From journal articles to Quick Guides and webinars, you will find tools and information to support.
This Evidence to Action Note provides an overview of the views of children and young people about whether they have a say in decisions that impact on their lives and whether they feel listened to, with findings drawn from two surveys, the 2018 NSW OOHC Survey and the NSW Residential Care Survey.
This Evidence to Action Note provides an overview of what young people think about the leaving care support they receive, with findings drawn from two surveys, the 2018 NSW OOHC Survey and the NSW Residential Care Survey.
The survey asked professionals a range of questions about their views on how birth parents are currently engaged with child and family welfare organisations in Victoria. The findings add to the growing body of evidence on engaging with birth parents in the child and family service sector, providing further context to the barriers and facilitators of effective engagement for Victorian parents, practitioners, organisations and service systems.
In this journal article, Herrenkohl et al. explain how the vulnerabilities for many children that are exacerbated by COVID-19 reinforce the need for systemic change within statutory child welfare systems and the benefits that would accrue by implementing a continuum of services that combine universal supports with early intervention strategies. This article also focuses on promising approaches consistent with goals for public health prevention and draw out ideas related workforce development and cross-sector collaboration.
This brief provides young people’s accounts of their experiences of violence and reunification and what they need to be safe and feel safe as they journey towards recovery. It aims to inform practice and highlights ways that the needs of children and young people might be central to responses to families experiencing violence. It draws from interviews with young people who participated in a study conducted by researchers from the Australian Centre for Child Protection, the Positive Futures Research Collaboration and the Schools of Social Work from the University of South Australia and Curtin University.
This report examines the Brighter Futures Transformation Pilot, that took place from 2018-2020. This Preliminary Findings and Recommendations Report was commissioned to highlight and identify the impact of the Pilot’s work and establish direction prior to the end of the funding cycle.
This evaluation report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, examines The Brighter Futures Transformation Pilot (BFTP). This pilot was funded for two years from July 2018 to June 2020, and aimed to improve outcomes for young people with an experience of out-of-home care. The pilot responded to a need, identified through earlier work of the Area Partnership, for changing how the leaving care system worked with young people.
The Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study (POCLS) is the first large-scale prospective longitudinal study of children and young people in out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia. Information on safety, permanency and wellbeing will be collected from various sources. The child developmental domains of interest are physical health, socio-emotional wellbeing and cognitive/learning ability. This interactive webpage provides an overview of several elements of the study, including videos, methods and updates.
This summary report from Ass. Prof Stephanie Taplin and Dr Aino Suomi at Australian Catholic University covers the main findings of the kContact study. This study is the largest trial to date testing the effectiveness of a contact intervention (the kContact Pratice Model) in the out-of-home care context. The main component of the kContact Practice Model consisted of the key workers contacting parents before and after each contact visit to provide them with support. This support helped parents clarify their concerns and expectations about contact, and provided practical and emotional support for the next visit with the study child.
