Safe Staff Safe Kids Campaign: Understanding, Prevention + Protection, Support, Recovery

 

For many years, the PSA has fought for members to have safe workplaces, manageable workloads and genuine access to their Award entitlements such as flex time and flexible work.

The work you do is so important to the community but the other side of child protection is the impact it can have on the workers.

The Safe Staff Safe Kids Campaign calls on the NSW Government and the Department of Communities and Justice to implement all the recommendations from PSA’s best practice model for mental health and wellbeing:

  1. Cultural and organisational change
  2. Peer Support Program
  3. Mental health and wellbeing are key strategic priorities
  4. Appointment of Chief Psychologist and a team of psychologists
  5. Clinical/professional supervision
  6. Dedicated time away from frontline child protection work
  7. Complete overhaul/reform of recover at work program
  8. Hotline for caseworkers
  9. Panel of secular and non-secular chaplains
  10. Child protection workforce strategy
  11. Annual well-being checks for all caseworkers, MCSs and MCWs
  12. Partnerships with mental health NGOs – Beyond Blue and Black Dog Institute

Download the Best Practice Model for Mental Health and Wellbeing HERE

We encourage you to watch the campaign video of Stewart Little, General Secretary of the PSA, talk about this campaign and how proud we are to be your union.

WATCH THE CAMPAIGN VIDEO NOW

The research underpinning Safe Staff Safe Kids 

The PSA launched this important campaign during Mental Health Month in 2020 because the biggest workplace issue facing child protection workers right now is mental health and wellbeing.

We know this because the PSA commissioned a research project to identify the parts of child protection work that most impact members and us this information develop a best practice model for mental health and wellbeing specific to the context of child protection.  The project looked at the impacts of workplace violence such as threats and assaults, vicarious trauma and extreme workloads, which can lead to psychological injuries affecting all workers in child protection.

The outcomes of this project showed that psychological injury in Community Services was higher than that in Ambulance and Police.

The results of the project underpin the Safe Staff Safe Kids Campaign.