On September 15th and 18th 2025, I attended a two-day in-depth safeguarding training online for people with disability, targeted at people in safeguarding leadership positions. I will be releasing a new blog post every fortnight summarising what I learnt at the training.
The first day started off by talking about how people with disability are at risk of abuse because of increased contact and being alone in the workplace with support providers. People with disability can have difficulty expressing their concerns, and also can be socially isolated, or reliant on the worker. People may not know what their rights are or how to address concerns that they have. Being in shared environments with other clients can reduce harm and abuse from occurring.
The culture of an organisation will drive safety. As the Uniting Church in South Australia, we can ensure that we have policies and procedures in place that will keep people with disability safe from harm and abuse. We also need to ensure that these are enacted when needed, but also enacted to prevent harm and abuse. We need to have a culture of safeguarding and make sure we live it out in all that we do. This applies to all leaders in the Uniting Church of South Australia.
Over the coming months there will be resources created for congregations to use. Please feel free to reach out to Anna via email: awilson@sa.uca.org.au