From journal articles to Quick Guides and webinars, you will find tools and information to support.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has released this web report providing baseline data from a new national data collection on the safety and abuse of children in care. The report found that 1,442 children were the subject of a substantiation of abuse in care, of whom 46 per cent were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The AIHW will undertake ongoing monitoring and reporting of this issue, with improvements and expansion of data collection taking place over time.
This paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology examines the offending pathways of 8,465 young people aged 13-17 who had been proceeded against for at least one juvenile offence. The study followed these young people until age 23 and found that young people who had been proceeded against for at least one domestic and family violence (DFV) offence were much more likely than other offenders to become adult DFV offenders and that they reoffended more frequently.
The Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System has released its final report inquiring into the family law and child support systems. The report makes four recommendations to supplement those included in the previous three reports.
The Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System has released a third interim report for its inquiry into the family law and child support systems. It provides an overview of the child support system and outlines issues identified by inquiry participants. The report makes 19 recommendations.
The House of Representatives Select Committee on Mental Health and Suicide Prevention has released the final report of its inquiry into mental health and suicide prevention. The report assessed the current landscape, reviewed the recommendations already before the Australian Government, and examined the gaps. Key areas of focus included COVID-19 and recent natural disasters, accessibility, virtual mental health care, workforce, funding, building the evidence base, and social determinants of health and wellbeing. The report makes 44 recommendations.
The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) has released this report containing results from the first 12 months of the ei Pulse wellbeing check-in tool. The ei Pulse tool uses an app to track Australian student’s wellbeing in real time. Once a week, students aged 10 years and over are asked how they are feeling and are then asked a selection of five evidence-based questions from a pool of 130 wellbeing questions. The report found that on average, 66 per cent of students felt ‘positive’ or ‘great’ each week, however 42 per cent said they worry a lot about mistakes they make. The tool is intended to improve student’s wellbeing literacy and the findings will allow schools to engage in continuous improvement to better support student wellbeing.
This paper from Child Family Community Australia (CFCA) 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 practice. The analysis identified 15 common elements. Four elements were related to content provided to parents by programs and included the topics of emotional management in separation, parenting in separation, co-parenting in separation, and the impact of separation on children. The remaining 11 were techniques used in programs and included psychoeducation, group participation, skills practice, personalising content, problem solving, assigning and reviewing homework, encouraging, normalising difficulties, video content, attending to group process, and providing materials.
Economic Justice Australia has released this report investigating the relationship between domestic violence and Centrelink compliance and debt mechanisms, and the impacts of these mechanisms on domestic violence victims/survivors. A key finding was that Centrelink compliance processes are sometimes used by perpetrators as a tool of violence. The report makes 27 recommendations.
This report by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) explores the occurrence, overlap or interrelationships between domestic and family violence, alcohol and other drug issues and mental health issues in Australian families involved in the child protection system. A critical interpretive synthesis of the academic and grey literature found significant weaknesses in the evidence base. The study concluded that further research is needed to understand these interactions in the Australian context.
