Considerations of whether children and young people are deserving of help are reminiscent of 19th-century approaches to child services.
If a child commits an offence while in the care of the state, questions should be asked about the quality of care and supervision being provided.
Shutterstock
What’s most concerning is children are being charged in out of home care for unnecessary and avoidable offences. We need to do a better job of placing children safe environments.
The child protection system looks at children on a case-by-case basis. This approach doesn’t work.
Charlein Gracia/Unsplash
Kenya announced plans in 2017 for a long-term action plan to end the institutionalisation of children.
Child Protection Minister Luke Donnellan said he would prosecute the state’s most senior Catholic, Peter Comensoli, if he doesn’t report suspected child abuse.
AAP Image/Daniel Pockett
Supporting mums in prison and whose babies are in care to breastfeed has benefits for mums, their children and wider society.
The Hague Convention on child abduction was drafted to deal with fathers abducting their children across borders after losing custody, but it’s applied mainly to mothers fleeing domestic violence.
from shutterstock.com
Under international law, a mother escaping domestic violence with her children to another country is seen as an abductor. She is often ordered to return the child leading to catastrophic consequences.
The most commonly criticised feature of the bill is the arbitrary maximum period of two years within which a decision about permanent placement has to be made.
Shutterstock
One of the state’s most significant powers is the ability to remove children from their families. Potential reforms in NSW could expand this already racialised power in frightening ways.
National apologies for abuse are important, but children in institutional care also need better support transitioning to adulthood.
Shutterstock
Despite high profile child abuse cases in Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford, lessons are not being learned and the failings of those investigations are being repeated.
An evaluation of a therapeutic foster care program has shown significant improvements in children previously thought too complex and challenging for foster care.
A Sri Lankan child refugee poses for the photographer as they rest in tents set up along the beach while the Indonesia military tries to fix their stranded boat at Lhok Nga beach, Indonesia, on June 18 2016. Close to 500 child refugees in Indonesia are unaccompanied by adults.
EPA/Hotli Simanjuntak
In recent years a number of NGOs have provided services for child refugees. The government should consider partnering them to provide child refugees their rights to protection.
It isn’t helpful to jump to conclusions about child sexual abuse.
Raj Rabidas/Shutterstock
James Ward, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute; Belinda Hengel, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, and John Boffa, Curtin University
Young people in remote Aboriginal communities have high rates of STIs for a number of reasons, including inconsistent condom use and poor access to health services.
Around 40% of children in out-of-home care have been there for five years or more.
www.shutterstock.com
A new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reveals grim detail on the breadth of child abuse in Australia. But crucial national data on abuse in out-of-home care remains elusive.
If youths with brain impairment had been identified and supported early, their entry into the justice system could have been avoided entirely.
from shutterstock.com
New research assessing young people in WA detention found 89% were severely impaired in at least one area of brain function. One in three had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
A royal commission has recommended that the Don Dale detention centre be closed.
Neda Vanovac/AAP
The trial of the cashless welfare card, to control unhealthy spending in Indigenous communities, is being expanded partly due to emotive well-funded campaigns. Meanwhile, evidence is being ignored.
Basque children, refugees from the Spanish Civil War, Aldridge Lodge, 1937.
(C) Walsall Local History Centre