Legal and ethical frameworks surrounding the provision of mental health and counselling services to children contain clear direction regarding when informed consent can and cannot be provided (Australian Psychological Society, 2015; Australian Association of Social Wokers, 2015; Larcher, 2005). There is, however, a lack of peer reviewed research or clinical guidelines regarding the consent and confidentiality of information that should be provided to children incapable of informed consent. This paper outlines the counselling practice principles for working with young children in place across FMC Mediation and Counselling Victoria (FMC).

FMC aims to increase the likelihood of a strong sense of trust and credibility in the therapeutic relationship (General Medical Council, 2000; Barkley, 2013; Sue, 1981). Emphasis is placed on highlighting what is and what is not to be disclosed by the clinician to consenting guardians. Open communication between children and their supportive carers is always encouraged. Practitioners use the conversation regarding the boundaries of confidentiality and rights of consent to educate child clients and their guardians in the limits imposed by law and those which can be negotiated between the family and practitioner.

In taking this approach, FMC aims to provide counselling services in which children are aware of the extent of the supports available and the safety those supports can extend. This approach also aims to increase the investment of child clients in the counselling process. A case study will highlight how this approach works in practice.

Children with disability continue to be overlooked in the National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children (the Framework). There is minimal reference and focus on children with disability in the current implementation plan. While this continues as the status quo Australia will continue to fail in building child safe organisations and environment for children with disability.

It is the view of Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) that at the outset of the establishment of the Framework there was limited recognition or understanding of the significant and specific issues relevant to children with disability regarding child safety, wellbeing and abuse. Further, CYDA believes that to date there has been little progress in ensuring children with disability are ‘core business’ in the Framework.

CYDA is concerned that the safety and wellbeing of children with disability is still largely positioned as the work and responsibility of the disability sector when it should also be embedded and central to the work of children and family services.

This presentation will discuss why it is critical that children with disability must be a core focus of the Framework and how this will impact on child safe practice and ultimately on children’s lives.

People with Disability Australia has been running a research project entitled ‘What makes institutions safe for children with disability?’ Children with disability experience far higher levels of violence than other children; international estimates suggest that children with disability are at over 2.7 times the risk of violence as their peers, and experience higher risks of sexual abuse as well.
Many professionals and experts have been called in to provide opinions on how to safeguard children, but few had consulted with people with disability themselves, who have substantial experience in various specialist and mainstream institutions, frequently as children themselves. Understanding this cohort to have valuable lived experience, Dr Jessica Cadwallader, Advocacy Projects Manager, Violence Prevention, and chief investigator on this project, set out to hold a focus group in each state and territory of Australia about what people with disability themselves thought would help keep children safer.
This paper will demonstrate that children with disability require particular consideration when developing child safe policies, procedures and institutions, and that lived experience is invaluable to this process. The insights gained through this project in some cases affirm the growing consensus about what is required to ensure that institutions and environments are safe for children. In many cases, they supplement these ‘mainstream’ ideas with detail about the specific needs of children with disability. And occasionally, they provide an important corrective to some of the assumptions made about the need to ‘protect’ children with disability, and about what it is that will keep them safe.