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Safety Management for Children's Ministries in NZ Baptist Churches.

 

Our Safety Management manual, Safety First, is available for download below. The page is password protected so please email the team for more information. Ideally, this manual is accompanied by training, but where that is not possible or available, our Children and Families team is able to help and support you as you work through our easy to follow steps and adapt our templates and sample policies and procedures. 

For answers to your questions, for information on the Safety First  manual and for the password, please contact the office:

email: childrensministry@baptist.org.nz 

 
Police Vetting

 

Download the Police Vetting consent form and the Police vetting schedule from the Baptist Intranet

 

Police Vetting volunteers is an important part of a Safety Management System.  Police will vet anyone over the age of 10 which is the age when a criminal conviction will be recorded.  However we would strongly recommend that churches have a policy that includes a minimum age of 14 (which is the legal age a person can baby sit) and older for people working with youth.

Churches need to pay attention to who is the Identity Referee and who is the Trusted Referee when filling in the two forms.  The identity referee confirms the person being police vetted is actually the person they say they are.  The trusted referee is the person in the church who gets the results back.  Unless there is written permission from the person being vetted the trusted referee can not share the results with anyone, not even the pastor.

 

Together with the Police vetting form you also need to complete the Police vetting schedule form.

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Police Vetting:

See the Baptist Intranet for the most up-to-date information and the Police vetting forms.

Safety First Manual :

Click here to access the online version of the manual.
Please note, t
his link is password protected.  Email: childrensministry@baptist.org.nz for assistance and the password. 

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Important information for charities that work with children

New regulations come into force on 1 July 2015 that set out requirements for safety checks for children’s workers. The requirements apply to charities that:
(i) receive money from a State service to provide a “regulated service”, and
(ii) employ or engage children’s workers to perform that regulated service.
The list of regulated services is broad, and includes mentoring and counselling services, youth services, youth work, home-based and residential disability services, and educational/early child care services.


Safety checks must be completed (or updated as required) for any paid employees or contractors who will be working as a children’s worker.  The children’s workforce is made up of all workers who have regular (at least once each week or on at least four days each month) or overnight contact with children, without a parent or guardian being present, as part of their role. Children’s workers are “core workers” if they work alone with children or have primary responsibility for children. The requirements don’t apply to volunteers, unless that unpaid work is part of an educational or vocational training course.


The safety checking requirements are being phased in over three to four years to give organisations time to have all of their children’s workforce checked:

  • From 1 July 2015 new core children’s workers starting a job or contract must be safety checked before they start work

  • From 1 July 2016 new non-core children’s workers starting a job or contract must be safety checked before they start work

  • By 1 July 2018 existing children’s core workers (that is, those currently employed or engaged as a contractor) must have been safety checked

  • By 1 July 2019 all existing non-core children’s workers must have been be safety checked.

 

The regulations set out what checks must be made, including identity checks, Police vetting, gathering other information and undertaking a risk assessment.
The regulations are available on the Government’s legislation website. Further information is available on the Children’s Action Plan website 

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