National Child Protection Week 2026 · Free Webinar
Before the Crisis: Seeing the Signals That Keep Children Safe.

About the webinar.

Children communicate every day through their words, their behaviour, their actions, and sometimes their silence. The challenge for the adults around them, in childcare, at home, in the community, is recognising those signals early enough for them to matter. On its own, a single observation can look insignificant. Together with others, it often reveals a pattern worth a second look.

  • SAFE Child
  • SAFE Child
  • SAFE Child
  • SAFE Child

This National Child Protection Week, SAFE's Science & Technology Lead David Salajan and Case Review Specialist Angela White unpack why one person's observation so often stays disconnected from the rest of a child's picture, and what it takes to change that. They'll walk through the verbal and non-verbal ways children communicate distress, why no single carer or educator ever sees the whole picture alone, and how connecting what different people notice, at childcare, in sport, at home, in the wider community, can help concerns surface earlier.

Along the way, David and Angela will share some of the decade of research, pilots and partnerships behind SAFE, built not as a piece of software looking for a problem, but as a response to a real gap in how the small, everyday signals around a child get noticed, recorded and connected. Attendees will leave with three practical things: what to notice, why recording an observation matters even when it feels small, and how SAFE is designed to support, not replace, the existing reporting system.

They'll also address a question a lot of people are quietly asking: can technology help us see what humans can't see alone, without replacing human judgement ?

Meet the speakers.

Team-David

David Salajan

SAFE's Science & Technology Lead and cofounder
 

David cofounded SAFE and has spent more than a decade at the intersection of technology and child safety, working through research, pilot programs, and partnerships with government and scientific organisations to help build what's become one of Australia's first early intervention systems for child safety. He leads SAFE's technology work, focused on how individual observations, reports from educators, carers, family and community, can be connected to build a clearer, fuller picture of a child's wellbeing sooner.

David's view is straightforward: SAFE wasn't built by technology looking for a problem to solve. It evolved because a real child-safety problem needed technology's help.

Angela-White-2

Angela White

SAFE's Case Review Specialist
 

Angela White brings more than 40 years of frontline and strategic experience in child protection, mental health, and early intervention. She has held senior leadership roles within the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, including Director of Practice Standards, led the state-wide rollout of the Triple P Positive Parenting Program, and contributed to major policy work on early intervention and risk assessment. Her background as a family therapist and narrative practitioner grounds her approach in a relational, holistic view of child safety.

More recently, Angela has conducted parenting capacity assessments for court proceedings and supervised social work students at Western Sydney University and the University of Sydney. At SAFE, she coaches early childhood services in reading risk signals and navigating pathways for early intervention and mandatory reporting, work she sees as combining systemic insight and professional judgement to protect Australia's most vulnerable children.

What you'll take away.

  1. 1
     

    How to build a fuller picture of a child's experience by connecting what different people notice, rather than holding one piece of the picture alone.

  2. 2
     

    Why recording an observation matters more than holding it in isolation, a single moment tells you little, a pattern over time tells you much more.

  3. 3
     

    Trust your judgement. Notice what you see, record it without trying to diagnose it, and act through the right pathway if there's an immediate concern.

 

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