Minimum Practice Standards

Victims, survivors and their support systems can face barriers when seeking help, including gaps in services, inadequate responses, and inconsistent service provision.

The national Minimum Practice Standards: Specialist and community support services responding to child sexual abuse aim to address this. They provide a set of principles and benchmarks to promote safe and effective service provision that supports individuals who have experienced or been impacted by child sexual abuse.

This animation explains what the Minimum Practice Standards are, and how services can apply them in their practices.
 

Read a copy of the Minimum Practice Standards

Read the Minimum Practice Standards – background information and terminology

About the Minimum Practice Standards

There are 6 individual standards that are supported by 3 overarching core values:

• Victim and survivor centred
• Trauma-informed
• Culturally safe.

The 6 standards are:

• Promotion of safety and self-determination: Services develop and implement systems and processes that support victims, survivors and their support system to experience safety, choice and self-determination.
• Accessible and inclusive services: Service design and delivery are accessible, respectful and inclusive of the diversity of victims, survivors and their support system.
• Holistic and integrated responses: Services provide holistic, integrated supports that are inclusive of victims, survivors, and their support system, provide connection to community, and the broader service system.
• Experience, research, and practice informed way of working: Service models and ways of working are consistently shared, and informed by best available practice knowledge, research, lived experience and cultural knowledge.
• Skilled and supported workforce: Services provide a workforce that is knowledgeable, skilled, and supported to ensure victim and survivor centred care is consistently provided in a culturally safe and trauma-informed way.
• Effective organisational governance: Organisations have ethical, trauma-informed, and culturally safe governance frameworks and practices throughout.

How and why we developed the standards

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed the complex challenges faced by victims, survivors, and their advocates, including gaps in services and inconsistent responses. In response, the Australian Government included a measure in the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030 to complete a baseline analysis of specialist and community support services for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.

We commissioned the Australian Centre for Child Protection (ACCP) to undertake this project in 2022. ACCP conducted consultations with a wide range of services, guided by lived experience, to identify their needs. This included in‑depth consultation with those with lived experience of child sexual abuse, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, service providers, other subject matter experts, and Commonwealth and state and territory government representatives.

Together with ACCP, we developed the Minimum Practice Standards and launched them in 2023.

Understand how the Minimum Practice Standards apply

The Minimum Practice Standards help service providers identify strengths and opportunities to continuously improve their service provision, so that victims and survivors can better experience safe, effective and consistent service provision wherever they seek help in Australia.

The standards can support or enhance work that may already be occurring in the sector. Services should be aware of and comply with any other relevant regulations or mandatory standards in their jurisdiction.

The Minimum Practice Standards are not mandatory and are not intended to be part of an accreditation process by the Commonwealth at this stage. The National Office does not endorse any accreditation organisations.

Services the Minimum Practice Standards apply to

The Minimum Practice Standards are designed for specialist and community support services responding to child sexual abuse across Australia. This includes:

• survivor and peer-led services
• non-statutory services provided by government and non-government agencies, including Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs)
• those that offer secondary or tertiary responses
• those providing services to individuals of any age who have experienced or been impacted by child sexual abuse (including parents, partners, siblings, supporters, and advocates)
• those that respond to children and young people who have displayed or who are at risk of displaying harmful sexual behaviours.

They are not designed to apply to:

• general community support services, such as housing support or social wellbeing
• mainstream services, such as police, health, education
• primary intervention services, such as safety or consent education services within schools
• private full fee-based services, such as private psychology clinics
• specific statutory responses such as investigations by police, and wellbeing assessments provided by child protection.

How the Minimum Practice Standards relate to other guidelines, frameworks and standards

Service providers are likely to already be working toward a number of different guidelines, frameworks and standards depending on their service type and jurisdiction.

To help alleviate the administrative burden of working toward multiple standards, the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse (National Centre) has developed a mapping tool. The mapping tool maps the Minimum Practice Standards to other common standards and guidelines service providers responding to child sexual abuse are likely to be working toward. This tool aims to help service providers assess how their current practices align to the Minimum Practice Standards and focus their effort on the gaps to streamline the implementation process. It is designed for quality assessors, managers and other staff responsible for ensuring safe and effective service provision.

The National Centre mapping tool considered 6 standards and guidelines for comparison with the Minimum Practice Standards:

• National Principles for Child Safe Organisations
• National Standards for out-of-home care
• National Safety and Quality Mental Health Standards for Community Managed Organisations
• NDIS Practice Standards and Quality Indicators
• NASASV National Standards of Practice Manual for Services
• Engaging with victims and survivors of child sexual abuse: A practice guide for workers and organisations: An Australian Government initiative.

Implementing the Minimum Practice Standards

We have developed an implementation guide to enable service providers to apply the Minimum Practice Standards across a variety of contexts.

It outlines what each standard could look like in practice, and how service providers can demonstrate implementation. It is important to note that implementation will look different across service providers, jurisdictions and service contexts.     

The implementation guide includes a self-assessment tool for service providers to reflect on their service’s current practice against each Standard. It asks service providers to assess, self-reflect and evaluate their service against each Standard’s indicators using a three-point competency scale of ‘working toward’, ‘meeting’ or ‘exceeding’. This will highlight areas where they are performing well and, critically, identify any areas for improvement.

Read the implementation guide 

Access helpful resources and tools

We have developed a suite of practical tools and resources to support service providers to adopt and implement the Minimum Practice Standards in different contexts and settings. The tools and resources are designed to support service providers implement the Minimum Practice Standards, and in doing so uplift critical aspects of service provision identified by service providers to be key issues.

Access all tools and resources related to the Minimum Practice Standards

The full suite of tools and resources developed include:

• Policy guides and templates
• Communications materials
• Supervision and reflective practice tools
• Monitoring and evaluation toolkit (to be published at a later time).

To find out more about how this suite of tools and resources was developed, read the Resources for Minimum Practice Standards Executive Summary.

Contact us if you have any further questions or feedback at NationalOfficeforChildSafety@ag.gov.au.