Australian businesses are coming together to safeguard children and young people
The On Us: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children is a trailblazing initiative to secure business community commitment to safeguarding children and young people.
As an initiative of Australian Childhood Foundation, On Us has the knowledge, expertise and tools to help businesses implement best practice solutions to effectively safeguard children and young people.
As a cross-sector coalition, On Us can facilitate learnings across industries, collectively solve problems and collaboratively manage risks to keep children safe. We help businesses strengthen their safeguarding culture.
With seed funding from Westpac Group’s Safer Children, Safer Communities program, the initiative brings together key decision makers and influencers from organisations that may not directly work with children and young people, but which may impact upon their rights and safety through their products, services and operations.
Founding members include Westpac, GPT, IHG Hotels & Resorts, TikTok and TBWA.
The need for a child-safe culture within Australian businesses is a community priority, as noted in a recent consumer poll:
88.5% disagreed or strongly disagreed that, Australian businesses already give enough consideration to how their organisations can impact on children. (Forethought Australian Childhood Foundation Consumer Poll 2022)
More and more there is an expectation that businesses address key risks and impacts on the human rights and wellbeing of the most vulnerable in society.
This includes statutory expectations to embed the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and the eSafety Commissioner’s Safety by Design principles as well as taking action to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation through customers using financial platforms, technology and/or child labour across supply chains.
It is evident that child safeguarding should be part of any company’s commitment to an ESG (environmental, social and governance) framework, enhancing its potential value to investors and other important stakeholders.
If you or your business would like to learn more about the On Us: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children, please visit the website below.
Why we’re doing this.
Outside of the community sector, most businesses have low awareness of the potential impact their operations and activities can have on children and there are no consistent national standards to guide them.
Too few businesses consider their vulnerabilities to perpetrator exploitation. With the e-Safety Commission estimating that 2% of employees use company supplied assets to facilitate exploitation, these vulnerabilities may even exist within their own workforce.
Latest News
Westpac, TikTok, IHG Hotels & Resorts, The GPT Group and TBWA are the founding members of On Us: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children, with other businesses set to join the Coalition in the coming months.
Please click through below to view all recent media updates.