This report presents a snapshot of the academic performance of children on guardianship/custody orders from 2003 to 2006, and changes in their performance over this period. This concludes a two-stage pilot study, the first of its kind in Australia. A considerable proportion of children on guardianship/custody orders are not meeting the national benchmarks for reading...

This report contains comprehensive information on state and territory child protection and support services, and the characteristics of Australian children within the child protection system. Across Australia in 2009-10 over 187,000 children were the subject of a child protection notification; just over 31,000 children were the subject of a substantiation; around 37,000 children were on...

Disability support services 2008-09 reports on data collected as part of the Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement National Minimum Data Set (CSTDA NMDS) between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009. The NMDS provides information on services funded under the Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement to 30 December 2009 and its replacement, the National Disability Agreement from...

Using data from the three most recent National Drug Household Surveys, this report to look at trends in alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harm, alcohol beverage of choice, and under-age drinking. Using the 2007 data, the report also explores factors that are associated with short-term risky or high-risk drinking behaviour.

Estimating the potential years of life lost to describe mortality patterns for deaths due to chronic disease this bulletin shows that most premature deaths were due to chronic disease. The leading cause of premature mortality among females was breast cancer and among males it was coronary heart disease. Further, the bulletin highlights that a large...