How the City of Melbourne strengthened child safe reporting with Whispli

The City of Melbourne is a large public sector organisation serving one of Australia’s most diverse and active communities. With a strong duty of care towards children and young people, the organisation operates within a robust child-safe framework that combines governance, policy, training and cultural responsibility.

Ensuring people can speak up safely about child safety concerns is a critical part of that framework. The City of Melbourne sought a reporting solution that was accessible, trusted and appropriate for sensitive child safety matters, while meeting strict privacy, governance, and risk management requirements.

Child safety concerns are highly sensitive. They often involve power imbalances, fear, anxiety and in some cases vulnerable individuals who may struggle to raise issues through traditional reporting channels. To strengthen its child safe framework, the City of Melbourne needed a reporting option that felt safe and supportive, particularly for people who may feel uncomfortable about making a report.

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Choosing Whispli : Building on trust without adding complexity

The decision to expand the existing partnership with Whispli was driven by practicality and trust. Already in use across the organisation, Whispli was a familiar and credible platform, allowing the City of Melbourne to strengthen child safe reporting without introducing a new system or increasing complexity.

This approach helped address key challenges, including reliance on manual processes and fragmented reporting pathways. The organisation wanted a clearer, more consistent way to capture concerns, manage follow-up, and learn from data over time.

Because Whispli was already in use across the organisation, the City of Melbourne was able to extend an existing, trusted reporting framework to support child safety needs. This ensured continuity for employees and stakeholders, while maintaining strong governance, privacy and risk management standards.

While anonymous reporting cannot be accepted for child safety matters and proactive response is required, Whispli’s secure chat function plays a critical role in supporting clarification and follow up.

It enables greater confidence in raising concerns, helps teams better understand potential risks, and contributes to a stronger and more trusted reporting culture.

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Implementation and integration: A considered and collaborative approach

The implementation experience was shaped by close collaboration and a strong understanding of the sensitivity of child safety reporting.

The Whispli team worked closely with internal stakeholders to understand context, obligations and internal processes, ensuring the platform was configured in a way that was both accessible and procedurally sound.

The pace of implementation was deliberate, with regular check-ins that helped build confidence and momentum.

Beyond the technical setup, care was taken to align the platform with existing child safe policies and response pathways. This ensured reports could be handled consistently and responsibly, while remaining accessible for those raising concerns and supporting appropriate, timely responses.

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Whispli in practice: Supporting appropriate action and defensible processes

Whispli supports a wide range of child safety concerns, from low-level issues and behaviours that do not feel right through to compliance matters linked to the Reportable Conduct Scheme.

The platform provides a secure way to manage reports, document actions and communicate appropriately, ensuring concerns are triaged, escalated when required, and recorded consistently.

Together, these capabilities help ensure that decisions are well-documented, proportionate and defensible, while meeting regulatory obligations with care, consistency and rigour.

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Looking ahead: Strengthening prevention, trust and wellbeing

Looking forward, the City of Melbourne sees Whispli as a core component of its ongoing child safety framework, supporting both reactive response and long-term prevention efforts.

As the platform becomes more embedded, insights from reporting data will help identify trends, strengthen preventative measures, and inform future training, policy refinement and practice across the organisation.