May 26th marks the 20 year anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report. When it was released, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were one in every five children in care. Now, they are one in three. The rate of Indigenous children in out-of-home care is now almost ten times that of other children, and continues to grow.
Recent projections by the University of Melbourne show that this poulation will triple in the next 20 years if nothing is done to interrupt current trajectories.
We need a fundamental paradigm shift, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. And we know that the most powerful change will come from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities themselves.
The Family Matters National Week of Action, from May 19-25, will be a groundbreaking collaboration, marked by public and community events and forums across Australia. The week of action will provide a space for community voices to be heard. It seeks to:
• break down damaging misconceptions
• provide communities with the practical skills and resources to speak up on this issue,
• raise public awareness, and
• encourage positive change in legislation, policy and practice, based on principles of community empowerment and human rights.
Mainstream service providers and peaks are our most crucial audience. Through joining in the national week of action, every participant in the Child Aware Approaches Conference can play a crucial role in improving the safety and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

There is an ever-increasing pressure for practitioners and organisations to demonstrate the evidence-base they are working from as well as the impact they have with the children and families they serve. Yet many face barriers of costs, sector and organisational culture, expertise and engagement in building research capacity and culture.

For reasons related to best practice, improving outcomes, ethics, serving mission, and funding, research and evaluation must be a core activity rather than add-on for human services practitioners and organisations.

Wanslea Family Services, a West Australian not-for-profit organisation delivering services to families and children, has established a strong track record and reputation in research and evaluation. Wanslea has recently been awarded a million dollar grant to undertake research with grandparent carers, in partnership with three WA universities and other key stakeholders.

Learning from the process, resources and strategies utilised to build this capacity and culture will be shared to encourage others to consider the possibilities in their own organisation. Key to Wanslea’s success has been vision, engagement of the Board and leadership, collaboration and partnership particularly with universities, involving practitioners directly in research activity, recruiting in-house expertise, developing infrastructure, and sharing findings and practice implications.
This presentation will encourage practitioners and leaders to consider whether we want to lead or be led in establishing research, evaluation and outcomes measurement as a core part of our service development, delivery and planning.

A hidden population impacting the numbers of children entering child protective services are women, often young women, suffering multiple and complex issues. These women may encounter the child protection system and their child may be removed. Without adequate intensive intervention for the woman subsequent pregnancies may also result in removal. The result may be the eighth, ninth or tenth child entering the system as the support for change in the woman is not successful. Often, once a child is removed, the woman is no longer eligible for intensive family support that may bring about change. In Australia, the size of this group of women or children is not currently reported.
UK research by Karen Broadhurst highlighted the size and impact of this group. UK Judge Nicholas Crichton reports removing the 14th child from one woman, and notes the success of intensive case management programs in reducing further pregnancies, breaking the cycle of repeat removal. While such programs are seeing some success in the UK, Australia has few such programs, and no data reporting on this group.
Australian research is needed to determine the size of the group of women, and of the numbers of children impacted. There is a need of national data reporting on both the child and the mother. It will provide evidence for funding of early intervention, intensive, holistic case management to bring about change for these women and to reduce the number of children entering care.

The issue: Whilst early intervention strategies improve the quality of family life and child development and link services to communities, there is currently very little evidence that they directly affect abuse and neglect or entry to care. We must find better ways to link early intervention to more intense interventions when necessary.
Why does it matter? Since 2010-11 there has been an increase of 35% of children subject to a substantiation. One in five of these children are subject to multiple substantiations and the re-substantiation rate is currently 18.8% (AIHW 2014-15). Whilst 42,457 children were involved in substantiations- only 11,581 entered care during 2014-15, how safe is the environment for the remainder? We know that there is little evidence that significant abuse, neglect and entry to out of home care are prevented by early intervention services.
The solution: We need to focus early intervention services on the most disadvantaged and link them to services capable of intensive interventions. It is only through strong links with more intensive services that we can make to have truly safe environments, early intervention services must be focus on the children and young people most at risk and must have clear links to housing, crisis care and intensive support. Models such as Children’s Family Centres must be developed.
The difference? Substantiation rates and re-substantiation must decrease and models of service which integrate early intervention and secondary services with good knowledge of child protection decision making need to be developed.

In 2009 and 2010 the National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children and the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children were released. In 2017, at their midpoints, we examine how these national policy agendas are mutually reinforcing and can be further strengthened.

Our Watch was established to drive nationwide cultural change to prevent violence against women and their children. In 2015, alongside ANROWS and VicHealth, Our Watch developed Change the Story: a shared framework for the primary prevention of violence against women and their children in Australia (see https://www.ourwatch.org.au/What-We-Do/National-Primary-Prevention-Framework).

While Change the Story focuses specifically on violence against women, we know that children are frequently exposed to violence against their mothers, female family members and carers. Research shows where family violence is present it often occurs alongside child sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect. Children’s direct experience of and/or exposure to violence can result in significant harm including attitudes to relationships and violence, behavioural, cognitive and emotional functioning and future education and employment prospects. And while not inevitable, it can also lead to a higher risk of violence perpetration and potentially victimisation.

Despite these connections, these two issues are often isolated. Responses have largely developed independently in distinct ministerial portfolios, fields of research and practice with different histories, ideologies and practices.

Our Watch will present on Change the Story and open a broad discussion about how protecting Australia’s children is intrinsically connected to preventing violence against women and how we can learn from each other’s work.

Social policy in Australia, Britain and the USA has recognised the importance of early intervention and the need to build individual, family and community capacity.

Research and practice experience demonstrates that families are more likely to engage with a support service when it is offered to them in a non-stigmatising, non-threatening way and without the support service being provided through a report to a statutory child protection agency or police.

The CommsyncAlert technology has a 25-year market leading history, with proven reliability in alert management. This technology is currently in multiple high-risk environments, including the United Nations, QLD Government (Health), Michelin and the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.

Commsync is applying this innovative technology to increase safety and supports for children and having their voices heard - without having to say a thing. The Commsync solution incorporates a watch that provides timely interventions for children and families in need of safety and support.

The watch technology allows the user to immediately action a pre-determined flow chart to a nominated safety network; simply by pressing a button on their watch. When that occurs, multiple calls (and/or text, email, IVR) are made to the child’s safety network until someone becomes the verified First Responder (escalation); ensuring that every child has someone responsible for their protection.

This innovative technology can replace the traditional method of ‘fridge-door’ safety plans that requires a child to call for help by accessing the safety plan and telephone to alert supports, often during the time of crisis.