Empowering safeguarding in early childhood: ECA’s comprehensive resource suite

Safeguarding children is at the heart of the National Quality Framework (NQF) and is a key focus of National Quality Standard (NQS) Quality Area 2: Children’s health and safety, as well as Quality Area 7: Governance and leadership. 

The NQF recognises that ongoing professional development is essential for educators and leaders to ensure every child is safe, supported and able to thrive. Building knowledge and confidence through professional learning not only strengthens compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements but also enhances educators’ capacity to respond to complex safeguarding issues. 

In support of this, Early Childhood Australia (ECA) has developed a comprehensive suite of resources to guide educators, service leaders and approved providers in embedding effective safeguarding practices across early learning settings.

For educators and practitioners

• Webinar: Children’s Safety and Safeguarding in Early Childhood Settings
  This recorded session delivers practical insights from sector experts, equipping professionals with evidence-based strategies for creating safe environments and responding effectively to children’s signals for help.
• Course + companion book: Putting Children First – Child Safe Organisations
  The online course, together with its companion publication, is designed to align with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and includes content for individual and team reflection.
• Factsheets: ECA explains Dynamic supervision and ECA explains child sexual abuse
• Publication: The Circle of Security
  This guide helps educators understand children’s behaviour and develop positive, protective relationships, fostering emotional security and responsive caregiving.

For service leaders and managers

Leaders are pivotal in cultivating a service-wide culture of child safety. ECA’s leadership-focused resources include:

• Downloadable tools: Strengthen child safety in your early childhood setting: A message for service leaders and Being a professional in challenging times.
  These resources are intended to provide guidance for team leadership, support professional discussions, and encourage reflection.
• Training programmes: Facilitating team-wide refresher sessions such as Inappropriate Discipline and Putting Children First: Child Safe Organisations online course, provides information to all team members to support ongoing awareness of safeguarding requirements.

The resources are designed for leaders to use in team discussions, professional learning activities and service-wide approaches to safeguarding.

For approved providers

Approved providers are entrusted with governance, compliance and whole-of-network leadership in child safety. Key resources designed for this role include:

• Courses: Inappropriate Discipline and Learn to be Safe – Early Years are available for organisation-wide licensing and may be used as part of staff induction or refresher training.
• Tools: The factsheets ECA explains child sexual abuse and ECA explains… Dynamic supervision can be referenced when developing policies or planning training.
• Curated materials: Resources from organisations such as Bravehearts, Act for Kids, and the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse include research-informed content that can be used to inform decision-making and service planning.

Ongoing professional development is a requirement under the National Quality Framework (NQF), supporting educators, leaders and approved providers to remain up to date with current practices in child safety. 

The range of evidence-based resources are available to inform reflection, guide team discussions, and provide reference points for service policies and procedures. 

ECA’s safeguarding suite includes materials aligned with the NQF and National Quality Standard (NQS) Quality Area 2: Children’s health and safety, as well as Quality Area 7: Governance and leadership, with the intention of assisting early childhood professionals to strengthen safeguarding approaches within their services.

Upcoming professional learning opportunities

ECA has also announced a forthcoming Children’s Rights Webinar, designed to support educators in embedding a children’s rights approach across all areas of practice, from policies to day-to-day interactions. The session will explore how children’s rights are integrated into the Approved Learning Frameworks, offering practical examples that educators across different service types can apply. Register for the webinar here.

In addition, ECA has signalled that further webinars, resources and professional learning tools are in development. Educators, leaders and approved providers can sign up here to stay up to date as new safeguarding resources are released.

Further information about these and other safeguarding resources are available on the Early Childhood Australia website.