Embedding a Culture of Child Safety in Early Childhood Services and How You Can Lead the Way.
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In every early childhood setting, safety is a visible, everyday priority. You supervise play spaces, check equipment, monitor health and ensure that every environment is welcoming and secure but there’s a layer of safety that often feels less visible, yet is just as critical.
The protection of children from abuse and neglect is a shared professional responsibility. And while policies, regulations and training requirements help define this responsibility, many educators and leaders still find the topic confronting because knowing how to assess risk, respond to concerns and foster a genuine culture of safety takes deep reflection, ongoing learning and a willingness to look beyond compliance.
Nicole Talarico’s book, Asserting a Culture of Child Safety, invites early childhood professionals to do exactly that. It’s a practical, accessible guide designed to help educators, leaders and service owners build confident, informed approaches to child protection, not from a place of fear, but from a commitment to care.
Nicole is an experienced early childhood consultant who supports services in achieving high-quality practice and ongoing improvement. She delivers professional learning both nationally and internationally and has a successful coaching practice recognised in early childhood publications, primarily supporting educational leaders and teams.
Beyond The Policies: Why Culture Matters
In Australia, the National Quality Framework (NQF) sets out clear expectations for the protection of children. Under Quality Area 2 of the National Quality Standard (NQS), services are required to ensure that every child is protected (Element 2.2.3). This includes adequate supervision, clear incident and emergency management procedures and defined child protection responsibilities.
Yet as Asserting a Culture of Child Safety highlights, compliance alone doesn’t create a culture of safety. Policies and procedures are only as effective as the people who carry them out. Educators need more than a checklist; they need the knowledge, confidence, and shared language to recognise risk, respond appropriately and actively mitigate harm in all its forms.
A strong culture of child safety is proactive, not reactive. It’s woven into everyday practice, relationships with families, leadership decisions and the ways educators think about their role in children’s lives and it starts with understanding that every child, regardless of background, can be vulnerable to harm and every educator has a part to play in prevention.
Moving from ‘What If’ to ‘What Now’
One of the most valuable insights Asserting a Culture of Child Safety brings to this conversation is the shift from fear-driven thinking to proactive, practical action.
Rather than asking ‘What if something happens?’ educators are encouraged to ask, ‘What steps can I take today to ensure this environment is as safe as possible for every child in my care?’
This shift is critical because fear often leads to avoidance. Worrying about saying the wrong thing, making a wrong call, or overstepping a boundary can make even the most experienced educators hesitate. Nicole’s book addresses this hesitancy with clarity and compassion.
In her book Asserting a Culture of Child Safety, Nicole Talarico breaks down key knowledge areas every educator needs, including:
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What abuse and neglect are, including less obvious indicators
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How abuse can happen in any environment, including within services
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The importance of understanding cultural, social and individual vulnerabilities
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How and when to seek advice or make a report
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The difference between child protection requirements and creating a culture of safety
Through this lens, child protection is reframed not as a reaction to crisis, but as a daily practice, one that becomes second nature within a strong, informed team.
Why This Matters for Leaders and Directors
For early childhood leaders and directors, the responsibility runs deeper. Leadership isn’t just about ensuring policies are up to date or that mandatory training is completed each year. It’s about setting the tone for how child safety is understood, talked about and prioritised within the service.
Nicole encourages educational leaders to think beyond the basics of compliance and ask important questions, such as:
- Are our child protection procedures clearly communicated to all stakeholders (educators, families and children)?
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Do our educators feel confident in recognising signs of abuse or neglect and knowing who to speak to?
- Are we considering how abuse might happen within our own environment and actively working to eliminate those risks?
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Have we created a workplace culture where questions, concerns and reflections about child safety are welcomed and supported?
These questions aren’t about creating doubt or fear; they’re about empowering leaders to foster environments where children’s rights, safety and wellbeing are always at the forefront.
Embedding Child Safety into Everyday Practice
A culture of child safety isn’t built in a single policy review or staff meeting. It’s a continuous process that involves embedding protective practices into every aspect of service delivery. Asserting a Culture of Child Safety offers practical ways to do this, including:
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Risk Assessing Beyond the Obvious: Encouraging educators to consider not just physical risks but also interpersonal and environmental factors that could expose children to harm.
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Involving Children in Their Own Safety: Helping children understand their rights, trust their instincts and know how to seek help.
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Auditing the Service Environment: Looking at policies, supervision practices, staffing patterns and leadership processes through a child safety lens.
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Building Strong Governance: Ensuring that leadership, accountability and decision-making structures support a zero-tolerance approach to abuse and neglect.
- These strategies require attention, reflection and a willingness to act. As we are reminded, the goal isn’t to eliminate every possible risk overnight, but to foster a mindset where child safety is a shared, ongoing priority.
Valuing the Voices of Children
One of the most powerful aspects of the approach outlined in Asserting a Culture of Child Safety is the emphasis on listening to children. Child safety isn’t just something adults impose; it’s something we co-create with children by valuing their voices, respecting their agency and empowering them to be part of their own safety network.
Nicole Talarico draws inspiration from initiatives like the Western Australian Commissioner for Children and Young People’s ‘Listening Tour’ and publications such as What Can Adults Learn from Children?. These examples highlight how children’s insights can shape stronger, more responsive approaches to safety and wellbeing.
For early childhood services, this means creating environments where children are encouraged to speak up, share their thoughts and feel confident that their voices will be heard and respected.
A Resource for Every Professional Library
Asserting a Culture of Child Safety is more than a book for your resource library; it’s a practical tool for reflection, discussion and professional growth. Whether you’re a centre director, educational leader, or room educator, this resource offers valuable guidance that can help strengthen your practice and your service’s culture.
The book is structured into two key parts:
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Understanding Child Abuse and Protection: Covering definitions, indicators, regulatory frameworks and the steps educators need to take when concerns arise.
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Building a Culture of Child Safety: Providing actionable strategies for mitigating risk, engaging children in their own safety, auditing environments and strengthening leadership practices.
By offering clear, accessible information paired with practical steps, Asserting a Culture of Child Safety helps educators move from uncertainty to confidence, ensuring that children’s safety is more than a policy, but a lived value within every early learning environment.
A Collective Responsibility
At its heart, this work is about shared responsibility. Protecting children isn’t the job of one person, or even one team; it’s a collective commitment that requires ongoing attention, reflection and care.
As Nicole Talarico writes, ‘We must take our ethics of care more seriously so that our actions execute the policies we have in place to keep children safe.’ This means being willing to ask hard questions, look honestly at your environments and continuously seek ways to strengthen your practice.
It also means leading with empathy, openness and a genuine belief in the rights and voices of children. Because when you work together, as educators, leaders, families and communities, you create not just safer services, but environments where children can thrive.
Looking to strengthen your service’s approach to child safety?
Nicole Talarico’s Asserting a Culture of Child Safety is available now from Amba Children’s Publishing, your trusted resource for educators and leaders seeking to build confident, informed and child-focused practices.