During 2017–18, 159,000 (28.7 per 1,000) Australian children received child protection services (investigation, care and protection order and/or were in out-of-home care). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were 8 times as likely as non-Indigenous children to have received child protection services.

Children from geographically remote areas were more likely to be the subject of a substantiation, or be in out-of-home care than those from major cities.