Child Protection Week 2023

National Child Protection Week: 3 – 9 September 2023

Overarching message: ‘Every child in every community needs a fair go’

This year between  3 September - 9 September 2023, Blacktown City Council is honouring the 2023 National Child Protection week.  This year’s theme for Child Protection week will continue to celebrate the overreaching message that every child in every community needs a fair go.

Child Protection Week is an opportunity to raise awareness of the issue of child abuse and neglect and to promote strategies for prevention and action.  Blacktown City Council is committed to listening to children and improving child safety across our city. 

As a community, we all share responsibility in keeping children safe and well in our communities.

National Child Protection Week provides the community opportunity to come together and change the trajectory of Children's lives and reduce the number of children who experience child abuse and neglect and whose who enter the child protection system.

We are determined to make Blacktown City a place where our children are supported, respected and where  they can learn and play in a safe environment.

This year Blacktown City Council has partnered with Sydney West Child Protection & Family Interagency in celebration of National Child Protection Week and created a Pre-school & Primary school activity pack.  This activity pack provides various resources and information for children and families around themes and services in child protection.

Download your free resource here(PDF, 19MB). 

Keeping Kids Safe

It’s important to teach kids about personal body safety and give them practical strategies to ask for and get help when they need it.

A few ways you can promote safety and personal safety with children can be done through small and simple but effective everyday practices. Some of this may include:

Teach children to:

• Name their feelings – happy, angry, sad, uncomfortable, scared. ‘We all have the right to feel safe all the time.’

• Use the correct names for their body parts and the difference between private and public body parts. ‘Everyone is the boss of their own body and they decide who touches them.’

• Recognise when they feel unsafe, and how to say ‘stop, I don’t like it!’

• Identify their safe adults. ‘We can talk about anything with our safe adults.’