Child Matters

Child Matters is a registered charitable trust* dedicated to preventing harm to children in New Zealand. For 15 years we have been working in communities throughout New Zealand, educating, supporting and inspiring adults to protect children.

Children are only harmed or neglected when adults who are in a position to help, lack the knowledge and confidence to keep them safe.

Child Matters provides guidance, advice, education and support to those in a position to act to protect children. Our training and education programmes provide adults with essential skills, and just as importantly the confidence, to intervene when a child needs help. To date, Child Matters has trained over 15,000 adults in New Zealand in how to recognise and respond to child abuse.

Preventing child abuse is everyone’s responsibility. Child Matters aims to move individuals from being bystanders to the problem of child abuse to being active participants in a community wide effort to prioritise the protection of children.

A community who is trained in recognising the signs of child abuse and who is not afraid to be ‘busybodies’ and intervene, is a community where child abuse will simply not be tolerated.

Child Matters is a non-government organisation, registered with the Charities Commission*. We operate from a national office in Hamilton.