Since the inception of the role of the Commissioner for Children and Young People WA in December 2007, the approach of the office has been to focus on what the best available research and evidence says about the wellbeing of our youngest citizens. This report, Building Blocks Edition Two, contributes to this by providing a...

Introduction: The Commission for Children and Young People and Child Guardian (the Commission) is responsible for the independent monitoring of the child protection system in Queensland. The Queensland Child Guardian Key Outcome Indicators Update: Queensland Child Protection System 2010–13 (the Update) represents the Commission’s latest analysis of the performance of the outcomes experienced by Queensland...

Numerous inquiries into child protection services in Australia and internationally have concluded that failures in child protection service responses are in large part attributable to: rising demand on child protection services; a workforce suffering low morale who are ill-equipped for the role; families receiving too little too late in the form of intervention; and a...

The Abbott government can provide national leadership and take adoption out of the ‘too-hard’ basket by setting national child protection performance targets, argues this report, including by boosting the number of local adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries within the next 10 years.

Corporal punishment is a contentious and much debated issue within the community. This resource provides a brief overview of research literature on the use of corporal punishment towards children and the legal landscape regarding corporal punishment as a means of disciplining children in Australia. We examine the distinction between corporal punishment and physical abuse, and...