Harm and Grooming
John Paul College is committed to child protection and adherence to the Child Safe Organisations National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.
The Wheel of Child Safety below highlights how the ten National Principles are all connected and important to ensure safe, happy and engaged children.
The National Principles of particular importance for Homestay Providers are:
- Families and communities involved in safety settings
- Robust recruitment and screening
- Ongoing education and training
Definitions
What is ‘Harm’?
Harm to a child is any detrimental effect of a significant nature on the child’s physical, psychological or emotional wellbeing. Harm can be caused by physical, psychological/emotional abuse or neglect or sexual abuse or exploitation. Harm can be caused by a single act, omission or circumstance or a series or combination of acts, omissions or circumstances.Â
What is ‘Grooming’?
Grooming refers to the process by which sex offenders groom people in the community, such as parents, carers, teachers and children to engage, establish trust and gain access to a child.
Sex offenders spend considerable time targeting, enticing and trapping a child for sexual purposes. Grooming involves the offender integrating themselves into places where they have access to children and then grooming the adults to create opportunities for the offender to abuse their victims.Â
Sexual abuse can happen abruptly, but more often is preceded by a period of ‘grooming’. Abusers and victims often know one another for significant periods of time (a year or more is common) before the first abuse incident.Â
Grooming typically involves a graduation from attention-giving and nonsexual touching to increasingly more intimate behaviours. Much of this will appear ambiguous both to the victim and others who may observe it.
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Key Polices
For more detailed information about the College’s student protection measures, please see the documents linked by clicking on the buttons