A pathway that centres and listens to the needs of the child harmed.
Young people are responding to harmful sexual behaviours from peers and other known young people in schools and communities across Australia, and many of us struggle to find ways of responding that attend to individual needs, support accountability and contribute to long-term safety and wellbeing. Community conversation and media coverage often centre on the behaviour itself, or on the child responsible for it, we believe the child who was harmed belongs at the centre instead, genuinely listened to, believed, and given real say over what happens next. We're piloting a restorative pathway built on that principle: one that also holds the child responsible genuinely accountable, and gives every young person a pathway back to safety.
We couldn't do this without them. The Snow Foundation's investment funds the development, delivery and independent evaluation of this pilot, from the first referral through to what we learn about what actually helps, so we can build a genuinely better justice option for children impacted by harmful sexual behaviour.
Current responses aren't meeting anyone's needs.
Young people, their families and school communities face complex experiences of harm, stigma and disrupted relationships following harmful sexual behaviour. The responses schools and systems currently have available to them are limited, they can minimise or normalise what happened, be overly exclusionary or punitive, and fail to address the needs of the student who was harmed. Left unaddressed, these responses can lead to further harm and compromised health and wellbeing for everyone involved.
We think there's a better way, one that doesn't ask schools to choose between safety and repair.
Accountability, not punishment.
Holding students who are responsible for displaying harmful sexual behaviour genuinely accountable is central to our work. But we know that carceral and purely punitive responses are largely ineffective, they don't get to why the behaviour happened, and they don't repair anything.
Real change comes when a young person understands the impact of what they did, takes meaningful responsibility for it, and commits to acting differently. That's what a restorative process makes possible, for the student responsible, and for the student who was harmed, who deserves to be heard, believed, and supported to feel safe at school again.
Alongside delivering the pilot, we're advocating to government and the Department of Education to recognise the scale of this need, and to invest in restorative pathways as a genuine, funded part of how schools respond, not a stopgap we're left to prove on our own.
Read about our model →What we're working to achieve
Health & wellbeing
A transparent, trauma-informed pathway that complements, never replaces, schools' legal and safety obligations.
Real support
Access to appropriate support for every student involved, including the student responsible, to address what's underneath the behaviour.
Skilled facilitation
Independent, trauma-informed restorative practitioners, and training so school staff can support the process with confidence.
Words can support safety, dignity and accountability, or they can hide harm
Across this site, we try to name harm clearly and honestly, keep responsibility with the person who caused it, use the language people choose for their own experience, survivor, victim, person harmed, or another term, and describe people as more than the harm they've experienced or caused.
Designed with diversity in mind, not as an afterthought
Children come to this project from every kind of background, First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse, LGBTQIA+ and gender-diverse young people, and children with disability among them. Facilitation is trauma-informed and culturally responsive, shaped around each young person's own identity, community and circumstances, rather than a one-size-fits-all script.
This pathway is open to any school.
Schools cover the cost of the process on a fee-for-service basis, we're advocating for government to fund it directly, so cost is never the reason a child can't access it.
Sources: Malvaso, Day, Cale, Hackett, Delfabbro & Ross, Adverse childhood experiences and trauma among young people in the youth justice system, Australian Institute of Criminology (2022).