Promoting the 2025 National Child Protection Week Theme “Every Conversation Matters” and Achieving an Exceeding Rating

Perfect for National Child Protection week 7 – 13 September 2025

By BEST Childcare Consulting 

In 2025, the importance of embedding child protection into early childhood education has never been more vital. With growing awareness of children’s rights, safety, and wellbeing, early learning services play a critical role in creating environments where every child feels safe, heard, and empowered. National Child Protection Week, with the theme “Every Conversation Matters,” offers a timely and powerful opportunity for educators to foster protective behaviours, build trust, and teach children the language of safety from their earliest years. By integrating these messages into everyday practice, services not only exceed their obligations under the National Quality Standard—they also contribute meaningfully to a culture of prevention, advocacy, and genuine care for every child in their community.

Quality Area 2: Children’s Health and Safety

Standard 2.2 – Each child is protected

Embedded Practice

We have embedded a strong culture of child safety by integrating age-appropriate protective behaviours across our curriculum. Activities such as Yarning Circles, Feelings Journals, and ongoing use of body safety language are part of daily routines. Educators consistently reinforce the message that every child has the right to feel safe, be heard, and understand their protective networks. Visual aids and prompts are available in all rooms to support these conversations.

Critical Reflection

As a team, we regularly reflect on the effectiveness of our strategies to protect children. Recent reflections have focused on how we respond to disclosures, the visibility of protective behaviours within our environments, and how children engage with community visitors during NCPW. We’ve used this insight to strengthen our supervision planning, revise our safe spaces, and refresh our policies to ensure all children feel secure and supported.

Meaningful Engagement

We engage families and community services in meaningful ways to promote a shared responsibility for child safety. During NCPW, we invited local police and Aboriginal health workers to speak with the children about identifying safe adults. We provided families with take-home resource packs including conversation starters, recommended books, and protective behaviours visuals, allowing them to continue the conversation at home.

Quality Area 5: Relationships with Children

Standard 5.1 – Respectful and equitable relationships are maintained with each child

Embedded Practice

We maintain consistent, respectful relationships with every child by ensuring every conversation is valued. Through activities like book-based discussions (Everyone’s Got a Bottom, Your Body Belongs to You) and social-emotional modelling, educators embed body autonomy, consent, and trust into daily conversations. We intentionally create time for child-led dialogue throughout the day.

Critical Reflection

The team reflects on how their communication style affects the child’s experience of safety and empowerment. Recent discussions focused on adjusting our tone, body language, and availability to better meet children’s diverse communication needs. We also reflected on how non-verbal children can be more meaningfully included in protective behaviours learning using visual supports and AAC tools.

Meaningful Engagement

Educators partner with families to personalise communication approaches and embed culturally responsive protective behaviours strategies. We ensure children’s voices are captured in documentation, and children actively contribute to learning environments that reflect their understanding of safety and belonging.

Quality Area 6: Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities

Standards 6.1 & 6.2 – Respectful relationships with families and the community

Embedded Practice

Our partnerships with families and community organisations are ongoing and central to our approach to child protection. Community visitors are part of our annual curriculum planning, and our protective behaviours work is evident throughout the year—not limited to a specific event. We view families as collaborators in building a child-safe service.

Critical Reflection

We critically examine how well our communication strategies serve all families, especially those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Reflection on past events led to the inclusion of more visual and plain language tools in our NCPW resources and parent communications. We continuously seek feedback to ensure all families understand our shared safety goals.

Meaningful Engagement

This year, we co-planned NCPW activities with families, inviting them to contribute stories, images, and ideas to a shared “Safe Conversations” display. Parent resource tables included protective behaviours booklists and links to services. These actions reflected the theme “Every Conversation Matters” and demonstrated our commitment to building strong, collaborative, and culturally sensitive safety practices.

Ideas to support “Every Conversation Matters” based early childhood educational program

Here are practical, NQS-aligned activities that can be implemented during National Child Protection Week 2025 — with links to trusted sources and downloadable resources:

Yarning Circles

Facilitate respectful, inclusive discussions about safety, belonging, and feelings.
Yarning Circles https://aussiechildcarenetwork.com.au/articles/childcare-articles/yarning-circles-in-early-childhood-services

Feelings Journals

Encourage children to draw or write how they feel daily to support emotional literacy.
Daily Wellbeing Journal – Be You https://beyou.edu.au

Community Visitors

Invite trusted people (e.g. local police, Aboriginal health workers) to talk about safety.
Bravehearts Early Years Education https://bravehearts.org.au/about-child-sexual-abuse/resources/

Book-Based Discussions

Use books to start conversations about body safety and autonomy.
Everyone’s Got a Bottom – Family Planning NSW https://www.fpnsw.org.au/sites/default/files/assets/teacherscatalogue_2014.pdf


Your Body Belongs to You – Penguin Random House  https://www.bookvine.com/prod-20-1-626-213/your-body-belongs-to-you-pb-.htm


Protective Behaviours Booklist – PBWA https://beaufortstreetbooks.com.au/c/protective-behaviours?page=2&site=3122

Visual Communication Boards

Support all children—including those with speech or developmental delays—to express concerns.


Widgit Australia – Visuals for Communication https://www.widgit.com/products/widgit-online/index.htm


Visual Behaviour Tools – Be You https://beyou.edu.au/resources/implementation-tools/betls-observation-tool

Helpful Resources and links

Here’s a curated list of helpful links and resources to support your planning and implementation of National Child Protection Week 2025 under the theme “Every Conversation Matters”. These resources are aligned with the National Quality Standard and provide practical tools, activities, and professional learning for educators, families, and children.

  • Widgit Australia – Visual Communication Boards
    Symbol-based resources to support communication and understanding.
     https://www.widgit.com.au/
  • SNAICC – The Voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children
    Advocacy, programs, and resources for engaging Indigenous children and families.
     https://www.snaicc.org.au/

Let BEST Childcare Consulting Help You Lead the Conversation

At BEST Childcare Consulting, we empower early learning services to transform everyday conversations into powerful evidence of Exceeding practice. National Child Protection Week is the perfect opportunity to showcase your commitment to child safety, respectful relationships, and genuine partnerships with families and communities. 

As always, use these inspirations to lead your service throughout the whole year in your everyday practices to truly earn an exceeding rating. 

Contact us TODAY 

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