<div><strong>Protecting children is the greatest social issue in our nation.</strong>
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<div>At the heart of the Child First Movement is a promise I believe is owed to every child in Australia: you have the right to grow up safe from abuse and neglect, with every opportunity to fulfil your God-given potential.
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<div>But Australia is catastrophically failing its children. In NSW alone, 244,710 Risk of Significant Harm reports were screened into the child protection system in 2024–25. 65% were closed because there was "no capacity to allocate" them. Of the 114,160 individual children involved, only 19.5% were seen for a field assessment.
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<div><strong>One in three girls and one in five boys experience child sexual abuse before they turn 18.</strong>
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<div>And this is happening in every state, all around the nation. <strong>This is the greatest social issue Australia faces</strong>. What happens to children doesn't stay in childhood. Childhood abuse, neglect and trauma feed into many of the mental health, addiction, domestic and family violence, homelessness and crime problems we spend billions trying to address later.
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<div>If we want to change the future of our nation, we have to change what happens to our children.
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<div><strong>PHASE 1: BUILD THE MACHINERY FOR A NATIONAL MOVEMENT</strong>
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<div>The Child First Movement has already reached the point where it is too big for one person. Thousands of comments and hundreds of private messages are coming through my social media. Survivors are sharing what happened to them. Families are telling me what they're fighting. Professionals are telling me what they're witnessing inside these systems.
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<div>I physically cannot read, respond to and manage it all anymore. And if the Child First Movement is going to grow into the national movement it can become, it cannot depend on one person doing everything.
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<div>That means building the team, infrastructure, media engine and research capability required for the Child First Movement to grow at the scale this issue demands.
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<div>I am raising <strong>$150,000 to fund Phase 1, the establishment phase of the Child First Movement.</strong>
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<div>Phase 1 has three major missions.
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<div><strong>1. BUILD THE MOVEMENT</strong>
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<div>The Child First Movement needs to reach millions of Australians who don't yet understand the scale of what is happening, while finding and connecting the people who already know something needs to change. Social media allows us to reach people directly, where they already are.
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<div>Phase 1 will help accelerate the building of a professional social media engine capable of creating and distributing content, using paid advertising to reach new audiences, managing a rapidly growing community, reading and responding to messages, receiving stories and turning awareness into participation.
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<div><strong>This isn't about building followers. It's about building a grassroots national movement.</strong>
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<div><strong>2. BRING THESE STORIES INTO THE NATIONAL CONVERSATION</strong>
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<div>I am already establishing strong relationships with journalists and media across Australia. As people find the Child First Movement, many bring extraordinary stories with them.
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<div>Where people want their experiences shared publicly, the Child First Movement can create a pathway to help amplify their voices. That means receiving stories, responding to people, identifying stories that can help educate the country, and connecting people who want to speak with journalists and media.
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<div>Social media helps us reach the people. The movement gives them somewhere to speak. Media helps the nation hear them.
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<div><strong>2027: THE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN</strong>
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<div>Everything being built now is also moving towards something much bigger. In 2027, the Child First Movement intends to launch a major national campaign day designed to stop the nation and reveal the true scale of what has happened, and continues to happen, to Australia's children.
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<div>It will create an opportunity for people across Australia who have experienced these systems or witnessed their failures to speak as one. Survivors, families, foster and kinship carers, mandatory reporters, police, child protection and youth justice workers, researchers, academics and other professionals will all have the opportunity to bring their perspective into the national conversation.
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<div>For decades, these voices have been speaking individually. <strong>The Child First Movement will bring them together.</strong>
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<div><strong>3. BUILD THE BLUEPRINT FOR REAL ACCOUNTABILITY</strong>
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<div>Australia does not have an information problem. It has an accountability problem.
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<div>Between 2010 and 2022 alone, 61 inquiries and reports into child protection and youth justice produced 3,005 recommendations.
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<div>The cost to the nation is untold. One single Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse alone cost approximately <strong>$342 million</strong>.<strong> </strong>So after decades of inquiries, investigations, reviews and thousands of recommendations, just how much money has Australia spent examining the failure to protect its children, yet still producing terrible outcomes?
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<div>At first glance, it can look as though Australia already has plenty of accountability. There are Ombudsmen, Children's Commissioners, Auditors-General, coronial investigations, parliamentary inquiries, reviews and other oversight bodies. They can investigate what went wrong, report their findings and make recommendations.
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<div>But there is a fundamental problem: <strong>who actually makes the system change?</strong>
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<div>There is no single national body responsible for tracking whether major recommendations are implemented, identifying repeated systemic failures across Australia and holding the systems responsible for protecting children genuinely accountable when they fail. We have mechanisms capable of identifying failure, but no single national mechanism with the power and responsibility to compel systemic change.
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<div><strong>That is why I am working towards establishing a National Child Safety and Prevention Commission.</strong>
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<div>This will not be another advisory body. The goal is an independent national body with real accountability powers, capable of holding systems to account, driving implementation when systemic failures are identified and creating greater national consistency in how Australia protects its children.
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<div>Phase 1 will fund the research and White Paper required to determine what the Commission would need to look like, what powers it would require, how it could operate nationally, how it would interact with existing state, territory and federal bodies, and the legal and practical pathway required to establish it.
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<div>The completed White Paper will become the evidence base that can be taken to governments, political leaders, major organisations, media and the Australian public to build the case for establishing the Commission.
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<div><strong>We don't need another report to sit on a shelf. We need a mechanism that makes sure what Australia already knows finally leads to action.</strong>
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<div><strong>WHY I'M DOING THIS</strong>
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<div>I know what it means to be failed by the child protection system.
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<div>I was born to a brain-injured mother after she was raped. At just two years old, after my mother tried to kill me, I had my first psychology appointment and entered the child protection system.
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<div>Between the ages of two and fifteen, I saw close to twenty different clinicians. At nine years old, I begged to be taken away. At eleven, I begged again. Reports were made to Child Protective Services, and professional reports stated that it was dangerous for me to remain in my mother's care. But I was never taken away.
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<div>I kept asking for help and trying to tell adults what was happening until eventually I stopped. <strong>They never took me away, but eventually my voice was taken away from me.</strong> Instead, I was made out to be the problem. My childhood became dominated by diagnoses, medication and professionals treating what was supposedly wrong with me, while the circumstances surrounding me were not adequately addressed.
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<div>At nine and eleven years old, I was already having to learn how to advocate for myself. I know what it is like to be failed by the system, and I know what it is like to live a life of extreme trauma because the adults and systems responsible for protecting you didn't.
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<div>It has taken me years to rebuild my life and find my voice again. <strong>But I found it. I reclaimed my voice.</strong>
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<div>Now I believe I have a responsibility to use that voice for the children who cannot speak for themselves, and for the people whose voices have been ignored for far too long.
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<div>My story is only one story. <strong>I believe there are millions of Australians carrying their own.</strong> The Child First Movement is being built so those voices can become impossible to ignore.
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<div><strong>WHERE THE $150,000 GOES</strong>
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<div><strong>$45,000 | Movement &amp; Social Media</strong>
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<div>Professional social media and community management, content production, paid reach and the infrastructure required to reach millions of Australians and manage a rapidly growing national community.
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<div><strong>$20,000 | Media &amp; Story Amplification</strong>
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<div>Professional media management to bring child protection issues into the national conversation and help stories from within the movement reach journalists and media when people want their experiences heard.
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<div><strong>$55,000 | White Paper &amp; Commission Research</strong>
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<div>Research, legal and policy expertise, consultation and development of the blueprint for a National Child Safety and Prevention Commission with genuine accountability powers.
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<div><strong>$30,000 | Core Team &amp; Operations</strong>
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<div>Part-time administrative and project support, a contribution towards the significant time required to lead and build the Child First Movement, and essential operating costs required to establish the movement properly.
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<div>I will publicly report on how Phase 1 funding is used and what it helps us achieve.
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<div><strong>WHAT COMES NEXT?</strong>
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<div>Phase 1 builds the machinery. From there, the Child First Movement moves into national mobilisation.
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<div>The 2027 national campaign will bring voices from across Australia together, show the nation the true scale of this issue and build the public momentum required to drive structural change. Beyond that, the Child First Movement will continue building the research, public support, partnerships and national pressure required to change the way Australia protects its children.
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<div>This is only the beginning.
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<div>Children cannot vote. They cannot choose their parents. They cannot leave dangerous homes. They did not build these systems. <strong>We did.</strong>
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<div>So the responsibility to change them belongs to us.
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<div><strong>Become part of the movement that changes the way Australia protects its children.</strong>
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<div><strong>5.8 million children. One national promise. You will be safe.</strong>
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Anonymous

Les Sloane

Help Build Australia's Child First Movement

Still $122,775 to go. Help us build momentum.