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Welcome to the Child Safeguarding Business Principles Self-Assessment

Welcome to the Child Safeguarding Business Principles self-assessment tool, brought to you by On Us: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children, a partnership between Australian businesses and Australian Childhood Foundation. 

This self-assessment tool is designed to support businesses of all sizes and industries—whether or not you engage directly with children—in strengthening your approach to child safeguarding. By using this tool, you’ll gain valuable insights to enhance your policies, practices, and risk management, ensuring your products, services, supply chains and people do not inadvertently put children at risk of harm.

This self-assessment will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. Upon completion, you'll receive a detailed report highlighting your results, which you can easily download and share with your team.


Even if your business doesn’t directly work with children and young people, your business still may inadvertently put children and young people at risk, this self-assessment tool will support you to identify where your child safeguarding risks may lie within your business.


Child safeguarding refers to the responsibility of businesses to protect children and young people (defined as anyone under the age of 18) from harm, abuse, and exploitation within all areas of their operations. This includes the design and delivery of products, services, and practices within supply chains. Safeguarding goes beyond direct interaction with children and aims to reduce any potential or unintentional risks to their safety and wellbeing.


The Child Safeguarding Business Principles were created by On Us: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children, a partnership between Australian businesses and Australian Childhood Foundation.

Developed in consultation with the On Us coalition businesses and child safeguarding experts from Australian Childhood Foundation, these principles provide a framework to help businesses recognise, manage, and prevent risks to children’s safety, even when child safeguarding is not a primary focus of their work.


Principle 1: Governance and Leadership
We recognise that we have a role to play in promoting the safety and wellbeing of children and young people.

Principle 2: People and Practices
We recognise that it is important for our people and business practices to be safe for children and young people.

Principle 3: Children and Young People’s Voice
We seek to include the voice of children and young people when making decisions that may affect their safety and wellbeing.

Principle 4: Collaboration and Continuous Improvement
We recognise the importance of collective action, and that it is on all of us to keep children and young people safe.


In short – yes business products, services, people, supply chains and operations can – watch this short video explaining how: On Us Coalition Promotional Video



© 2025 On Us: Australian Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children and Australian Childhood Foundation