Baptist churches are supposed to be safe communities for all of us, and keeping children safe from abuse is a top priority. That’s why we’ve partnered with Carey Centre for Lifelong Learning to provide FREE child protection training for ANYONE who works with young people. Responsibility to our children is shared and not solely on the shoulders of youth and children’s leaders. This training is central to our Child Protection Policy for Baptist Churches, recently developed with Child Matters. Catharina Siraa and our Youth Catalyst, Ethan Miller, from the Baptist Support Centre, unpack what this new policy and training is all about in this episode of ‘It’s all admin’:
Safety: The importance of Child Protection training with Ethan Miller
There are two options for when you can join the child protection training:
#1 Register for Tuesday 20 Feb, 7-9pm, 2024
#2 Register for Wednesday 1 May, 10-12pm, 2024
Click your preferred date for the training event description.
Share this with you church family and we hope to see a good lot of you there for our young people!
Read some of Catharina and Ethan's conversation below:
Over the last six months, we’ve been working with Child Matters to develop a new Child Protection Policy for Baptist Churches with accompanying training.
Child protection is all about making our churches safe for young people. It must be one of the highest priorities that churches have. We are supposed to be safe communities for all our people.
It’s been a few years since Safety Matters, the previous child protection training, was developed. When we started working on a refresh, we bought in a few commitments:
1) We are committed to child-centred safety. We believe every faith community working with young people should operate by best practices and want to assist.
We are committed to expertise. We wanted to work with field experts, so we consulted with Child Matters. Their consultants have been exceptional. They have a range of people, including lawyers and people familiar with church contexts, who have helped us craft the Child Protection Policy. Our lawyers have reviewed it and aligned it with our complaints policy.
2) We are committed to accessibility. We know there are many costs for churches, and we didn’t want that to be a barrier. So, we’ve funded the policy development and the training for the policy. So, it’s all free; we just need churches to engage in the training and implement the policy in their contexts.
3) We are committed to training. You can have great policies, but the key to child protection is how it is implemented in a local setting. So, leaders must be trained to use the child protection policy effectively. To ensure that people engage in the training, we will only send out the Child Protection Policy template to those churches that have done the training. From there, churches can make some contextual adjustments to the template.
Once people have the policy, what are the next steps?
Edit to suit your context: It will vary depending on the size and structure of ministries, etc.
Implementation: Share, train, and let people know—especially leaders and parents.
Ongoing training and awareness: Keep referring to the policy and explain why it’s essential. Child protection is everyone’s responsibility, and we are pleased to help equip churches to keep our tamariki and rangatahi safe.
‘It’s all admin’ is a podcast show hosted by Catharina Siraa from the Baptist National Support Centre. In the latest season she breaks down some of the top policy and compliance issues currently facing Baptist Churches in Aotearoa with the help of the National Support Centre team and some special guests.
Listen on the Baptist NZ app or website or follow on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Cover photo: by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
