Safeguarding Forum

Safeguarding Forum 2026: Moving Beyond Compliance to Culture

Many schools have made significant progress implementing Queensland's Child Safe Standards and Universal Principle. Yet for many, the greatest challenge is not developing policies and procedures, but embedding a culture where children are genuinely heard, families are actively engaged, and safeguarding is reflected in everyday practice.

Through ISQ's Child Safe Standards Readiness survey, schools consistently identified opportunities to strengthen:

• Child Safe Standard 2: Children participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously, and

• Child Safe Standard 3: Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing.

This year's Safeguarding Forum has been designed to address these challenges directly.

Join school leaders, wellbeing professionals and safeguarding practitioners from across Queensland for a practical day focused on the elements of safeguarding that are often the hardest to achieve but have the greatest impact.

Through keynote presentations, case studies and panel discussions, participants will explore:

• creating meaningful opportunities for children and young people to influence decisions that affect them

• strengthening partnerships with parents and families as part of a child safe culture

• trauma-informed approaches that recognise indicators of harm and support positive outcomes for students

• translating Child Safe Standards from policy requirements into practical systems, processes and everyday practice

• capturing and using information to inform decision-making and continuous improvement

• supporting staff wellbeing while meeting increasingly complex safeguarding obligations.

Drawing on the expertise and lived experience of the speakers profiled below, the forum will offer practical strategies, real-world examples and diverse perspectives to support schools to strengthen child safe culture in their own context.

This forum will help leadership teams identify what may be missing, what can be strengthened, and what meaningful child safe culture looks like in practice.

We encourage principals, deputy principals, wellbeing leaders, guidance staff, safeguarding leads and members of school leadership teams to attend together and identify opportunities for continuous improvement within their school’s safeguarding approach.

Speaker biographies are provided below.

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

1.1, 1.4, 4.1, 4.4, 6.2, 6.3, 7.1, 7.2, 7.4

Australian Professional Standards for Principals:

• Leading the management of the school