The Trust Alliance, a collaboration of leading humanitarian organisations, partnered with Curio to develop a shared Child Safeguarding Capability Framework. This foundational work enables sector-wide consistency in safeguarding behaviours, supports digital credentialling, and ensures organisations uphold the highest standards of child protection.
The Client: The Trust Alliance
The Trust Alliance is a collective of leading humanitarian, development, academic, and technology organisations working to build a secure, portable identity ecosystem for the sector. Members include:
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CARE Australia
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Oxfam
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Redr
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Engineers Without Borders
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Australian Red Cross
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Save the Children
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Plan Australia
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ACFID (Australian Council for International Development)
Their goal is to make training and experience verifiable and trusted across organisations — starting with child safeguarding.
The Challenge
Safeguarding children is a core responsibility in humanitarian and development work. However, within the Trust Alliance, there was no shared understanding of what child safeguarding meant in practice.
Each organisation had its own frameworks, policies, and training programs — but no consistent capability standard existed. This created challenges in:
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Recruiting and onboarding staff with varying levels of safeguarding awareness
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Training and development, where content varied significantly across agencies
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Credentialling, as the Alliance’s digital credential system required a common standard to verify capability
The Alliance needed a foundational capability framework that could be applied across all member organisations — flexible, practical, and aligned with existing sector standards such as the ACFID Code of Conduct.
Our Approach
Curio was engaged to design and deliver a foundational capability framework for child safeguarding in just five weeks. Our approach was grounded in consultation, sector alignment, and practical application.
Key Activities:
1. Project Discovery and Scoping
We began by working with the Trust Alliance to define project goals, timelines, and a high-level plan, ensuring alignment with the credentialing initiative.
2. Research and Framework Review
We analysed existing safeguarding capability frameworks and standards from:
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ACFID
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DFAT
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Child Wise
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CHS Alliance
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Internal frameworks from Alliance members
This benchmarking highlighted areas of overlap and divergence, shaping the foundation for a shared model.
3. Stakeholder Workshops
Curio facilitated a cross-sector discovery workshop with representatives from all eight member organisations. Key themes included:
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A need for simplicity and practicality
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Application in hiring, onboarding, and training
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Flexibility for different roles and risk levels
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Alignment with existing policies and compliance requirements
4. Expert Interviews
We conducted one-on-one interviews with safeguarding leads across the Alliance to understand current practices, risks, and behavioural expectations when working with children.
5. Framework Design
Drawing on our insights, we defined:
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A shared definition of child safeguarding
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Two core capability elements
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Seventeen foundational behaviours, knowledge areas and skills, including:
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Treating all children with respect
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Recognising signs of harm
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Escalating safeguarding concerns
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Acting with integrity and within professional boundaries
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6. Iterative Refinement
We tested the draft framework with key stakeholders and refined it to ensure clarity, feasibility, and alignment with organisational processes.
The Outcome
Curio delivered a foundational Child Safeguarding Capability Framework that is:
Sector-endorsed
Co-created with the participation of major humanitarian organisations and aligned with ACFID and DFAT requirements.
Practical and Usable
The framework can be used across recruitment, onboarding, training, and performance management. It supports consistent expectations across diverse roles.
Credential-Ready
Designed as the basis for the first portable digital credential in the Trust Alliance’s ecosystem, allowing staff safeguarding capabilities to be recognised across organisations.
Scalable
Establishes a template that can be extended to other capability areas (e.g., ethical leadership, humanitarian response) as the credential system expands.
Why It Matters
By establishing a shared language and standard for safeguarding, the Trust Alliance can now:
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Confidently verify child safeguarding capability across members
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Reduce duplication and administrative burden
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Strengthen sector-wide accountability and compliance
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Foster safer environments for children — globally and consistently
This project sets a new benchmark for how capability frameworks can underpin ethical, safe, and portable workforce standards.
What the Client Said
“This foundational work brought clarity and cohesion to a complex issue. The framework not only supports our safeguarding responsibilities—it lays the groundwork for trusted credentialling across the humanitarian sector.”