South Australia has the highest rate of separating brothers and sisters in care in the country, research shows, prompting child protection advocates and the minister in charge to call for sweeping reform to keep families together.

This study, based on interviews with 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth from Victoria and Western Australia (who were a sub-set of a larger study of 34 care leavers), examined their transition experiences and outcomes in relation to accessing stable and affordable housing. While all care leavers spoke of poor or non-existent transition planning, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants were more likely to report incidences of homelessness and more complex experiences in a range of areas. Importantly, the group identified a need for culturally appropriate service models which built on and enhanced cultural and kinship connections.

Young Australians exiting Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) face some of the most challenging access to justice issues due to experiences of trauma, increased interactions with the justice system, distrust of government services, high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage and a lack of accessible support services. This article outlines the experience of the Mid North Coast Legal Centre (MNCLC) which, through the LevelUP Project, aimed to bridge this access to justice gap with a shake-up of the traditional legal services model. Through this experience, MNCLC offers some suggestions for legal centres seeking to improve access to justice for this disadvantaged group.

This book presents new and vivid findings concerning the extensive vulnerability of this population of children at the point of entry to care. It also shows that there is much to learn at an international level from the experiences of those involved in mandatory face-to-face post adoption contact - a uniquely Australian policy. The book provides evidence which shows how continuing post-adoption contact was experienced by adoptees and their adoptive parents. This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.

Abused and neglected children who were adopted had significantly better life outcomes compared with children who stayed in foster care, according to new research from the University of Oxford and Barnardos (Australia).

The rates of Indigenous people being jailed, dying by suicide, and having their children placed in out-of-home care are continuing to worsen for the second year in a row.

Child protection workers who engage with some of the state’s most at-risk youth in Perth, Australia, participated in snap walk-outs in protest of understaffing and workload concerns.

Salary:

GBP £50-55,000 equivalent - fixed in local currency. Salary will be determined based on experience and adjusted to the local market rate.

In Australia, on any given day, about 43,000 children have a parent in prison. We have to use the word “about”, as there is no official process to identify this group of children. There is no specific oversight and no special supports. Despite the state removing their parent, there is no government department responsible for them. A new parliamentary inquiry has been set to try and fix this. It cannot come soon enough.

There are limited studies which investigate the perceived needs and wellbeing of parents caring for their children with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This qualitative study uniquely explored the experiences and cultural factors of Vietnamese parents caring for children with a disability in multicultural Australia.