International approaches to child protection: what can Australia learn?

The provision of child protection services varies considerably across the world. This paper offers a broad overview of some of the main approaches to child protection used internationally. Using examples from Canada, Sweden, Belgium and the Gaza Strip, it offers policy-makers the chance to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, as well as how these examples might be used to inspire improvements within the Australian context. One way in which policy-makers can reflect critically on Australia’s child protection systems is to develop knowledge of the ways in which different jurisdictions around the world structure and conduct child protection services, and condsider how this knowledge may be relevant to the Australian context. It is often argued that there are two broad orientations to child protection: the “child protection” orientation (evident in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom) and the “family service” orientation (of many European countries, including Belgium, Sweden and Denmark). Attempts to respond to rising demand have seen countries that have traditionally possessed a child protection orientation (e.g., Australia) increasingly move towards a family service orientation. A third orientation to child protection has been employed by “child-focused community-based groups”, which have emerged in emergency, transitional and developmental contexts, most notably in Africa and Asia. As country-level service systems are embedded in complex cultural, social and historical contexts, it is not always possible to determine whether different approaches are “evidence-based”, “promising” or “untested”. However, it is possible to identify the strengths and limitations of each service model, as well as their potential applicability to the Australian context

Cumulative harm and chronic child maltreatment

In this paper, cumulative harm is defined, past approaches that have contributed to conceptualising maltreatment as an isolated event are discussed. Possible indicators of chronic maltreatment are highlighted and the potential for chronic maltreatment to have a cumulative impact on children is demonstrated using a case example. The paper focuses on the Victorian context, but the issues of cumulative harm and chronic child maltreatment have relevance to policy-makers and practitioners in other jurisdictions

Deniz Gezmiş ve arkadaşlarına idam (1971)

Taha Toros Arşivi, Dosya No: 27/A-Deniz GezmişUnutma İstanbul projesi İstanbul Kalkınma Ajansı'nın 2016 yılı "Yenilikçi ve Yaratıcı İstanbul Mali Destek Programı" kapsamında desteklenmiştir. Proje No: TR10/16/YNY/010

Child Protection in Europe: Development of an International Cross-Comparison Model to Inform National Policies and Practices

We report a five-nations project in comparative child protection to provide recommendations on policy and practice to inform the redevelopment of the Swiss child protection system. The Swiss Federal Government and the Optimus and Oak Foundations commissioned the project—collective title: Association Programme National pour la Protection de l'Enfant. We identify the historical developmental trajectories of child protection systems together with common drivers: the evidential basis for the prevalence and effects of child abuse, the co-joining of social and economic policies and practices to promote early investment in children, the influence of children's rights and comparative international league tables on child well-being. We describe the cross-national project methodology and analysis of results. Three key indicators for the performance of national child protection systems are indicated: creating a culturally sensitive child protection governance framework, building a relational heart and using evidence to inform policy and practice. These encapsulate the recommendations made with respect to the Swiss child protection system. The results provide a prototype model with potential utility in similar cross-national studies, and add weight to the argument that cross-cultural learning in the context of a globalised society is not only possible, but desirabl

Chronic child maltreatment in an Australian statutory child protection sample

The prevalence, course and predictors of chronic child maltreatment were investigated. The majority of children referred experienced chronic child maltreatment. The characteristics of families and maltreatment were more similar than different for chronic and isolated child maltreatment. The type of response provided by child protection services differentiated chronic and isolated maltreatment

Abuse and neglect: Australia’s child protection ‘crisis’

The tragic death of four-year old Chloe Valentine in South Australia has raised concerns that the state’s child protection system is in crisis. Following a history of abuse and neglect, Chloe’s mother and her partner repeatedly put Chloe on a 50-kilogram motorbike and filmed her crashing into objects. She later died of her injuries. During the first two weeks of evidence in the inquest into her death, we heard Chloe was the subject of more than 20 notifications to child protection. It also identified that resources constrained SA Child Protection Services’ capacity to investigate allegations during that period. One witness estimated under-resourcing meant he “ordered no action on up to 30 similar notifications per week”. The issue of resourcing constraints is by no means unique to South Australia. In 2013, a Victorian whistleblower argued that increased awareness of the risks of domestic violence to children had seen reports from police and courts increase from approximately ten per week to 15 per day. The experienced practitioner reportedly said: Whilst it’s a good thing that the community and other services are reporting more to us, we just don’t have the capacity to respond to the demand and we’re not coping. In New South Wales, the Ombudsman reported that child protection officers were conducting face-to-face assessments for only 28% of reports where a child was alleged to be “at risk of significant harm”. Nationally, only 36% of investigations were completed within 30 days and a further 26% were still not completed after 90 days. How did this situation arise? Are Australian child protection services being starved of vital resources? Or is the incidence of child maltreatment increasing at an alarming rate?   The rise in demand for child protection services can be traced, at least in part, to a global shift in the breadth and scope of what constitutes child abuse and neglect. Modern child protection services originated in the 1960s in response to Henry Kempe and colleagues\u27 seminal paper The Battered-Child Syndrome. Child protection services were established to respond to serious physical abuse, such as multiple fractures and bleeding on the brain. The problem was considered to be small in scope and the established response was one of detection by professional reporters, investigation and child removal. A combination of advances in research, changes in social values, and breaking of taboos has resulted in an expansion over time in the types of maltreatment acknowledged and a decrease in the threshold for what constitutes abuse or neglect. The remit of child protection now includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect and exposure to domestic violence. The threshold for what constitutes maltreatment includes outcomes such as bruising, developmental delay and psychological harm. This broadening of the scope of child protection services has been gradual, and occurred without a fundamental reappraisal of the assumptions on which child protection services were established. The failure to fundamentally rethink the approach to child protection would be analogous to the health sector having continued to rely on intrusive and expensive hospital treatment as its primary response to smoking – despite the accumulating discoveries of smoking-related diseases. The result: a system ill-designed to respond to the nature and scope of the contemporary problem of child maltreatment. In 2012–13, there were 272,980 notifications to Australian child protection services – more than six times the number of notifications recorded in 1989-90 when national data collection commenced. The most commonly verified types of maltreatment are emotional abuse (largely attributable to exposure to domestic violence) and neglect, which combined comprise 66% of all substantiations. Has the incidence of child maltreatment increased at a rate so rapid that child protection services cannot keep up? The truth is we don’t know. Australia, unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, has not conducted a national community-based child maltreatment prevalence or incidence study. The absence of such a study represents a critical evidence gap. Without it we have no reliable way of evaluating the extent to which maltreatment reported to authorities reflect the actual incidence of the problem nor can we evaluate the effectiveness of policy and practice reforms in reducing child maltreatment. Are child protection services under-resourced to respond to the growing population of children in need of protection? This is the wrong question. We should instead be asking whether we are making the best possible investment to protect our nation’s most vulnerable children, now and into the future. Statutory child protection services are the remit of one department within state and territory governments. However, the mandate of these services is to respond to a problem only after it has occurred. Australian governments need to embrace the lessons learnt in the reduction and treatment of preventable disease. The protection of children requires substantial new investment in prevention. The strategies for prevention need to be broad and integrated, and must include: Strategies to reduce the major causes of maltreatment, particularly domestic violence and substance misuse Population-based programs that increase parenting capacity and reduce family isolation Targeted programs to provide intensive support to families with complex problems before they escalate and children require child protection intervention. Critical to the success of any prevention efforts is the need to draw on international evidence and to ensure that any new investments are based on those interventions that have already proven to be successful. Australian child protection services are in crisis and struggling to cope with unsustainable demand. However, the solution to reducing demand lies outside of these embattled agencies. If we fail to fundamentally rethink our approach to protecting children, it is the child victims of abuse and neglect who will ultimately pay the price. • Leah Bromfield, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Australian Centre Child Protection, University of South Australia This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article

Children in care

This resource sheet provides information about children in out-of-home care in Australia who are on care and protection orders. Out-of-home care refers to the care of children and young people up to 18 years who are unable to live with their families (often due to child abuse and neglect). It involves the placement of a child or young person with alternate caregivers on a short- or long-term basis (Victorian Department of Human Services, 2007). There are three main types of out-of-home care: foster care: where care is provided in the private home of a substitute family who receives payment that is intended to cover the child\u27s living expenses; kinship care: where the caregiver is a family member or a person with a pre-existing relationship with the child; and residential care: where placement is in a residential building whose purpose is to provide placement for children and where there is paid staff. This includes facilities where there are rostered staff, where there is a live-in carer and where staff are off-site. Out-of-home care can be arranged either formally or informally. Informal care refers to arrangements made without intervention by statutory authorities or courts; and formal care occurs following a child protection intervention (either by voluntary agreement or care and protection court order).

The limitations of using statutory child protection data for research into child maltreatment

Child protection legislation has undergone a number of changes since its inception, changes that have redefined the population of children in need of protection. However, child protection data on notifications and substantiations remain the most common source of data for statistics on the rate of maltreatment and the breakdown of specific maltreatment types. In the present study, three factors are identified that have compromised the accuracy of child protection data reporting the incidence of child abuse and neglect: (i) the legislative changes that mandate child protection services to protect children from harm rather than from identifiable adult actions; (ii) the shift from the Harm Standard to the Endangerment Standard; and (iii) the assignment of responsibility solely to parents.<br /

Australian laws and policies on child neglect

This chapter describes the features of different Australian State and Territory laws and policies about child neglect. It makes observations about three major domains of law and policy: laws about child neglect to enable protection of children who are suffering severe neglect (child protection laws); laws and policies about the provision of services for children and their families when experiencing neglect (support-oriented laws and policies); and criminal laws about child neglect