The Safer Schools Action Plan, which focuses on enhancing students’ safety and well-being, has been fully implemented by the Yukon government.
The Safer Schools Action Plan’s action items emphasize creating safe and caring environments, transparency, accountability, victim-centered approaches, collaboration, and reconciliation in education settings while acknowledging that the work to ensure students’ safety at school will never cease.
Since the send off of the More secure Schools Activity Plan in February 2022, extraordinary work has been embraced to address strategy holes and upgrade wellbeing and oversight across all Yukon schools and government divisions.
The following are significant developments that have occurred over the past year:
- implementation of new policies and procedures for preventing and responding to harm by adults, including guidance for information sharing and reporting allegations to the RCMP (actions 1 and 6);
- completion of actions 2, 3, 11, 18 and 20, focused on enhancing corporate guidance and leadership capacity across the organization to improve coordination and response management of critical incidents;
- the development of comprehensive victim support plans (action 4);
- a new joint agreement between the departments of Education and Health and Social Services regarding interdepartmental operations and communication when a child’s safety is, or is likely to be, at risk (action 7);
- new corporate procedures and guidance for responding to situations where employees are charged, convicted, or under investigation for criminal conduct, including improved information sharing with the RCMP within the bounds of appropriate legislation (action 8);
- completion of training and new requirements for all school-based staff on preventing and responding to harm by adults (action 10, 13 and 14);
- implementation of new onboarding practices for all school-based and administrative staff (action 12);
- development of processes to strengthen the collection, maintenance and archiving of the assignment of adults who work with students in school-related activities (action 15);
- development of a process for ongoing review of policies, procedures and best practices for higher risk educational settings (action 17);
- finalization of a Values and Ethics Code for Government of Yukon public servants (action 21);
- finalization of a new government-wide communications policy that outlines roles and responsibilities of the public service for leading internal and external communications related to critical incidents and emergencies (action 22); and,
- an updated temporary assignment directive to provide employees with development opportunities and encourage sharing and networking between departments (action 23).
The Safer Schools Action Plan was put into action by the Yukon Government through a whole-of-government strategy. This meant that the departments of Education, Health and Social Services, Justice, the Public Service Commission, the Women and Gender Equity Directorate, and the Executive Council Office worked closely together. In addition, the Yukon government collaborated closely with the RCMP and will continue to collaborate with all stakeholders to ensure the safety of students at school.
The Safer Schools Action Plan has made progress toward ensuring student safety in educational settings, but the Yukon government is still committed to the crucial work of ensuring student safety. The improvement, implementation, and operationalization of strategies to safeguard our students will be the primary focus of ongoing efforts.
