In 2021, the Tasmanian Commission of Inquiry was established to consider the Tasmanian Government’s responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse in government institutions and those funded to provide services on its behalf. The Commission was established as a response to serious allegations of child sexual abuse in Tasmanian schools, Ashley Youth Detention and Launceston General Hospital. The Commission aimed to understand Tasmanian children and young people’s contemporary experiences of government-run and government-funded services and to use those findings to inform recommendations about how institutions and systems might better prevent and respond to harm.

The Commission engaged researchers from the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University to conduct a study which aimed to work with Tasmanian children and young people to explore:

• how safe they feel in key government institutions
• features of an organisation that increase or decrease their feelings of safety
• the extent to which they feel confident raising safety concerns
• how they would raise these concerns (if inclined), to whom and what influences these decisions

This report explores the views of 59 Tasmanian children and young people to understand their contemporary experiences of government-run and government-funded services and to use those findings to inform recommendations about how institutions and systems might better prevent and respond to harm.