This report draws on post-separation lived experience to demonstrate the ways that the Australian Child Support Scheme can be used and abused to jeopardise the financial safety of recipient parents and their children.

This report documents the experiences of approximately 100 children who have been repatriated or returned to France, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan between 2019 and 2022.

This mixed-method project was designed to examine the drivers of non-compliance with parenting orders and the operation of the parenting order enforcement regime in Australia. This report sets out findings from contravention matter court file analysis, an online survey of separated parents with parenting orders...

This report summarises the views of 343 professionals who work with separated parents and chose to complete an online survey, and 11 judicial officers who exercise family law jurisdiction and participated in one-on-one interviews. The survey instrument was designed to elicit views on a range...

Evidence-based programs for separating families can provide practitioners in diverse sectors with information about 'what works'. This paper identifies the common elements of evidence-based parenting programs that support children's (aged 0-12 years) mental health through parental separation to inform the decisions practitioners make in their...

This report is a multi-disciplinary collaboration which highlights the Australian government’s intentional use of family separation against people who seek asylum. Calling on leading medical experts and international law specialists, this report shows that the Australian government’s tactic of separating families is not merely morally...

This research summary highlights some key findings from a range of studies dealing with the experiences of separated families, children's needs in the context of the family law system, and the impact of domestic and family violence on parenting.

This research report focuses on data collected by the online surveys and the interview data relating to family justice services. It provides a broad overview of all of the major descriptive findings about parents' and caregivers' experiences of, and views on, making parenting arrangements and...

The focus of this paper is the approximately 650,000 separated families, and the 1.3 million children affected by these separations in Australia. For these families too, it is likely that COVID-19 will amplify both the opportunities and the dangers.

This review found a diverse and exciting field of scholarship, that while not as extensive as its heterosexual counterpart, provides some clear insight into the contemporary experiences of rainbow family formation in Australia.

This report sets out findings from the Children and Young People in Separated Families: Family Law System Experiences and Needs project, a qualitative study commissioned and funded by the federal Attorney-General’s Department (AGD). This study aimed to investigate the experiences and needs of young people...

This report adds to what is known about the behaviour and motivations of separated parents in Australia, drawing on three independent data sets.

Custody abductions and filicides-suicides are not every day occurrences and typically become ‘media events’. Through an analysis of newspaper representations of two custody abductions and one filicide-suicide, this article examines the role played by fathers’ rights discourse in the construction of the separated father in...

This report presents the findings of a core element of the Evaluation the 2012 Family Violence Amendments project—the Experiences of Separated Parents Study (ESPS).

The report contains 25 recommendations in total. The Committee found that the CSP is generally functioning as intended: evidence to the inquiry indicated that in approximately 75-80 per cent of child support cases, parents are meeting their child support obligations and have established friendly or...

Little evidence has been produced on the influence of housing on children’s development in Australia. This study, relying on LSAC 2004 and 2008 data, begins to fill this gap by examining the association between residential mobility, unstable housing tenure and housing stress on children’s cognitive...

This paper highlights findings from interviews with adolescents from separated families.

Debbie Kirkwood reflects on the inexplicable reasons parents kill their children during or after separation from their partner.

This article updates trends in couple dissolution that formed the basis of an article that was published in the second edition of Family Relationships Quarterly, and includes additional information concerning the duration of marriages and differences in rates of relationship dissolution for marriages and cohabiting...

This paper looks at the specific issues facing those responsible for ensuring the safety and wellbeing of children in the context of parental separation, and the two separate legal systems: family law and child protection.

This project investigated the context in which relationship instability occurs by examining the factors (at the individual, and the couple/family levels) that precede relationship dissolution within Australian families with children.

The Children and Families in Transition project aims to research the experiences and special service needs of separated families and their children in order to develop early intervention strategies to promote child-centred practices and positive, cooperative parenting. In this report on Phase A of the...