understand that the Government has funded programs in every high school and in every primary school. In a high school its 'Consent Is a Conversation' program. In the primary school, it is Safe, Smart Kids and delivered by the Tasmanian Sexual Assault Support specialists. I understand that these programs are delivering myriad benefits, not only the educational platform and opportunity they provide but, being external providers, they also offer our children an alternative mechanism to report and discuss some of their experiences. This is proving incredibly valuable.
I'd like to understand some more about this and, in particular, the Government's appetite for continuing to fund these programs, given their success and expansion of these programs so they can be rolled out and touch more kids. My understanding is they're touching about 3 per cent of public schoolchildren at the moment. Clearly, an aspiration would be that it gets to 100 per cent of those children and that clearly is going to take additional resources. Are there any commitments around that you can give to the committee?
Mr JAENSCH - The safeguarding framework has been a very important development in terms of coverage. Every government school is part of the network. For context, the training and the contribution of the individual safeguarding leads in their own schools is critically important and the guidance, mentoring and leadership they can provide for their school's settings, staff, students and their school community is critical in each place. What's also important is the network that they form across the state with people who have had the same training who are working to the same awareness of signs of harmful behaviour, grooming and other matters.
Ensuring that we've got the state covered is one of the things that has protective value from some of the instances that have been documented through the commission of inquiry's hearings and findings, where in the past, from time to time, people who have been perpetrators of abuse have moved across the system, have not been tracked and have been able to start afresh in each community and do the same things again. I think that's abhorrent to everybody.
One of the strongest things - and why I commend the secretary and his team on their leadership in rolling this out ahead of the commission of inquiry's finding and our response to it - has been to set that net across our 195 schools and those settings so that all eyes are on behaviour, there's an informed surveillance of our sites and the people in them, and we are all looking for the same things. If there is a perpetrator who moves themselves from school to school, the same eyes will be on them and they'll know that. We want that to be known and we want to ensure that everybody in our school communities, including children, are empowered to speak up. To the effect that it has deterrent value as well as early detection value, it's an incredibly important safeguard.
There are myriad recommendations in the commission of inquiry about the things that we need to do to bolster and support that, including mandatory curriculum content relating to child sexual abuse awareness, empowering children to speak up, and ensuring they understand their rights and obligations to their peers and themselves to keep themselves safe. There are some very strong statements in there. We will look at all of those and how they work in concept and how we resource them adequately to do their jobs through normal budget processes but also through things like the child abuse prevention strategy, which will be handed down mid next year that will have budgeting associated with it as well.
Mr BAYLEY - I've got some questions about the tracking and the Teachers Registration Board that maybe I'll do in another round. In terms of those external providers and those programs, can you give a commitment that they will continue? They're obviously delivering a profound service and an educative role when it comes to those children and the forum they present to them to report. What commitments can you give to those providers that they can plan into next year and beyond to continue to deliver and expand those services?
Mr JAENSCH - A couple of those that you referred to in your question received some greater reassurance yesterday of ongoing funding for their important work. I congratulate them for that and thank them for the work that they do. In terms of programs that we have an existing commitment to that are working, that are pilots and that are scalable, certainly we will be looking for partners, the same ones that we have and more as well, to contribute in the future.
Mr BAYLEY - Given the statistics, there are victims/survivors in our teaching cohort and their engagement in this issue and the responsibility they are given in terms of child sexual assault within schools is and can be triggering for them. Can you give the committee and indeed victims/survivors some confidence that you have a mind to their safety and security and their occupational health and wellbeing, and that there are programs in place that look after victims/survivors who are doing really important work in schools as well? Can you fund some of these external providers to also assist with that teaching cohort?
Mr JAENSCH - Thank you. It's a really important issue and one that the commission goes directly to in recommendation 6.7 regarding guidelines and supports for victims/ survivors in our school communities, recognising that they may be students, former students, teachers or families of people who interact with the school environment. Schools can be a very important place for us to be recognising those impacts and the vulnerabilities and needs of people who have experienced trauma in their lives, particularly in relation to sexual abuse in our school environments. Our safeguarding framework recognises that and we have support response coordinator roles now in our department. Their focus is initially on students but we recognise that families and our staff are part of that as well.
Mr BAYLEY - Do you see a role for external providers in assisting that teaching cohort as well?
Mr JAENSCH - My focus is particularly on what we provide, who needs it and how it is provided. We recognise the value in the specialist service provision that doesn't exist necessarily within the department all the time. We're open, and we have shown in the past that we're open, to purchasing those services from others. They are matters for the secretary and the department, so I might ask if Mr Bullard wants to add anything.
Mr BULLARD - Thank you, minister. Mr Bayley, we recognise there is a large workforce of 12 000 individuals and we have people with a range of lived experience, including being victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. There are a couple of things that we have under way and there are more to come. The first is just being highly aware that when I'm communicating around matters to do with the commission of inquiry, or previously the professor's report, that might be triggering for some staff, so at the head of every email we remind staff of where they can access our employee assistance program or if they need more tailored wellbeing supports.
The second is in talking to leaders, people who manage our teams or our schools, reminding them of that fact and making sure that they have access to where those supports can be found in case staff come to them with disclosures or looking for more assistance.
Finally, in terms of staff wellbeing, we are investing heavily in the area of staff wellbeing right across the agency. Part of that is recognising what we can do with an internal capacity, making sure that we have people on staff who are able to provide some of that more acute-end support where staff aren't tracking well, but we are looking at a range of other providers for particular cohorts and how we can support them. At the moment, most of that is coming through the employee assistance program, or for staff who need a particularly acute support through our private psychologists or counsellors, but we're really open to looking at other services that can support.
Mr BAYLEY - Would that be something that would be contained in next year's Budget?
Mr BULLARD - A lot of that is already under way, Mr Bayley, through the team and the funding for that team. It's just now identifying what the range of support services are.
Ms JACK - Minister, perhaps I could add to that as well. We are very well aware of the need to be trauma informed in our practice. There is a lot of work that has already been done and is ongoing in schools in terms of trauma-informed practice and professional development. Staff are also, particularly senior staff, have gone through trauma-informed practice training and we use external providers for that as well.
