Georgia Naldrett
General Manager, Child Sexual Abuse Prevention; Stop it Now! Australia
Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Through Cross-Sector Collaboration: The Development and Scale-Up of Stop It Now! Australia.
Stop It Now! Australia is a national early intervention service delivered by a not-for-profit service provider (Jesuit Social Services) in close partnership with the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department. The service model reflects collaboration across law enforcement, victim-survivor organisations, international services, and government agencies. The service delivers evidence-informed, ethically robust support, offering anonymous, action-oriented advice via a helpline and online resources for individuals concerned about their own or others’ sexual thoughts and behaviours towards children.
This presentation outlines the program’s collaborative foundations and its transition from pilot to a government funded national service. It highlights how interagency collaboration—particularly with law enforcement— shaped the program design, service model refinement to suit the Australian population, and pilot implementation. It also offers insights from the Attorney-General's Department on how partnership between the not-for-profit sector and government is imperative in prevention efforts.
We examine how ongoing alliances with law enforcement have enabled co-development of referral pathways, reporting considerations and practical frontline tools to support earlier intervention alongside criminal justice response. Ongoing engagement with specialist units and agencies has ensured the model remains operationally relevant and aligned with policing contexts, strengthening awareness and uptake of prevention pathways and creating earlier opportunities to disrupt harm.
This presentation demonstrates how embedding prevention-focused services alongside criminal justice responses enhances system capability and highlights the critical role of sustained collaboration in enabling safe, effective prevention at scale. It shows that preventing child sexual abuse at scale is possible, but only through the collective efforts of multiple systems working together.
Open Access
Prevention Through Collaboration: The development of What's ok? Australia.
While public awareness of child sexual abuse often focuses on abuse perpetrated by adults, findings from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study indicate that harmful sexual behaviour by children and young people is the most common form of CSA for young Australians, with more than 50% of victim-survivors experienced sexual harm inflicted by another young person.
Responding to and preventing harmful sexual behaviour by children and young people requires more than awareness-it demands genuine collaboration with young people and strong partnerships across service systems. What's ok? Australia, building on learning from Stop It Now! Australia, is a new anonymous website and helpline for young people concerned about their own or someone else's sexual thoughts or behaviours towards children. The program is grounded in co-design, working alongside young people to ensure the service is relevant, accessible, and reflective of their lived realities, while also supporting parents, carers, and professionals with clear, evidence-informed guidance to prevent harmful sexual behaviour.
This presentation focuses on the process underpinning the development of What's ok? Australia, highlighting how engagement with young people has shaped the platform's tone, functionality, and content. It also explores how collaboration across the sector has been pivotal to the initiative's success, including partnerships with academics, direct services, victim-survivors, law enforcement, education, and many more.
The presentation highlights the critical role of partnership in designing innovative approaches that are developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed, and responsive to the diverse contexts in which young people live. Drawing on insights from the design and pilot phases, it will examine how collaboration has shaped key elements of the initiative, including content development, referral pathways, and service user engagement. We will share learnings from the service development, and how stakeholders, including law enforcement, can utilise What's ok? Australia to assist in preventing harmful sexual behaviours by young people.