Advocacy
A key role of NAPCAN is to act as an advocate for the rights of children and young people to government, business, community based organisations and the general public. NAPCAN connects and engages with communities to inspire and enable and support them to be increasingly supportive of children's wellbeing. For us engagement is a dynamic two-way relationship in which we seek to: raise awareness; advocate for children's wellbeing; and, educate for positive behavioural change.

This process of community connection, engagement, challenge and support has been developed from a solid foundation of best practice research and evidence and is underpinned by a rigorous social change approach incorporating public awareness, advocacy and education initiatives. It relies on the networks and trust built up over the 18 years in which NAPCAN has been a force in the social justice field within Australia.

A Whole of Community Approach
NAPCAN's community approach challenges the commonly held view that parents carry the sole responsibility for children's safety and wellbeing. To date successful solutions to the complex and endemic social problem of child abuse and neglect have only been found by working in a sustained way in partnership with communities. This informs NAPCAN's belief that children's wellbeing is everyone's responsibility and that it takes the whole of a healthy community to prevent child abuse and neglect.

When NAPCAN talks about Community it is talking about the people in our "every day" lives. We work with a wide-ranging interpretation and understanding of "community" as any group of people who call themselves a "community". Neighbourhoods, sporting clubs, businesses and work places, cultural groups, religious groups, social groups, friends, professional groups, internet groups and interest groups, are some of the "communities" that influence the wellbeing of children. There are a great many more.

A true community development model, led by the community, determined by the community, is fundamental to the success of NAPCAN's work. NAPCAN's staff, members, volunteers, committees and regional working groups extend our national reach at 'grass roots' level and provide the foundation for our work in community engagement right across urban, rural and remote Australia . Whilst NAPCAN and other professionals bring research, evidence, knowledge, skills and tools, it is the communities who hold the answers about what will work.

As much of NAPCAN's work is to act as a catalyst for behavioural change the specifics of which are determined by each community and led by the communities themselves, it is sometimes difficult for us to categorically state what we will do.

More appropriately NAPCAN's Approach outlines how NAPCAN works now and proposes to work in the future and what initiatives we will undertake. Of course this leaves space for every Australian community to take responsibility for determining and delivering culturally appropriate actions to care for children. In general this leads to children being:

• included
• supported
• provided for
• protected

Reflecting the key principles of the universally accepted United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC )

Submissions
UNCROCDownload (185 KB) HERE
NSW Inquiry into Children, Young People and the Built Environment Download (232 KB) HERE

Conference Papers
NTCOSS (Northern Territory Council of Social Service) Bi-annual Conference 2006 Download (1.16 MB) HERE

Public Presentations
North Shore Talks Download (1.23 MB) HERE
Australian Child Protection Forum Download (1.68 MB) HERE