Research shows that children and young people who have been abused or neglected are at greater risk of engaging in criminal activity and of entering the youth justice system. Better understanding the characteristics and pathways of children and young people under youth justice supervision who have had an interaction with the child protection system can help to support staff, case workers and policy-makers in getting the best outcomes for these people.

Using data from the child protection and youth justice supervision linked data collection, this report, the seventh in the series, presents information on young people under youth justice supervision during 2020–21 who had an interaction with the child protection system in the 5 years between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2021.

It includes some data from the period in which COVID-19 and related social restrictions were present in Australia, specifically between March 2020 and June 2021.

Key findings:

• More than half of young people who had been in youth justice supervision during 2020–21 had also had an interaction with the child protection system in the last 5 years.
• The number of young people under youth justice supervision that had an interaction with the child protection system remained stable over the 4 years from 2017–18 to 2020–21.
• Young females who had been under youth justice supervision were more likely than young males to have had an interaction with the child protection system.
• The younger a person was when they first entered youth justice supervision, the more likely they were to have had an interaction with the child protection system.
• Indigenous young people under youth justice supervision were more likely than non-Indigenous young people to have had an interaction with the child protection system.