Inspire - a chat with Jane Searle, CEO of Child Matters

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Join us for the May Inspire - a chat with Jane Searle CEO of Child Matters.    

Jane started her career as a barrister and solicitor, before joining the New Zealand Police. After qualifying as a detective, she worked on the Child Abuse Team. Jane has also worked as a counter fraud specialist in the United Kingdom, where she led a team responsible for fraud detection and investigation in the National Health Service. After returning to New Zealand, Jane worked as a trainer and investigator for local government, financial institutions, insurance companies and the health sector, before joining Child Matters in 2015. Jane sits on various Government Agency and sector advisory and working groups and sits on several boards including being a school board member.
 
In the last three years, the needs of the social sector have increased exponentially. Rather than Child Matters becoming a statistic of the pandemic, the organisation flourished under Jane?s leadership. Child Matters became agile in its delivery launching online training courses, school child protection audits and introduced training that focuses on trauma and the wellbeing of staff.
 
On average, one child dies from abuse every five weeks. Jane?s view is that New Zealand?s child protection systems are outdated, transactional and under resourced. The solutions to the country?s child abuse statistics are simple, and Jane will present her ideas on how the stats can be turned around.