This article, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, investigates the relative amount of funded awarded by Australian government research agencies to research focused on parenting interventions. The article found that in the period from 2011 to 2020, only 0.25 per cent of the total research budget allocated by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC) was allocated to parenting intervention research. This low funding commitment is out of step with the high positive impacts of improved parenting for children.
Australian country report – “Never waste a crisis”: Domestic and family violence policy and practice initiatives in response to COVID-19
Australia’s Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) and the University of Melbourne have released this Australian country report, one of four country reports as part of the DAHLIA-19 study, examining prevention strategies and responses to domestic and family violence during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and up until June 2021. The study found evidence that policy and funding strategies resulted in increased collaboration and communication, more multiagency working, leveraging of existing relationships and more efficient decision-making processes.
This report from ACIL Allen considered the extent to which the implementation of the Child Link Register will enable it to deliver the policy and legislative intent of Part 7A of the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act (2005). The review found that the program is well-positioned to achieve its objective and identified four strengths that are supporting its effective implementation.
Enabling the public health approach to protecting children
The Productivity Commission has released this paper, the second in their What Works reviews, investigating what is known about systems that enable a public health approach to protecting children. A key finding of the review is that developing a learning process which encourages continuous improvement and assists the child protection workforce to handle uncertainty is an important feature of the commissioning process for government when seeking to deliver an effective public health approach.
