To the members and participants of SCA Ltd Australia and SCANZ Inc New Zealand,

The Australian Board and the New Zealand Committee have developed a joint bullying and harassment policy for our respective members and participants.

There have been, and continue to be, a rise in complaints of bullying and harassment in the kingdom. In response to this, and the feedback that Australia’s policy wasn’t comprehensive enough, and that New Zealand didn’t have a policy addressing B&H at all, the Board, Committee and Kingdom Seneschal have discussed at length the importance of having a policy as soon as possible, and what options we had available to us to provide this to our members and participants. A thorough discussion was had about the potential to launch the policy as a pilot vs sending out the policy for consultation.

After comprehensive discussions and considerations, we have decided to move forward with a 90-day PILOT for the Bullying & Harassment Policy.

We are aware that going live with a policy (even as a pilot) is not standard procedure. Under ordinary circumstances we would not go forward with a policy until we have requested and considered feedback. Unfortunately, we have an urgent need for a new policy.

We have agreed overall that our primary responsibility as the governing bodies in this instance is to go live with the pilot. The pilot helps to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our members and participants, with immediate effect. Providing you with the support and protection of a policy, and providing our officers with a process that is clear and comprehensive, was deemed to be vital enough to go forward with this variation from the norm so that the policy could be in place for Rowany Festival.

In light of this, the Board and Committee have made the following joint decisions:

1. The Bullying & Harassment Policy will come into effect immediately as a PILOT for 90 days
2. Feedback is requested on the content of the policy over this 90-day period
3. Feedback is also requested on how the policy works in practice over the 90-day period
4. At the end of the 90-day period, the feedback will be collated and reviewed by the SCA with a view to improving the policy where it is beneficial to do so based on the feedback. We will also provide an anonymised recap to the members of the feedback received and our responses.

Please send feedback on the policy to: feedback@sca.org.nz – The SCANZ Chair will be undertaking the process of collation and coordination of the responses to the feedback on behalf of both SCANZ and SCA Ltd.

The Bullying & Harassment Policy will be available at http://sca.org.nz/documents or https://sca.org.au/board/documents/policy. Please allow an hour or so for the policy to appear.

The Board and Committee would like to assure the membership that this is a one-off, no precedent action taken in response to an urgent and pressing need. We would also like to thank you all in advance for your cooperation and feedback.

Sincerely,

Tiffany Brown, SCA Ltd Chair

Melissa Muckart, SCA NZ Chair