This special edition of ACCP Inform celebrates a very significant milestone - 20 years of the Australian Centre for Child Protection. In 2004, the Australian Government and the University of South Australia jointly established the Australian Centre for Child Protection, intended to be the national centre for creating and translating evidence into practice to better prevent and respond to child abuse and neglect.

Over 20 years, the ACCP has matured into Australia’s largest centre in the area, with partnerships and impacts across Australia and internationally. Our experienced staff draw on our research strengths, practice expertise, and depth of insight to drive impactful and real-world applicable outcomes, for the benefit of vulnerable children and families.

Read on to find out more about how far we've come in 20 years.

To commemorate our milestone birthday, on Thursday 24 October the ACCP would like to share some of our work, findings and resources with the sector through a 1-day online Symposium, free of charge. If you haven’t already, please register to secure your place!

The ACCP’s establishment years saw the significant development of foundational works that set the path for the Centre for the next 20 years. Inaugural Director Prof Dorothy Scott (2005-2010) provided a leading voice for the creation and promotion of a public health approach to child protection, which continues to resonate today.

The Centre commissioned the National Audit of Australian Child Protection Research 1995-2004 as an early priority to identify the research undertaken in the area of child protection up to the Centre’s establishment, creating a resource to inform the direction of new research.

The Centre’s first two Australian Research Council grants investigated two key ways in which child protection research could collaborate with governments and sector organisations: Research utilisation (1, 2), seeking to understand how research could directly inform policy and practice; and diffusion of innovation, investigating how promising, evidence-backed solutions and approaches might be scaled up to meet the sector’s needs.

These early activities helped to prioritise implementation science and knowledge translation in the field, identifying gaps and national priorities. The influence that this first wave of activity had on the national child protection landscape could be seen reflected in the first National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children (2009-2020) and the National Research Agenda for Protecting Children (2011).

Also in this period, professions previously considered to be outside the scope of child protection were now brought into the purview of a broader child protection system, including the education of nurses, midwives, and social workers, and encouraging adult-focussed services to consider the wellbeing of children.

In its next phase of activity, under the directorship of Prof Marianne Berry (2010-2012) and Prof Fiona Arney (2012-2021), the ACCP moved towards prioritising translation of research into practice, and broadening the conceptualisation of ‘child protection’ practice beyond statutory responses.

The Centre also undertook extensive research into worldwide best practice in child protection, children in out-of-home care, Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and the impacts of child protection on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, including research contributing to operationalising the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle.

The Centre developed its focus on population and systemic perspectives. We have also supported and contributed to the numerous national and jurisdictional Commissions and Inquiries across the last decade, to help drive an evidence base to inform recommendations for long-term change across our systems, including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. In addition, Centre Director Prof Leah Bromfield was a Commissioner on the recent Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings.

The creation of the Early Intervention Research Directorate saw the ACCP develop new methodologies and approaches, simultaneously examining the effectiveness of child protection programs against their outcomes, and undertaking large sample case file reviews to understand the key characteristics of families involved in child protection and priority cohorts for intervention. This significant program of work revealed the true extent to which families at risk face multiple and complex needs, inspired significant government investment in the form of a dedicated taskforce, and catalysed the statewide recommissioning of family support services.

The Centre has also expanded from its foundational research base to incorporate complementary practice expertise across multiskilled project teams, helping to ensure that the Centre’s work is informed by the needs of the sector, with project outputs that are implementable and impactful. In addition to working alongside governments to inform policy and framework development, the Centre has also produced much needed resources for the sector such as the recent Minimum Practice Standards for support services responding to child sexual abuse.

The Centre has also developed multi-project programs of work across key areas such as preventing child removals focused on vulnerable families during the perinatal period and the Harmful Sexual Behaviours program of work, which is raising awareness in Australia and internationally of the increase in sexual harm occurring between young people.

The Centre has also taken strides in building sector capacity in critical areas of practice, such as responding to childhood trauma, offering short courses and a Graduate Certificate alongside other bespoke training offerings in partnership with the sector.

Aboriginal-led research and governance has also continued to grow, and the ACCP is proud to have firmly centred these priorities in its Strategic Framework, underpinned by a core value of decolonisation. In addition, the incorporation of Lived Experience has become increasingly central to the Centre’s governance and ways of working. We will continue to develop and improve our work in these areas into the future.

Over 20 years, the tireless work of the ACCP through research and partnership with government, non-government, and Aboriginal Community Controlled organisations has confirmed that the current child protection system is not fit-for-purpose. For the child protection system to truly serve the community, there needs to be a comprehensive transformation to a whole-of-government approach to preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect, underpinned by a public health approach and a more nuanced use of statutory powers. Starting in South Australia with current stewardship from the Child Protection Expert Group, the ACCP is working towards real and significant change by contributing research evidence and its systemic expertise to lead this transformative agenda now and into the future.

The ACCP is pleased to announce the appointment of two new adjunct staff members:

Vincent, S., Hawkes, M., Ogle, J., Evans, J., & Reed, B. (2024). From passive subjects to active agents: enabling child-centred recordkeeping in social care contexts. Archives and Records, 1–19.
Zagler, J., Yu, N., & Cleland, A. (2024). "The system allows for it to happen”: The experiences of human service workers in engaging with Aboriginal participants of the National Disability Insurance. Disability and Rehabilitation.
Lima, F., Taplin, S., Maclean, M., Octoman, O., Grose, M., & O’Donnell, M. (2024) Child protection and developmental trajectories of children who entered care as infants. Child Abuse Review.
Paton., A., Perfect, D., & Burgess, S. Co-Design Report: Specialist Service Model for young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours. ACCP, UniSA.
Paton, A., Burgess, S. & Bromfield, L. Key elements when choosing an assessment tool for understanding risk related to harmful sexual behaviours. Children Australia
Thain, E., Cox, S., Paton, A, Shihata, S, & Bromfield, L. Complex Trauma from Child Abuse and Neglect “I'm not sure we’re even all talking about the same thing and we're probably not”:
Parsons, L., Cordier, R., Chikwava, F., O’Donnell, M., Chung, D., Ferrante, A., Mendes, P., & Thoresen, S. Shedding light on the social and health realities of care-experienced young people in Western Australia: A population-level study
Harrap, B., Gibberd, A., O’Donnell, M., Jones, J., Chenhall, R., McNamara, B., Simons, K., & Eades, S. (2024). Mental and neurodevelopmental health needs of Aboriginal children with experience of out-of-home care: a Western Australian data-linkage study. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health