The Letters Patent provided to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse require that it ‘inquire into institutional responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse and related matters’. Under paragraph (d) of the Terms of Reference we are given in the Letters Patent, we are required to inquire into: what...

There is growing concern in the child welfare sector with the quality of care being provided through Residential Care out-of-home care services. In Victoria, the recommended policy direction is to move away from standard Residential Care as much as possible (Auditor-General Victoria, 2014), largely because it is both expensive and largely seen as ineffective, or...

This report presents the results of a retrospective evaluation of the MFAT/IN NZ funded Protection of Children from Commercial Sexual Exploitation project in Accra in Ghana. The purpose of the report is to independently assess how well the project was implemented using the given resources, the emerging impacts on the lives of the beneficiaries and...

In some jurisdictions of Australia, the rate of Indigenous children in foster, kinship and residential care on any one night has reached almost one in ten. This rate is almost ten times higher than non-Aboriginal children and has steadily increased over the past decade. Contrast this with rates of non-Indigenous children in out-of-home care, which...

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...