Child protection has long been featured in the news for various negative reasons. There have been in excess of 50 enquiries, reviews, commissions, etc. since the turn of the century. The vast majority of outcomes have promoted early intervention and diversion where possible and even now Queensland is again making significant changes with the Enhanced Intake and Assessment roll-out, marking the 3rd significant change this century. There is chronic government under-staffing, challenges recruiting and retaining staff. Nongovernment agencies are now also experiencing staffing challenges and some non-government services are handing back their contracts in the early intervention and fostering services.

My presentation will focus on my lived experiences as a child in care, a kinship carer, foster carer, and as a professional in the sector for the past fourteen years; highlighting my unique perspective of the various challenges and strengths within the child protection system. Many children, parents and extended family members that come into contact with the different services provided by child safety have negative experiences. Whilst our family had several challenge experiences themselves, overall, I believe our family situation is better as a result of the different departmental interventions. I will then propose my learnings from practice, highlighting the best ways of working with families and working with the challenges facing the system. It is my hope to bring a spotlight to success, failure and the need to change the way we respond to issues of child protection to make children, families and communities safer.

My aim is to address these three questions: How do we work with an ‘inadequate system’ to achieve the best outcomes for individuals and for families? How do we seek to address, and treat the issues of child maltreatment? How do we stop inter-generational trauma from continuing from generation to generation?