Kate Rattigan: Everyone. So, I'm Kate Rattigan. I'm the deputy secretary of the People and Executive Services Group. I will be facilitating this session today with my colleagues Helen Quiney and Naomi Shimoda. And for those who are just joining, it's the session that we're having today on School Community Safety Order Scheme. Before we begin, officially, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of Country throughout the State and their connections to land, sea, and community. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. So, just a little housekeeping before we get started. Thank you for those who are joining us live. So, the meeting's being recorded and it will be uploaded onto the School Community Safety Orders Policy on Health for those who are unable to attend the session, please ensure your video is turned off and that you are on the session. So, we will be using the Webex Q&A function for the session today. We'd love to hear from you with any questions that you might have using the Q&A function instead of the chat will help us not miss any questions amongst the comment. We have the team on standby to respond in writing to any questions that you have and each time allow for those who try to address some of those questions verbally at the start of the Q&A time that we have allocated towards the end of the session. So, I also encourage you to participate in the slider poll, which you should be able to bring up on your Webex if it's not displayed already. Details on where to find the Q&A and slider function there on the current slide there. So, a bit about the scheme. I wanted to start the session today by talking about the initiatives that we have in place to direct, to address the workplace risk or work-related [inaudible]. We know the overwhelming majority of adults who interact with school, so parents and carers, we know that they have positive relationships with school staff. So, that's the overwhelming majority. But sadly, our data that we collect through eduSafe Plus and also the anecdotal feedback that we receive that indicates that the frequency of aggression and negative parent carer pages is increasing. In a recent principal check-in survey conducted in week seven of term two 16% of principals reported that parents and carers were not engaging with them respectfully.

In addition to that, the Australian Occupational Health and Safety and Wellbeing Survey 2021 reported that 44% of Australian principals that were surveyed reported experiencing threatful violence. And 39% actually experienced physical violence in their jobs. And threats to safety experienced by teachers in the course of their work has been linked to greater staff, turnover rates, and departure from the profession. The survey report cited the scheme, the scheme that you're going to be trained on today. It started this scheme as a critical tool in responding to offensive behaviours by adults from parents and carers towards principals and school staff. And we know that sustained parent carer aggression can have a significant impact on employee mental health and wellbeing and can be a real driver for workforce attrition. So, that's why in November we released the respectful behaviours in the school community policy and we published resources to schools to use to promote positive and respectful behaviour [inaudible].

So, this was accompanied by a school based communications campaign that highlighted the importance of respectful partnerships to parents and carers. We also added a chapter specifically on parent carer pages to the work-related violence in schools policy, and that contains guidance for preventing, managing and responding to work-related violence risks in schools. Helen Quiney who many of you know. Helen's the director of the...executive director of the Employee Safety, Wellbeing, and Inclusion Division. And Helen is going to talk more about the policy and the resources later in the session. I just wanted to mention a couple of things about, Helen. So, I would attribute Helen's leadership and her empathy, compassion, and expertise as being the key enabler of the success of this initiative. Helen, many of you know Helen. Helen previously worked in the legal division and so she had direct experience of supporting school principals and other leaders in dealing with violence and aggressive behaviour. And through that work that Helen did and she might talk a little bit about this today, identified that we had a big gap in the system. We didn't really have a bespoke scheme that was set up to address the really unique nature of that relationship between school leaders and members of the community. And she could see when it went off the rails, she could say when behaviour really, really escalated and it was very, very unsafe and we didn't have, we had only trespass orders and using that kind of the trespass scheme to manage that behaviour. So, through Helen's work and her vision, she supported the minister, former minister for education, in you know, putting a policy proposal together and essentially then working that through the legislative policy as with support from our colleagues in the legal division and other places, to put in place a really, really great scheme, which is what we have now. But it's not just the scheme that is going to enable the success of it, it's also the communications, the engagement, the resources, the tools, and the support that Helen is overseeing that work in the role that she had. So, I just wanted to mention that 'cause I know Helen probably won't say all of those things about herself, but she's absolutely been instrumental in this. So, as I mentioned, it's part of a wider strategy that Helen has put together that helped us manage the risk to safety of school staff and students and you know, everything from unacceptable behaviour of parents and other adults who interact with schools to other sorts of challenges that that school is might have with behaviours. So, what the scheme will do is allow principals and other authorised persons to issue orders for community safety orders to stop or to limit parents and carers and other adults who behave in a way that's harmful, that's threatening or abusive towards staff and students.

The scheme is intended to be a last resort option. But for many of you who are here, I know that you would have faced these scenarios where, you know, you've made it that last resort option, where you know that there's no other less restrictive option available to manage the behaviour. And the powers that that scheme gives to principals and it gives to other authorised persons like regional directors who are part of the scheme, they're really significant powers and there are important limitations on the use of those powers that we're going to outline today. And Helen will discuss some of those with you in more detail. So I think that that's it for me. But I'm just gonna pause there to see if I've covered everything.

Helen Quiney: Thanks very much for your kind words and for all of your support and leadership of this work and to the team. And thank you to everyone for joining us today and for making the time. And if you could just keep in mind the chat function, and if you can keep your cameras off during the presentation, that would be great. So, thanks again, Kate. Let's get into it. Kate mentioned some other components that are designed at preventing the behaviour. And I'm just going to spend a little bit of time talking about those before we talk about the detail of the scheme and how it operates. When we design, when we started thinking about how we would do this work and how we'd go about addressing parent and carer aggression, we talked to a lot of school principals who said things that I won't forget to me, like, I just want the department to stand up and say, this is not OK. And to have a really clear message about that. And that's one of the first things that we set out to do with the creation of a policy that applies across all Victorian government schools, that sets the standards of behaviour for anyone on school grounds 'cause schools are workplaces for so many people and they set the tone for the experience of our students in our schools too. So, it's really important that those places are safe for learning. And also more importantly, from my perspective, our really safe place for work and that people go home having felt safe when they've been at work at that during the day. So, this policy, it's on the department's website and it's on the parent-facing part of the department's website. And it sets out what behaviours are expected in the school community and what behaviours are unacceptable. And that's a really important foundation. A lot of schools might have used the policy templates that are on the school's policy templates portal. That is a really fantastic resource for principals and that does have additional policies that are available. But we wanted to make sure that every school, no matter what, whether or not they had policy, their own policies in place, had this policy setting that applied to them. This policy is a really important first step if you are experiencing kind of the early indications of some behaviour that might not meet the expectations of respect in the school community. And it's really important to be referring to that and promoting that within our school community at any time, but particularly where behaviour starts to fall short of it. So, it's a really important foundational element that we build upon with different tools. It also, it includes information about what we want to aim for. So, principals for a really good collaborative relationship between parents and school staff, examples of respectful communications and behaviours, and tips on how to respectfully raise complaints at school. Because complaints are still an important part of our system and then examples of the types of behaviours that are unacceptable. And we actually had a small excerpt of that in the prep bag for this year, setting really good foundations from the beginning of prep, but also have generated a whole range of resources and a toolkit that schools can use to promote that with their school community. Schools could put information about the policy into their school newsletter or on campus or whatever channels they use to communicate with their school staff. The other thing that we do is we have the department's OHS management system, and that is the systems of work so that work can be performed safely in the workplace at school. And that's something that every employer must do, is that they must clearly set out what are their systems of work, for work to be performed safely and to manage risks to health and safety. So, as a component of that broader OHS management system, we've generated guidance and resources that sit on the OHS management system, which is on the policy and advisory library, which includes how to manage the health and safety risk of work-related violence in schools. And that includes the risk from students whose behaviour might present a health and safety risk. But in addition, we've got more detailed guidance around managing the behaviour of parent and carer aggression, how to manage that risk, how to prevent it, and also how to respond to it. That policy and the guidance has been developed based on lots of experience across working with schools in real-life scenarios and it's unfortunate that we have those, but we want to make sure that what we develop is based on real-life issues that are playing out in schools. And so we try to make the guidance responsive to things that you might see and happen in schools and really conscious of the school setting in that you want to have, really positive relationships with parents and carers and other members of the school community. So, I encourage you to have a look at that resource which is helpful for you in terms of putting in place systems of work in your school. Let's get into the School Community Safety Order Scheme. And just to say at the beginning and to reiterate some of the comments that Kate made. This is a tool in your toolkit of responses when parents' and carers' behaviour falls below what's expected and creates a risk in your school context. It's not meant to be the only measure and it's meant to be a measure of last resort. But what we found when we were developing this scheme and thinking about strategies for addressing parent and carer aggression, it just weren't the right legal tools to respond to these issues. And there are lots of cases where the legal mechanisms that were already available like trespass, warning notices, and personal safety intervention orders just didn't fit or weren't able to be utilised in circumstances where parent and carer behaviour really wasn't, was creating a significant risk and wasn't able to be responded to. So, this is a really important tool for that. It's a tool that's available to all Victorian Government principals. You don't need to do anything in order to be able to be eligible to be an authorised person to issue a school community safety order. Although we will talk a little bit later on about some important things that you need in terms of having the right skills and capability in order to issue orders. But all school principals are automatically authorised persons for the purposes of this scheme. Regional directors are also authorised persons who can issue orders in relation to schools in their region. And we'll talk a little bit later about the circumstances in which you might want a regional director to issue an order rather than a principal. The Deputy Secretary of Schools and Regional Services, David Howes, is also an authorised person and the Secretary of the Department of Education and Training is also an authorised person.

Authorised persons can issue orders to a limited number of people, so they can't issue orders in relation to a student of a school and they can issue orders in relation to a staff member who works at the school. But they can issue orders to any adult. So, who's 18 years or older who is not staff or student? And that might include parents and carers. It might include acquaintances, friends, or partners of students or other parents who are engaging in behaviour. It might include former students if they're 18 year old or over. It might include former staff. And it might include third-party contractors as well.

There are two types of orders that can be issued. There's an ongoing school community safety order which we'll spend quite a bit of time talking about. And then there's an immediate school community safety order, which is a shorter-term order which can be used in more urgent circumstances. So, let's first talk about the ongoing school community safety order, and then we'll move on to the immediate school community safety order. So, an authorised person can issue an ongoing school community safety order where they've got reasonable grounds to believe that some of these issues might occur first if a person poses an unacceptable risk of harm to anyone in the school grounds. And that can include students or staff or other people that are engaged as contractors who are working on the school grounds. And it can be in relation to school grounds, but also other school-related places. And when we were designing this scheme, we knew that sometimes parent and carer aggression and other forms of aggression happen at school events. So, that might be the end-of-year concert, might be a school sports day, or a school camp or excursion location as well. So, that is that broad terminology allows us to issue orders in relation to other places where parents might be or carers. If a person poses an unacceptable risk of significant disruption to the school an order might be able to be issued against them. That might be where someone attends a classroom and is not violent or threatening harm but refuses to leave. And if that's disruptive to the school context, where a person poses an unacceptable risk of interfering with the wellbeing, safety, or educational opportunities of students. If a person's behaving in a disorderly, offensive, intimidating, or threatening manner and is likely to continue to behave that way. And also if a person engages in vexatious communications relating to a staff member, and it's likely that that will continue. Importantly, this is not a scheme that is designed to prevent reasonable complaints that are made in a reasonable manner. And we have really well-established procedures for the making of complaints. And the department's complaints policy is probably well known to many of you but is available on the DT's website. And so this is about communications that might be false, malicious, or disrespectful, and it can extend to posts or emails or communications that are on the school's Facebook site or another school-related site, or maybe through email or text. We wanted to make sure that the scheme took into account that school, school staff are more accessible than they ever have been through email, through different apps like Seesaw and Compass, where people can really access staff and communicate with them through those platforms. So, an ongoing school community safety order can be issued to prohibit certain behaviours. And it's not just entering on the school grounds, but it can also be relating to approaching or calling the school or sending a message to staff using different communication platforms or channels that are owned by the school. And we'll talk a bit more about social media a bit later or any other types of behaviour that is causing a harm. And so the order should really be targeted at the behaviour that is creating a risk and think. And when you are an authorised person issuing an order thinking about what's the behaviour and how is it creating risk or harm. Ongoing school community safety orders can be issued to be in effect for a maximum of 12 months. And leading up to that 12 month period, it would be necessary to consider the future of that order and whether it's necessary to remake race to the order or for it to come to an end. So, I wanted to talk in a little bit more detail about how the scheme works in relation to social media. Ongoing orders can be issued to limit a person from using a communication platform or channel that is owned or controlled by the school or established in relation to a school. So, just to play that out in some examples, campus and Central are both, if you have an account for the school, those are both controlled by the school. You might have a school Facebook page, or you might actually have a page that's been established by your Parents and Friends Association or other members of the school community that is in relation to the school. And that would be within scope of the scheme if that behaviour occurs on their messaging platforms and then other forums and online notice boards or hard copy notice boards or other types of communications that might be within the scheme as well.

The types of behaviour that could be subject to an ongoing order are behaviours that intend to cause or have the effect of causing distress or harassment to staff. So, that might be where people are continuing to post comments that are disparaging of staff members, and that's having an impact on the staff, for example. It's important that there's an initial request for that behaviour to stop on the online portal or other channel before issuing an order in relation to that behaviour.

So, I mentioned that there's another type of school community safety orders, which is immediate school community safety orders, and they are designed for situations that are potentially unexpected or coming up all of a sudden but need to have action taken to minimise the risk. They have a slightly higher bar for issuing an immediate school community safety order. That's because there are less steps of procedural fairness before issuing an order, but they can be eased more imminently. So, an immediate school community safety order can be issued where a person poses an unacceptable and imminent risk of causing harm to anyone on the school premises or school-related premises. Or if there's a person posing significant disruption to the school or its activities that are being carried out by the school, or where there's an interference, the well-being, safety or educational opportunities of students. For example, if a person says that they're threatening to take some particular action on a school ground, you might consider issuing an immediate school community safety order before a person attends the school grounds or if you anticipate that behaviour. I just want it to be really clear that immediate school community safety orders or any orders aren't designed to replace the need for calling police when it's necessary to do so. So, if there's an imminent risk of harm from a person where you think that they are engaging in or about to engage in any behaviour that might amount to a criminal offence, then you should absolutely call the police first and we can issue an order later on. So it really... we don't want to increase the risk of harm to principals when they're issuing an order. You should not put yourself in harm's way by issuing an order in the first place. Make sure that everybody is safe and cared for before issuing an order. And if there's an emergency, of course, consider calling 000 as in A2. Immediate orders can be in effect for a maximum of 14 days. And during that time, it's necessary to consider whether you might issue an ongoing school community safety order in that period. But this gives you an immediate tool to respond. So, there are two ways that you can issue immediate orders. And then one way to issue ongoing orders. Ongoing orders must be issued through providing a written notice first of an intention to issue an ongoing order. And we've got templates that are available to be used to do that. And then a person must get seven days to provide any submission about whether or not an order should be made. Immediate orders can be issued either verbally or by written notice. So, we have a script that's available in our resources that can be used. If you have a person who you want to issue an immediate school community safety order to that you can follow, and then that will have the effect of issuing an immediate order without needing to prepare it and notice first.

Because these are really significant powers, it's really important that a number of considerations are taken into account before deciding to an issue in order. Orders curtail a person's freedom of movement or freedom of speech in some cases because it limits their ability to communicate and that might be justified in circumstances. But it's really important that you turn your mind to the different thresholds and really important that when issuing an order, you step through these processes so that the order can be issued validly. Naomi will talk a little bit later about the systems that we have in place to support you to do that. And I just mentioned them really briefly here, and we'll come back to them a bit later. But legal revision will be able to support you in determining whether or not the grounds exist to issue an order and to step through these requirements. And then we also have a form on eduSafe Plus that will take you through one by one each of the considerations. So, we're trying to make sure that there's lots and lots of support to get through to these considerations. First, you need to consider whether or not the grounds for making an order are made out. And then second, consider whether it's reasonably necessary to address the behaviour. So, in doing... in considering whether it's reasonably necessary, you need to think about what are the other interventions that I can use first to prevent that behaviour. In some cases, it might be a more immediate risk and so there might not be other interventions, but in other cases, it might be necessary to ask the person to stop or to write to them and ask them to stop in engaging in their behaviour before issuing an order. And that will support you to ensure that you're using the least restrictive means available to address the behaviour. You also need to consider the vulnerability of the person. And by that we mean considering whether or not the person has a disability or perhaps they have other circumstances that might have limited English that you need to consider that might be informing the way in which they're behaving. So, that's an important consideration. And then the other really key thing is that to issue any order, you must consider the safety, well-being, and educational opportunities of a child or children, including the child of a person who is proposed to be subject to an order. We think schools do this really well. This is what they do every day is thinking about the well-being of children. But in the context of an order, the way that might look is if a child is perceived to be at risk of family violence, and there's concern that issuing an order might increase the risk of family violence, then that would be a relevant consideration in terms of the well-being of the child. As principles, authorised persons need to consider their OHS obligations, and that might often be a reason for issuing the order in the first place is the health and safety impacts. It's really important to acknowledge that even if there isn't a physical risk online conduct, disparaging comments, discriminatory comments can have a really significant impact on a person's mental health and well-being and can result in longer-term mental injury. And so by taking action, not using an order that is often a really valid measure to prevent that type of harm to a person.

As principals and as other public servants, we also have obligations to consider our human rights charter obligations. So, that means considering people's freedoms under the Human Rights Charter and the need for protection of families and children, freedom of movement. That's something that we must all do when we make decisions about different changes. And so, but we will be able to step you through that process to understand how the different charter rights interact with the decision to be made to issue an order.

I talked a little bit before about minimising the impacts of harm on children. So, I just wanted to step that through a little bit more. One of the things that we've that's embedded into this scheme is the requirement where an order is being issued to have in place a communication and access protocol for those students to ensure that they can continue to access their school and access their education. Because we really don't want these orders to be a driver for students leaving the school or disengaging with school. So, a communication and access protocol should set out the measures to allow a parent or care to continue to communicate with the school and be informed about their child's education and also to ensure that the child can still access school. Where an order is proposing to limit a person's access to the school site, it'll be important to consider the age of the child, whether they can get into the school safely, whether they need the support to access school. For example, if that child has a disability and needs support to get to the classroom, that it would be important to consider that as part of an order. And, for example, to consider whether there's another person that can support the child to access the school or whether other arrangements can be made. We've got a template for that too, which can help you step through the different requirements for a communication and access protocol, and that's on the resources section. We'll talk a bit more about that later. Now, sometimes there might be circumstances where a principal might be reluctant to issue an order, or it might be better for another person, such as a regional director, to issue an order. And there's a number of really valid reasons why that might be the case. Often, unfortunately, principals and also front of office staff are often more likely to be subject to parent and carer aggression. And if a principal is the subject of that aggression already, then in order to protect the principal, then it might be quite appropriate to consider whether or not a regional director should issue the order. And you can talk to your SEIL about that circumstance on whether you need that support to issue an order. The other reason why it might be appropriate is if you think issuing an order is likely to increase the behaviours or make that person direct the behaviours towards a parent and carer.

Another might be because you have a potential conflict. For example, if you've had, you know, an extended interaction with that person or if you feel like it'll be difficult to make an objective decision because of your close involvement with the issue. If you're acting or need some, just need some more support that's another really good reason. So, if you're in that circumstance, I really encourage you to talk to your SEIL and you can also just reach out to legal division and we'll support you to work through what the most appropriate option is in that circumstance. So, it's really important that the scheme has teeth, but it's also really important that we don't unnecessarily push people into the criminal justice system. Criminal justice system experiences and criminal offences have really significant consequences for people for the rest of their lives. So, we want this scheme to be effective, but we don't necessarily want to push families into criminal justice system. So, that's why this scheme is a civil remedy scheme, which means that if a person breaches an order, it's up to the department to take action about that alleged breach. So, if you've issued an order, then it's open to... you should contact reason and legal will consider whether or not it's appropriate to commence enforcement proceedings in the Magistrates Court. A magistrate will hear about the order and the breach and consider whether or not a breach has occurred. And if a magistrate finds that a breach has occurred, then they may issue a fine of up to 60 penalty units, which is translates to just over $11,000 or a number of different orders. Like compelling the person to comply with the order or to take specified action.

The other thing that's important about this scheme is giving people the right to review the decision that's being made under the scheme. So, if an order has been issued in relation to a person, so when they get the order, they'll have noticed that there's an ability to apply for an internal review of the decision to issue an order. And that internal review process will consider the whether or not the order that was made was valid and whether the grounds existed for the making of the order. And that will be considered by the department. If a person's unsatisfied with the outcome of the internal review, then a person can apply to VCAT. And a VCAT member will consider whether or not the order ought to have been made and they'll consider that afresh as well. So, I've been through a lot of information there. I'm going to hand over to Naomi because there is a lot to this theme and we want to make sure that there's a lot of information for people to understand how to step through the process and also some of the additional support and training available. So, I hand over to you, Naomi. Thanks.

Naomi Shimoda: Thanks, Helen. So, as Helen said, I'll step everyone through some of the resources and support and advice that can be obtained for you to understand the scheme and also to use the scheme. I do want to start by saying that no principal or user of the scheme if you are an authorised person appointed within the department, no user of the scheme will be navigating the system alone because of all those supports and resources that are available. So, firstly, I do want to talk about the enhancements that will be coming to eduSafe Plus in the next couple of weeks. So, eduSafe Plus will have its own dedicated reporting section for school community safety orders. So, this will provide a single digital system for authorised persons to comply with their reporting requirements. And as you can see here on this screen, it's a form to fill out if you want to report the issuing of an immediate order. It steps you through all of the procedure requirements and considerations that you need to turn your mind to as a decision maker within the scheme. And so in this way, eduSafe plus can enable you to comply with all those requirements without making you reference the policy and reference the Act, and reference the ministerial guidelines. Although we do encourage you to look at the policy while you're completing this form. Once submitted, it notifies relevant teams within the department for follow-up advice and support. One of those teams will be legal division who is available to provide advice on whether a particular scenario that the school is going through or is faced with meets the threshold for issuing an order. But also they're available to provide you with that tailored support for when you've decided to issue an order, and you want to make sure that all of the procedure requirements are being met in the issuing of that order. So, there's going to be more detail in the reporting chapter of the School Community Safety Orders Policy that will detail some of the main times and touch points at which an order report needs to be created. Or that order report needs to be updated with subsequent information and updates, such as if an order is breached or if an internal review application has been received from the subject, or if it's going to be verified or revoked. All of that sort of guidance will be included in the School Community Safety Orders Policy. We can go on to the next slide. I can just give you a bit of a snapshot of the new tile that's gonna be available on the eduSafe Plus workspace. So, in the coming weeks, we're going to include a new tile and we're going to include those two separate forms for an immediate order and an ongoing order. And in addition to submitting an order report, you do have to submit an incident report as per usual process, and you will be able to cross-reference any related incident reports in that particular order report. We'll have some user reference guides available on the School Community Safety Orders Policy as well so that you can easily navigate the system. Although many of you will be very, very familiar with using this system all the time to report incidents. And during this current periods where we're in between now and the enhancements going live, we'll have some manual reporting forms available on the policy as well in case there's an order that needs to be issued and the platform is not yet live. So, again, we encourage you to access the policy, which I will talk about a bit more in-depth in the next slide. So, we've mentioned this policy a couple of times. We've launched this last week and it includes step-by-step guidance for authorised persons using the scheme. And you can see a list of chapters here. So, a lot of the material that Helen went through, including what circumstances can you issue an order, what are the mandatory requirements and considerations that you need to think about before issuing an order? And all of the more detailed procedural steps in issuing an order, as well as some of the later considerations after issuing an order. What can you do to minimise the impact of an order on a student's impacts, psychological health impacts on staff, or monitoring compliance with an order that's currently in place? So, all of that detail is contained in the School Community Safety Orders Policy on Powell. What's also available on the policy is a number of templates. So, we've got template orders, we've got scripts for issuing an immediate order verbally, communication, and access protocol. All of these templates have been developed in recognition of principals and the demanding workload that we are very acutely aware of when it comes to leading schools. So we've been very cognisant of that when developing these templates and guidance materials and more templates, I assure you, will be developed over time, especially in response to feedback from schools about what would be useful. So, we'd love to hear feedback from you.

So, there's a eLearn module on the School Community Safety Orders Scheme. It's available now on LearnIt. And this eLearn is a requirement for all authorised persons if you intend to use the scheme and it's a requirement to complete this before issuing your first order. And it's either type of order. So, it's not quite a blanket requirement for all principals to complete the eLearn as of today. It's based on an individual assessment as to whether you think you'll use the scheme within your school and making sure that where there is whether you when you are facing a scenario or circumstance where you may need to issue an order, particularly an immediate order, which might have that unacceptable and imminent risk of something happening. That could pose harm or disruption or interference with the school that you're ready to, ready with the knowledge and capability to issue a verbal or immediate order on the spot. Although this is a requirement for authorised persons who intend to use the scheme, we do also encourage anyone else school-based or department-based, who wants to gain a really quick sort of understanding of the scheme. A quick overview of the scheme because it is a short and sharp 30 minutes and it does cover a lot of essential information you want to know about the scheme, such as when the two types of orders can be made and a lot of the procedure requirements. And it's supported by a number of case studies and examples that are featured throughout the eLearn so that you can test the understanding and test the knowledge that you've gained throughout the eLearn against those examples.

We've also just on the eLearn as well, we do recognise that there is quite a lot of eLearn fatigue out there. So, we have tried to make it as short as possible but also as engaging as possible. So, again, we really invite feedback on this eLearn and its sort of effectiveness and ease of understanding as well.

Thank you. So, next we have publicly accessible information on the department's website. So, we really encourage schools to refer any parents or carers or other members of the school community who inquire about the scheme or wants further information about the scheme to be directed to this web page to a specific School Community Safety Orders landing page on the department's website. So, we've got here a still for a short video summary of the scheme. It's about 2.5 minutes, and it provides a really succinct and really quite simple overview of the scheme. So, we'd really encourage many of you to check that out. We've also got a link to the latest version of the ministerial guidelines. This is something that authorised person could choose to access for further guidance, further detail, further sort of operational information in addition to the School Community Safety Orders policy. It's a sector-neutral resource, so it won't include government school-specific information.

In government school-specific information can be found in their School Community Safety Orders policy, which I went through before. I do want to point out the two key web pages on this site. One is the information for parents' webpage. So, this includes information on appeal rights for parents. Some of the safeguards and procedural fairness measures that are included within the scheme. So, it can be quite reassuring information for parents who may be quite concerned about how the scheme impacts them. And it includes downloadable factsheets for parents in simple English, as well as those that are translated into the 30 most commonly spoken languages in the States. And an easy English version of these factsheets and an overview scheme is coming soon. It'll be published on the website in the next few weeks. We've been really cognisant of trying to develop materials that can be widely understood by a range of people from diverse backgrounds and diverse abilities and diverse linguistic backgrounds as well. So, that's also something that we've really tried to focus on while preparing for implementation. The last thing on this page is information for students. So. if there are students within your school whose parents or carer may have been issued with an order or just for general information or the general student population, if they have questions about the scheme or if you wanted to clarify details about the scheme with the student population. There's also that particular web page which contains age-appropriate information, and it's really quite reassuring to students about how the scheme won't interfere with their ability to interact with their own parents or carer. And so it does contain a lot of student-specific information.

Next one. So, we've got a communications toolkit for schools. This was featured in school update last week. It's really a tool for you to download off the School Community Safety Orders Policy, and it includes a bunch of materials that you can repurpose to raise awareness of the scheme within your school. So, this can include suggested newsletter content to school staff or the school community. Speaking points for when you're addressing school staff at meetings to inform them about the scheme. Email signature banners, as you can see here, social media posts, as you can see here. And also some of the posters that you may be familiar with which promotes respectful behaviour within the school community.

Next slide, please. So, we've spoken a bit about how we have a range of advice and support pathways for authorised persons within the department. The most important one, I think, in terms of seeking information and advice about the scheme is legal division. So, as I noted before, legal can help you understand whether a situation hits the threshold for issuing an order and also help you with issuing an order that's compliant with all of the legislation. Legislative requirements and policy requirements. OHS advisory service would be familiar to many of you. They can provide generalised OHS advice, but also assistance with incident reporting. As I said, an incident report has to be submitted in addition to reporting, a school community safety order so they can provide you with focus support with that and also reviewing risk controls following an incident that results in an order being issued. EAP is available for counselling support for all staff. So, that's also expanded beyond one on one counselling to onsite support and a group debriefing service. So, we really encourage all staff and principals who have been affected by behaviour that's resulted in an order being issued to access those really critical psychological health supports. Employer Wellbeing Response Team are an amazing team that provides risk management planning for those high-risk issues and following a critical incident, they can provide you with really tailored support for managing safety risks that arise out of such a critical incident.

Next slide, please. So, you've got a range of other advice and support pathways as well. So, parent complaints, if you receive a parent complaint and would like assistance or advice on responding or managing that a complaints and improvement unit is available. And also the complex manager support team, they provide really great advice on ongoing vexatious reading communications from a parent or advocate. So, they're really critical pathway or advice source for when you want to deal with a parent carer aggression matter before it escalates to an ongoing order, for example. Convergence Nationals, so the conflict resolution supports service can be available to DET staff who want to participate in mediation, sorry, and conflict coaching or conflict intervention. I do want to note that this is not available to... this is available to school staff, but it's not available to parents who schools they wish to engage in that sort of mediation process with. We've got details of ISOC, which would also be familiar with. So, the security unit is available to provide security advice and security audits. We've provided ISOC's details here because they do provide that 24- seven support. Lastly, we've got the independent office, the school dispute resolution. So, they provide advice on escalated parent disputes. So, this may be before an order is issued, but also when an order has been issued and it's coming to an end or it's expired or it's lapsed. There is also some support and advice available from the independent office to re-engage that parent back into the school community.

With the next slide, I'm just going to refer back to Helen to take you through some of the principal health and wellbeing supports. So, this is we really encourage and suppose to access these supports in recognition of a lot of the really significant psychological health and physical health risks that may come with performing this role of an authorised person, but also being subjected to the behaviour that results in an order being issued.

Helen Quiney: Thanks, Naomi. And I'll be quick as I've got a few minutes remaining and I would love to finish off a little bit early. In addition to the work that we do on this scheme, we in my division, we lead the principal Health and Wellbeing Services which are available to all principal class staff. And I just wanted to mention a few in particular that are really important supports. The principal mentor program is available for mentoring for principals, but I wanted to make sure that people are aware the Proactive Wellbeing Support program. I can see there are a few SEILs on the line and there are a few principals on the line as well. And this service is available to all SEILs and to all principal class offices. And provide support in relation to planning to proactively manage our mental health and wellbeing. In a really busy job, it's really important that you do that and it can also support you to think about managing the mental health and wellbeing of your staff too. The early intervention program is a really important service and gives you access to sessions with health professionals, so that can include physiotherapy and psychology. And we also have support through the medical advisory service and through Manager Assist, which is a really great service that I've used to get advice on how to talk to someone who might be going through something really difficult, which I think it's an important service for circumstances such as these. So, please consider accessing those services. I use Proactive Wellbeing Support myself and it's a really fantastic service. That is the end of our presentation. I just wanted to jump back to one side that I skipped, which relates to the use of trespass warning notices, because we did have a few questions about this in the last session. So, trespass warning notices continue to be available, as I mentioned earlier. And in some circumstances, that might still be the appropriate tool. In other times, it might be that you need both a school community safety order or trespass warning notice and or and a trespass warning notice to respond to the behaviour. What I would say is talk to legal division, they're really amazing advisors and they're really well established to give you some advice that relates specifically to your circumstances and considers the different risks and which might be the most suitable tool to use in that circumstance. But those still are available to be used and any trespass warning notices that you've already issued still continue to apply based on the terms of that order. There's no change to those. So, that was all we were gonna cover today. I'll just pause for a moment in case there are any additional questions in the chat. I know the team have been responding to the questions as we go.

And otherwise. I just wanted to thank you all for your time and for your great work on other on various components of the scheme and for your support in schools. Thanks very much. And thanks to Naomi and the team for their work to bring this together as well. Thanks. Bye.

Kate Rattigan: Thanks everyone.

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