Our Collective Experience Project

In 2022, we launched Emma’s Project to collect responses from adult survivors of child sexual abuse. We heard directly from them about what more could have been done to prevent the abuse from occurring and how all adults in their community could have ensured that they were listened to, validated and effectively protected.

With these findings we are now asking the Government to include mandatory education within the Working With Children Check for all applicants, not only those working in the early childhood education and care sector.

We invite you to email your Federal Member of Parliament, to ensure they know how crucial this change we are seeking is.

We have drafted an example email, but we welcome you to make edits.

In 2022, we launched Emma’s Project to collect responses from adult survivors of child sexual abuse. We heard directly from them about what more could have been done to prevent the abuse from occurring and how all adults in their community could have ensured that they were listened to, validated and effectively protected.

With these findings we are now asking the Government to include mandatory education within the Working With Children Check for all applicants, not only those working in the early childhood education and care sector.

We invite you to email your Federal Member of Parliament, to ensure they know how crucial this change we are seeking is.

We have drafted an example email, but we welcome you to make edits.

Write to your local MP today to support this vital change

Find your local rep

Compose your email

Subject:

To my local member,
 
You are my elected representative, I want to know if you will support adding mandatory child abuse prevention education to the Working with Children Check. Although various Australian Governments have announced changes, including in Victoria where mandatory education for all applicants will be included in the WWCC process, these changes must be mandated nationwide.
 
Right now in some jurisdictions, it is easier to be trusted with children than to pour a pint of beer at a pub: to receive a Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate you need to do a day of training and pass a written test, but you need no training at all to work with children who are inherently vulnerable.
 
Child sexual abuse and other forms of child abuse are frighteningly common in Australia: 28.5% of children experience sexual abuse, and even more suffer physical and emotional abuse, as well as family and domestic violence.
 
Some six million adults working with children could be armed with training to better prevent and intervene with this abuse, yet the Working with Children Check fails to offer this. As a result, every month new media stories come out about adults with these Checks who have abused children while others around them did not know how to see and stop this.
 
I hope the federal government will begin to play a leading role in making mandatory child abuse prevention education a harmonised, powerful element of the Check nationwide, by committing to funding this training program.
 
This is a call for change supported by hundreds of survivors of child abuse, who were surveyed by Australian Childhood Foundation. The campaign to mandate this life saving education is also led by survivors, who I hope you will listen to so other children do not suffer as they did.
 
Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon.

How we use the data you enter on this form

Do Gooder (the advocacy platform powering this online action) processes personal information from you that you enter on this form so that we can provide the functions and related services to you and The Campaigner (the organisation responsible for this online action) for their legitimate purposes, including possibly exporting it to other systems, and to effectively respond to enquiries and communications related to those services.

Specifically when you enter:

Your location data (residential address or postcode) it is used to locate your elected representative, to pre-populate your email signature and to provide The Campaigner with a visualisation of the location of the support for this campaign.
All other data you may enter, including your email address, name, telephone number, commentary and so on is used by The Campaigner to advocate for the campaign’s goals and where required may be sent to the target of the campaign.

The data collected by Do Gooder is also used by us in aggregate form to improve the service and may be held on your behalf outside your country of residence by our third party service providers. These providers are bound by contract to only use personal information on our behalf, in accordance with agreed terms. While the privacy laws of the country in which personal information is stored or transferred may be different from those in your country, we will always have safeguards in place when storing or transferring personal information. We will never sell, rent, loan or in any other way pass your information on to other parties other than to provide this service to you and The Campaigner.

The personal information collected by Do Gooder is held subject to a Data Processing Agreement between Do Gooder and The Campaigner in compliance with the EU's GDPR and Australian law.

Learn more about our privacy policy here

How is my data used?