Uniting Country SA and Uniting Country Housing (UCSA|UCH) is committed to the safe care of children and young people. At UCSA|UCH, children are the centre of everything we do.

UCSA has adopted the Child Aware Approach (CAA) across the entire organisation and its programs. This includes educating UCSA/UCH staff, volunteers, foster carers, stakeholders, clients, program participants and communities about the ages and stages of child development and critically the meaning of trauma and its impacts on childhood development.

The aim of CAA is to influence the culture of child attentiveness in communities by increasing the awareness of factors impacting childhood development. This is from the moment of conception through to the early teenage years. CAA aims to offer every child the opportunity to flourish and thrive.

Combined with the Child Aware Approach, Uniting Country SA and Uniting Country Housing have adopted and are implementing the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. The ten Principles were recently endorsed by the Commonwealth and State Governments.

These Principles will ensure that children and young people in our care and the care of our clients, are supported to be safe, happy and engaged with life.

Sitting alongside the ten Nationally agreed Principles are a set of tools that will guide our organisation. These tools will support our organisation to identify key action areas, develop indicators of success regarding the implementation and ensure that our work is aligning with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Collectively, the implementation of the Child Aware Approach and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, will ensure that Uniting Country SA and Uniting Country Housing are fulfilling our mission, to ensure that we improve the lives of local country people and communities by making child protection everyone’s business.