The National Centre's Monthly Newsletter: April 2025 edition
National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse
Protecting children, guiding best practice responses and pathways to healing for survivors.
Welcome to our Newsletter, our LinkedIn edition alongside our Monthly EDM which you can subscribe to here. Please enjoy our Newsletter welcome below, written by National Centre CEO Dr Janine Bush
"As we head into the second quarter of 2025, I’d like to take a moment to share some recent highlights from the National Centre’s work.
Since starting with the National Centre, I have continued to meet with stakeholders and hear about important work being undertaken to address child sexual abuse, including:
Of note is the upcoming virtual sector-wide presentation on the Minimum Practice Standards, hosted by NOCS on 14 May. This session will showcase new tools and insights from frontline services, an essential opportunity for learning and collaboration.
I am pleased to announce that our new Director, Lived Experience, Dr Lucy Knox commences in April. Lucy brings extensive experience in embedding the voices of people with lived experience into service and policy design and her expertise will be vital in continuing to shape a centre informed by victim-survivors and evidence.
As always, I value the commitment of our staff, partners and the broader community in advancing our shared mission to prevent child sexual abuse and support those impacted.
Warm regards,
Janine."
Monthly Highlights
New prevention-focused research activity
Kooyoora has just launched their Abuse Prevention through Culture Change Framework, as part of a National Centre-funded research project, “Developing and implementing a framework for abuse prevention through culture change and organisational development”.
This represents a key milestone and the culmination of crucial work within this project and is an accessible framework to help organisations strengthen their safeguarding practices and prevent child sexual abuse.
The project is led by Kooyoora alongside Glasshouse Safeguarding and the Institute of Child Protection Studies , Australian Catholic University.
“Ending child sexual abuse urgently requires frameworks like this, which disrupt the underlying power dynamics and factors which enable it to occur. That’s why we have funded such important research.” - Andrea de Silva, PhD , Director Knowledge Generation, Research and Evaluation, National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse.
Protecting children and young people in community sports
With the majority of Australian children playing sport at a community level, ensuring that children and young people are safe from child sexual abuse in community sport is critical. However, the community sport sector is heavily reliant upon volunteers, which makes it difficult to ensure that the sector is child safe and its workforce is appropriately trained and supported to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse.
The National Centre is partnering with Victoria University on a project titled, “Upskilling the community sport volunteer workforce to respond to child abuse in sport: a collaborative research project”. This project will build upon findings from a large-scale national survey within the community sport sector.
It will involve co-designing evidence-based interventions and initiatives that will strengthen the capability of the volunteer workforce to protect children and young people from sexual abuse while taking part in community sports.
Investigating child sexual abuse prevention initiatives
The 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made important recommendations on the prevention of child sexual abuse, including in relation to prevention services. In the years since, there has been little investigation of how such services are being implemented and accessed.
To address this critical evidence gap, the National Centre has partnered with the Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit at the University of the Sunshine Coast. The collaborative project will investigate how accessible child sexual abuse prevention initiatives are across Australia with a particular focus on regional and remote areas.
This project, titled “Accessibility of child sexual abuse prevention in Australia” will enhance our understanding of accessibility (in all its dimensions) to current child sexual abuse prevention initiatives. Identifying gaps, challenges and opportunities will then inform strategies to strengthen existing, and design future, prevention programs, policies and activities, while also promoting effective implementation.
The aim is to ensure a range of effective prevention initiatives are accessible to all, and particularly those most at risk.
Creating safety in primary health care
Primary Health Care practitioners have a unique opportunity to contribute to improved health outcomes and provide a supportive, safe experience for people who have experienced sexual violence, including child sexual abuse.
On World Health Day 2025, we launched our new resource “Create Safer Spaces in Primary Health Care”.
Developed in collaboration with victims and survivors of sexual violence, including child sexual abuse, this resource shares practical tips on how to contribute to safer physical, emotional and online spaces in primary health care settings.
National Centre Blog
The impacts of child sexual abuse within the family system
“In 2015, child sexual abuse was not on my radar. When I say it was not on my radar, I mean I was fully aware of stranger danger. I protected my children; they were not out of my sight in public places. The reality was painfully different…”
The National Centre recently facilitated an important conversation about child sexual abuse and the impacts to and within the family system on one of our In Conversation webinars.
In this blog, panellist Tracey Basan shares her experiences as a parent. Tracey talks about receiving and responding to her child’s disclosure and supporting her children through the impacts of child sexual abuse occurring in their family.
The Change Academy
Webinar: Compassionate aged care for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse
Many older adults are living with the impacts of child sexual abuse, and many have never disclosed their experience.
As they begin to engage with services such as aged and primary health care, it is critical that caregivers create trauma-responsive environments where older adults feel comfortable disclosing.
To address this pressing need, our next In Conversation webinar will focus on “Compassionate aged care for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse”.
Set for 22 May 2025, this webinar is designed for professionals and caregivers who regularly interact with and support older adults.
Webinar: Navigating Australia’s Child Safe Legislation
Registrations are now open for the last instalment of our collaborative training with Knowmore Legal Service set for 27 May 2025.
The session will provide critical knowledge needed to navigate the legal and legislative requirements and environment when working with and supporting victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.
This training is ideal for practitioners from diverse organisations and settings who work with children and young people. It will explore the complexities of legal foundations and reporting protocols across different jurisdictions.
Online course: Understanding and responding to disclosures of child sexual abuse from children and young people
Enrol in our new online course, “Understanding and responding to disclosures of child sexual abuse from children and young people”.
Grounded in the latest research and informed by practice and lived experience expertise, this self-paced course will explore:
This course is also available for bulk purchase by organisations - enquire at thechangeacademy@nationalcentre.org.au.
Online course: Foundations of child sexual abuse
Upskill in child safety by completing our online, self-paced course, “Foundations of child sexual abuse”.
This online, self-paced course has been designed for a broad range of workers across different levels as well as community members and explores:
This course is also available for bulk purchase by organisations - enquire at thechangeacademy@nationalcentre.org.au.
Out and about
A New Era in Ageing for Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers
The National Centre attended A New Era in Ageing for Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers, hosted by the National Aged and Community Care Roundtable for Forgotten Australians and Wattle Place. It was a powerful event highlighting the experiences of older care leavers and Forgotten Australians as they move into the aged care system.
At the National Centre, we are providing our priority workforces with training that recognises the long-term impacts of child sexual abuse. This understanding contributes to a more trauma-informed workforce that is responsive to victims and survivors throughout their life.
Join us on Thursday 22 May for our next In Conversation webinar, "Compassionate aged care for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse”.
Strengthening the Primary Health Care sector
Last month, the National Centre attended the National Primary Health Network workshop to discuss strategic priorities across all types of violence and abuse.
It was a privilege to hear about the work being undertaken by Primary Health Networks, and how efforts are progressing to include sexual violence, including child sexual abuse.
We are proud to partner with Primary Health Networks on an important project funded by the Department of Health and Aged Care, which you can learn more about on our website.
Share your insights…
Recruiting research participants with lived experience of child sexual abuse
The National Centre-funded research project, “Learning from victims and survivors about what helps disclosure and responses to child sexual abuse”, is seeking survey participants with lived experience of child sexual abuse.
The project, led by Professor Lynne McPherson from Southern Cross University , aims to empower victims and survivors to raise concerns, disclose and seek help.
Participants are asked to complete a survey to hear from victims and survivors about how responses to a child sexual abuse disclosure can help children and young people to feel believed, validated, safe and supported.
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