By Brendan Rees
TWO Victoria Police detectives from the Frankston Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team have won a community service award for their work engaging with secondary schools across Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula.
Detective Senior Constable Richard Thomson and Sergeant Byron Smith received the 2024 XLI Victoria Police community service award for their exceptional efforts in holding forums with schools. Their forums held with school staff ensure students, teachers, parents, and staff know how and where to seek help. This included presentations on what a crime involves if a young person is subject to any type of concerning behaviour or discloses information about a situation that has made them feel uncomfortable.
The first forum was held at the Mt Eliza community hall in March with 44 attendees from 13 secondary schools on the Mornington Peninsula with presentations from Victoria Police, MacKillop Family Services and the University of Melbourne. Following positive feedback, a second forum was held in July at Padua College Mornington with 72 people attending, covering how school staff can respond to disclosures of sexual offences and child abuse, consent, harmful sexualised behaviours, and signs of radicalisation. A third forum was held at Marvel Stadium on 6 September with representatives of the Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools.
To ensure their vital conversation around child safety continued to grow, Thomson and Smith have engaged several stakeholders including the Department of Education, Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Child Protection, and Monash Health. “The idea of the initiative is that we can bring new trends that we’re seeing that affect young people and students straight to schools pretty efficiently,” said Smith. He said it was important to “get messages out quickly because these trends don’t last for too long” and “they can be really damaging”. “By the time we’re talking about it there’s already a new trend out there.” “We’ve developed strong partnerships with schools to share information, resources and accrued expertise to students in a timely manner,” said Thomson.
As part of the award, the officers received a $3000 grant which they chose to donate to Headspace Frankston, a not-for-profit organisation for youth mental health. The grant was presented to Headspace Frankston on 25 September, which was warmly welcomed by Headspace’s centre manager for Frankston and Rosebud Leisl Jackson.
“We’re very grateful,” she said, noting the initiative of the two officers was “something that’s core and fundamental to the needs of our staff”. “Sometimes we might be the first people the young person reaches out to or feels comfortable through their journey and access to our services. “I think it’s great to have this initiative within the schools, and across the border youth sector. “I think it is invaluable, and certainly something that I see, that key people within our team or more broadly across that service are engaged in any level of information and intelligence about what’s going on for our young people right now.”
Club XLI, which presents the annual award, is a group of police veterans and members of Melbourne’s business community.
First published in the Frankston Times – 1 October 2024