In the midst of crisis, we MUST listen to the voice of the child.

Listening to Professor Daryl Higgins (Director, ACU Institute of Child Protection Studies) speak on the landmark Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) at the Families Australia AGM 2024, including new publications yet to come from the #ACMS rich data set, has led me to reflect on this data when asked to be a member of the response panel with colleagues Tom Allsop (PeakCare Queensland) and Phil Doorgachurn (Australian Childhood Foundation).

Reflection 1: The ACMS data has revealed a shockingly high number of Australians that experienced maltreatment as children. Exposure to domestic and family violence (DFV) is highest at 2 in 5. A frightful number! The complexity of Australian support systems, if and how they intersect, and how they do and don’t work together, leads to obvious and challenging questions. Which children are heard and seen? Which children receive help? And what is the impact of poverty if the ACMS tells us that 8.9% of the adult group experienced neglect as children, but we also know from AIHW data that roughly 20% of substantiated statutory child protection reports in Australia each year record the primary reason of neglect. What and where are the safety nets for children, and why do some children end up in care, but not others?

Reflection 2: Australia’s 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is recent. Its final report also shocked and confronted Australians with the extent of abuse to children. One outcome of the Royal Commission was the setting up of State and Territory Reportable Conduct schemes across Australia. Five years on, it’s timely to reflect on the extent to which these schemes are keeping children safer, and whether they are simply making all of us feel better by having more child abuse reporting and investigation. As CEO of Barnardos Australia each and every week I see and sign off detailed reportable conduct investigation reports, frequently these reports are over 100 pages. A large number of these children live with kin – extended family – and live in circumstances where regardless of reportable conduct allegations they are unlikely to be moved from the care of extended family/kin because that is where they are loved, and where they belong (that’s a good thing!). How much time, and money, are we spending on this new area of regulation? How much of it is administrative bureaucracy, and to what extent are reportable conduct systems actually reducing maltreatment, and keeping children safe?

Reflection 3: Who sues who, and for what? The Royal Commission rightly created a National Victims Redress Scheme to compensate victims of sexual abuse in care, and many victims choose an alternative path of civil litigation. Rights that must be supported. Additionally, Australian Courts are also now seeing legal claims by young adults of being left too long in maltreating families before state intervention – the completely opposite end of being abused in care. Two types of legal claims, and who is responsible for what? A complex dilemma for Australian ‘child protection’.

Reflection 4: 1979 was the International Year of the Child, 16 years after publication of ‘The Battered Child Syndrome’ by Henry Kempe and just seven years after establishment of The Kempe Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect – the first of its kind, providing research, training, education and innovative program development for all forms of child abuse, neglect and trauma. 45 years after the International Year of the child, the ACMS tells us that 6 in10 young people aged 16 - 24 were hit or physically punished for misbehaviour as children, separate from physical abuse but that (pleasingly) belief in the need for physical punishment has reduced significantly over time.

Finally, there’s more to do, and complexities will continue. Looking critically at what we do and providing for children and families in the light of research evidence, at all levels, is essential. And most important of all, we must listen to children.