Children are taken into out-of-home care because the state has decided their parents cannot keep them safe. From that point the state is their parent. Royal commissions, coroners, ombudsmen, child death review bodies and children's commissioners have examined what happens next, and their findings point the same way: children in care, and children known to child protection, die at higher rates than other children; the placements most likely to harm them keep growing; warnings are recorded and not acted on; and no Australian government publishes a national count of the children who die in its care.
This page draws on official reports and mainstream media investigations. It does not discuss individual register entries. The register's own figures appear in the findings section as aggregate counts only. Each section summarises what the cited sources found. Alecomm's conclusion follows each one.
Research current to: 21 October 2026
- Published entries
- 7
- Australian entries
- 4
- Official and media sources cited
- 24
About this page
- Scope. "Out-of-home care" means overnight care for children under 18 who cannot live with their families because of child safety concerns, including foster, kinship and residential care (Productivity Commission definition) [4].
- Children in care and children known to child protection are not the same group. Several oversight bodies report deaths of children known to child protection, which includes children still living at home. This page says which group each figure refers to.
- Figures are taken from the sources as published. Nothing has been estimated, modelled or extrapolated.
1. First Nations children are removed at rates that have not moved
At 30 June 2024, about 44,900 children were in out-of-home care in Australia. About 20,000 of them were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. That is a rate of 50 per 1,000 First Nations children, compared with 4.6 per 1,000 non-Indigenous children [1]. First Nations children made up 45% of all children in care where Indigenous status was known [2]. Between 2020 and 2024 the rate for First Nations children did not change significantly, while the rate for non-Indigenous children fell from 5.2 to 4.6 per 1,000 [2].
SNAICC's Family Matters Report 2025 found First Nations children were 9.6 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care or on third-party parental responsibility orders, and First Nations infants were 8.9 times more likely to be placed in care. Only 7.3% of First Nations children were reunified with family, compared with 10.1% of non-Indigenous children. A further 37.6% left care to "other circumstances", including independent living, homelessness and detention. Only 15.6% of child protection spending went to family support services. Outside Western Australia, only 6.8% went to Aboriginal community-controlled organisations [3][24].
The pathway from care into custody is documented. Of the 4,575 First Nations young people under youth justice supervision in 2022–23, 76% had been in contact with child protection in the previous 10 years, compared with 55% of non-Indigenous young people [2]. The 2017 Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory found systemic failures in care planning, too few Aboriginal community workers, caseworker contact requirements not being met, and a shortage of foster and kinship placements. It also found that children in out-of-home care faced the highest risk of later offending [17].
In Victoria, eight of the 38 child deaths notified to the Commission for Children and Young People in 2024–25 were Aboriginal children. The Commission described this as "the continued over-representation of Aboriginal children in child deaths where the child was known to Child Protection" [7]. In Queensland, 39% of the 70 child deaths reviewed by the Child Death Review Board in 2023–24 were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children [12].
Alecomm's conclusion: The rate at which First Nations children are removed has been flat for five years while the non-Indigenous rate has fallen. Governments that hold the most children in care spend the least on keeping families together and route little of that money through Aboriginal community-controlled organisations. Any death review that leaves this out has left out part of the cause.
2. Residential care is the smallest placement type and the most dangerous
Most children in care live in home-based care. At 30 June 2025, 90.4% of children in out-of-home care (excluding Queensland) were in home-based care. For children aged 12–17 the figure was 81.0% [4]. The rest are in residential care (staffed houses run by paid workers) or other arrangements.
In Victoria, residential and therapeutic care held about 5% of the out-of-home care population in 2024–25 but accounted for 81% of all reported incidents. Of the Commission for Children and Young People's incident queries that year, 89% concerned children in residential care [7]. The Commission's 2015 inquiry, cited in its later Out of sight report, had already found that residential care "in its current form is often unsafe and places children and young people at an unacceptable risk of harm" [8].
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found particular risks in residential care. Vulnerable adolescents share facilities. Children with harmful sexual behaviours are placed with other children. Staff turnover is high, shifts rely on casual workers, and staff training and supervision are inadequate. Sexual exploitation is a growing concern once perpetrators learn where houses are located [15]. In 2016 South Australia's Child Protection Systems Royal Commission (The life they deserve) found commercial emergency care staffed by minimally trained agency workers being used far beyond genuine emergencies. It recommended ending single-worker shifts, and recommended that no child under 10 be placed in residential care [16].
Queensland has the largest residential care system in the country. At 30 June 2023, 1,763 children were in residential care there, 312 of them younger than 10. The state's Child Death Review Board made residential care a leading theme of its 2023–24 report, and its findings included two children who died in care [12][13]. In August 2025, ABC News reported the suicide of a 15-year-old Aboriginal boy in a Queensland residential care home. Whistleblowers alleged that children in the home were told not to speak about the death [20]. In May 2025, former children in care told the ABC that residential group homes had left them unsafe, including exposure to exploitation [23].
Residential care is also the most expensive placement. In 2024–25 the annual cost per child in residential care ranged from $659,665 to about $1.2 million, compared with $57,981 to $78,718 for non-residential care [4].
Alecomm's conclusion: The placement that costs the most per child is the one where incidents are concentrated, children go missing and predators know the address. Royal commissions identified the staffing and design failures years ago. Children under 10 are still being placed in these houses.
3. Instability, emergency placements and hotel rooms
When foster and residential placements run out, children are moved, and some are placed in hotels. The NSW Audit Office found that in August 2023, 471 children in NSW were in high-cost emergency arrangements, 142 of them in hotels, motels or serviced apartments, at about $829,000 per child per year. NSW spending on out-of-home care rose 36% in five years, from $1.39 billion in 2018–19 to $1.9 billion in 2022–23, "largely due to increasing emergency care costs" [9]. The NSW Advocate for Children and Young People's 2024 special inquiry, Moving cage to cage, found these alternative care arrangements unstable, unsuitable and harmful. Children in them were poorly supervised and isolated, their education was disrupted, and therapeutic support was inadequate. The Advocate concluded the arrangements should not continue [10].
National data shows how often children are moved. Of children who left out-of-home care in 2024–25 after 12 months or more in care, only 54.4% had experienced one or two placements (excluding Queensland, the ACT and the Northern Territory) [4]. The Productivity Commission still reports no data for its "continuity of case worker" indicator [4].
Queensland's Child Death Review Board described a young person who had been excluded from every residential care facility in the state. When no placement could be found, Child Safety gave them a tent. The young person was homeless for more than six months before they died by suicide. The Board found the system "appeared ineffective at being able to address or stop further trauma" [12][13].
Alecomm's conclusion: Every move takes a child away from a carer, a school, a doctor and, often, family contact. A hotel room staffed by shift workers is not care, and giving a child a tent is the system abandoning that child.
4. Health care and mental health needs go unmet
In NSW, 17 children died while living in care during 2022 and 2023. The NSW Ombudsman found that 13 of those 17 children did not have a current health management plan when they died, although plans are mandatory under the out-of-home care Health Pathway Program. Seven of the children had complex medical conditions. Poor mental health, against a background of trauma and abuse, was a key factor in four deaths [5][6].
Nationally there is no measure of the health of children in care. The Productivity Commission's "improved health and wellbeing" indicator is "yet to be defined". Most states list no published statistics on the health of children in care, and the Northern Territory reports that health information in its case system "is not readily extractable" [4].
Queensland's Child Death Review Board devoted chapters of its 2023–24 report to "the system as a parent", "addressing the mental health needs of children" and "the needs of children living with disability and chronic conditions" [12]. In February 2025, ABC News reported a Board finding that Queensland's Department of Child Safety took six months to investigate concerns about the care of a non-speaking teenager with disability, who died about four months after entering residential care [21].
Alecomm's conclusion: A parent who failed to arrange a child's health care would face a child protection investigation. When the state is the parent, a missing health plan is recorded as a compliance gap and nobody is held responsible.
5. Suicide and self-harm
Victoria's Commission for Children and Young People examined the suicides of 35 children and young people who died within 12 months of contact with child protection (Lost, not forgotten, 2019). Together they had been the subject of 229 reports to child protection, an average of seven each, and 90% of those reports were closed at intake or investigation. Of the children, 89% had experienced neglect, 51% had been sexually abused, 83% were disengaged from education and 89% had been in contact with a mental health service. Six were Aboriginal [11].
The deaths continue. Suicide or self-harm was the recorded category in 8 of the 38 Victorian child deaths notified to the Commission in 2024–25 (21%), the highest annual number in the Commission's series since 2017–18 [7]. In NSW, three of the 17 children who died in care in 2022 and 2023 died by suicide, and two of those three had made a previous attempt [5]. In 2024–25, Victorian out-of-home care incident reports recorded 335 incidents of self-harm or attempted suicide, plus a further 282 self-harm and 47 attempted suicide incidents under new categories introduced that year [7].
Alecomm's conclusion: Children who died by suicide had been reported to child protection again and again, and the reports were closed. A system that receives the warnings and closes the file shares responsibility for what follows.
6. Missing from care and sexual exploitation
The Victorian Commission's Out of sight inquiry (2021) found that the Victorian department "does not collect reliable data about the number of children and young people who are absent or missing from their residential care placement". In the 18 months to 31 March 2020, an average of 388 warrants a month were granted for police to return children absent from residential care. That is nearly one warrant per child in residential care each month, and about 75 times the rate of missing person reports for 13 to 17 year olds nationally. Girls were reported absent at 2.5 times the rate of boys. The term "sexual exploitation" appeared in 37% of absent-client incident reports, or 870 reports [8]. The inquiry found these children are "sometimes viewed as the 'undeserving missing'" and are sometimes met with "a punitive rather than caring response" [8].
The problem has grown since then. Absent-client incidents in Victorian out-of-home care rose from 3,603 in 2022–23 to 4,517 in 2023–24 and 5,309 in 2024–25 [7]. The Commission reports that many sexual assault and abuse incidents happen while children are absent from placement, "often … within the broader context of child sexual exploitation" [7]. In Queensland, the Child Death Review Board described a young person excluded from care who was left staying with adult men "understood to be adult men who sexually exploited young people in exchange for drugs, money and a place to stay" [13].
Alecomm's conclusion: A missing child is a child in danger. Absences are rising, the department did not count them reliably, and exploitation is recorded in incident reports while the children keep going missing.
7. Abuse in care
About 1,500 children were the subject of a substantiation of abuse in care in 2023–24, covering physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect [14]. Across jurisdictions in 2024–25 (excluding Queensland), between 0.7% and 6.1% of children in care were the subject of a substantiation of abuse or neglect. Between 0.1% and 3.3% were abused or neglected by a person living in the household providing their care [4]. Victorian out-of-home care incident reports recorded 334 incidents of sexual abuse in 2024–25, along with 572 of physical abuse and 780 of inappropriate physical treatment [7].
Alecomm's conclusion: Every one of these children had already been removed from home to keep them safe. Abuse by the people paid or approved to care for them is the system's own failure.
8. Carers and the workforce
The supply of foster carers is shrinking. At 30 June 2024 there were 7,980 foster carer households with children placed, 13.3% fewer than in 2020. Kinship carer households rose by 4.2% to 16,009 over the same period [4]. The Productivity Commission has no national data for its "workforce sustainability" indicator [4].
Caseworker shortages leave reports unassessed. The NSW Audit Office found that in 2022–23 DCJ closed 63% of the cases of children presumed to be at risk of significant harm because of caseworkers' "competing work priorities". Of more than 112,500 such children, around 85,000 had their cases closed without a home visit, about 71,000 of them because no caseworker was available [9]. In Victoria, the Commission found the risk of harm "inadequately assessed" in 18 of the 37 child death inquiries it completed in 2024–25 [7]. Lost, not forgotten linked the pressure to close cases to "an under-resourced and pressured child protection system" [11].
Alecomm's conclusion: When cases are closed because nobody is available to visit, a resourcing decision has been made at the expense of a child's safety. That decision should be recorded and attributed like any other.
9. Leaving care
Victoria's Keep caring inquiry (2020) found that at least one-third of young people who left care were identified as homeless after leaving, and that about half of those whose last placement was residential care experienced homelessness [18][19]. Nationally, 37.6% of First Nations children who left out-of-home care left to "other circumstances", including independent living, homelessness and detention [3]. The Northern Territory Royal Commission found poor planning for children leaving care [17]. Educational outcomes show what young people carry out of care: in 2024, between 24.9% and 32.5% of Year 5 children on guardianship and custody orders met the "strong" or "exceeding" level in reading, compared with 66.7% to 68.8% of all students in the jurisdictions reporting [4].
Alecomm's conclusion: A child's 18th birthday does not end the state's responsibility for how that child was raised. Releasing young people into homelessness repeats the harm the original removal was meant to prevent.
10. Oversight, reporting and accountability gaps
There is no national count of children who die in care. AIHW's Child protection Australia and the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services report placements, orders, substantiated abuse and costs. Neither publishes the number of children who died in care [1][4]. Each state uses its own definition and reporting cycle:
- NSW counts "reviewable deaths" of children in care and reports on them every two years [5].
- Queensland counts deaths of children "known to Child Safety" in the previous 12 months. In 2023–24, 53 of 422 child deaths fell into that group, and only four of those children were in care [12].
- Victoria counts deaths of children known to child protection in the previous 12 months [7].
These counts cannot be added together, and families have no single place to look.
Children known to child protection die at higher rates. In Queensland, the mortality rate for children known to Child Safety was almost twice the state child mortality rate: 60.4 compared with 34.5 deaths per 100,000, averaged over five years. These children were almost four times more likely to die of external causes [12].
Recommendations go unimplemented. The Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Human Rights Commission examined more than 3,000 recommendations from 61 child protection and youth justice inquiries between 2010 and 2022 and found the same problems recurring: weak oversight, poor information sharing, workforce limits and a lack of First Nations partnership [22]. Of the 108 recommendations Victoria's Commission made in child death inquiries over five years, 55 had been fully implemented [7]. The NSW Ombudsman examined 10 child deaths from 2018 to 2023 that had been the subject of post-death agency reviews and raised concerns about interagency collaboration and information sharing after those deaths [6].
Alecomm's conclusion: Governments count placements, orders and dollars every year, but they do not publish a national count of the children who die in their care. Families and the public cannot hold anyone to account for deaths that are not counted, and that gap in the data is itself an accountability failure.
Findings
All graphs are bar graphs. Register graphs (R1–R4) are calculated live from the register's published records at `/api/oohc-deaths`. The figures below are a snapshot taken on 21 October 2026. Every other graph uses figures exactly as published in the cited source.
What this register currently records
The register holds 7 published entries. 4 are from Australia and 3 from overseas jurisdictions. 6 of the 7 children were in foster care. No published entry yet records the agency, the provider, the number of placements, the number of caseworkers or a First Nations status other than "Not stated". The register's ability to show patterns depends on families, journalists and officials supplying these details.
R1. Register entries by country (live)
Source: published register totals
Show data
| Country | Entries |
|---|---|
| Australia | 4 |
| United States | 2 |
| United Kingdom | 1 |
R2. Register entries by placement type (live)
Source: published register totals
Show data
| Placement type | Entries |
|---|---|
| Foster care | 6 |
| Other out-of-home care | 1 |
R3. Register entries by age at death (live)
Source: published register totals
Show data
| Age band | Entries |
|---|---|
| 1–4 | 4 |
| Under 1 | 2 |
| 15–17 | 1 |
R4. Register entries by type of account (live)
Source: published register totals
Show data
| Account type | Entries |
|---|---|
| Family account | 5 |
| Media report | 2 |
National and state figures
G1. Children in out-of-home care per 1,000 children, 30 June 2024
Source: [1]
Show data
| Group | Rate per 1,000 |
|---|---|
| Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children | 50 |
| Non-Indigenous children | 4.6 |
G2. First Nations overrepresentation, Family Matters Report 2025 (times more likely than non-Indigenous children)
Source: [3]
Show data
| Measure | Times more likely |
|---|---|
| In out-of-home care or on third-party parental responsibility orders | 9.6 |
| Infants placed in out-of-home care | 8.9 |
G3. Reunified with family, Family Matters Report 2025 (%)
Source: [3]
Show data
| Group | % reunified |
|---|---|
| Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children | 7.3 |
| Non-Indigenous children | 10.1 |
G4. Victoria: share of out-of-home care population compared with share of incidents, by care type, 2024–25 (%)
Source: [7]
Show data
| Care type | % of children in care | % of incidents |
|---|---|---|
| Residential and therapeutic care | 5 | 81 |
| Kinship care | 81 | 11 |
| Foster care | 14 | 7 |
| Other | <1 | 1 |
G5. Annual cost per child in care, 2024–25 (range across reporting jurisdictions)
Source: [4]
Show data
| Placement | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|
| Residential care | $659,665 | about $1,200,000 |
| Non-residential care | $57,981 | $78,718 |
G6. NSW: DCJ out-of-home care expenditure ($ billion)
Source: [9]
Show data
| Year | $ billion |
|---|---|
| 2018–19 | 1.392 |
| 2019–20 | 1.527 |
| 2020–21 | 1.561 |
| 2021–22 | 1.713 |
| 2022–23 | 1.892 |
G7. NSW: children in emergency care arrangements, August 2023
Source: [9]
Show data
| Arrangement | Children |
|---|---|
| All emergency care arrangements | 471 |
| Hotels, motels or serviced apartments | 142 |
G8. Victoria: "absent client" incidents in out-of-home care
Source: [7]
Show data
| Year | Incidents |
|---|---|
| 2022–23 | 3,603 |
| 2023–24 | 4,517 |
| 2024–25 | 5,309 |
G9. Victoria: child death notifications to the Commission for Children and Young People (children known to Child Protection)
Source: [7]
Show data
| Year | All deaths | Suicide/self-harm |
|---|---|---|
| 2017–18 | 26 | 1 |
| 2018–19 | 34 | 3 |
| 2019–20 | 51 | 6 |
| 2020–21 | 45 | 6 |
| 2021–22 | 37 | 2 |
| 2022–23 | 36 | 7 |
| 2023–24 | 43 | 5 |
| 2024–25 | 38 | 8 |
G10. NSW: children who died while in care, 2022 and 2023, by cause
Source: [5]
Show data
| Cause | Children |
|---|---|
| Natural causes | 9 |
| Transport-related incidents | 3 |
| Suicide | 3 |
| Other unintentional external injury | 1 |
| Neglect | 1 |
G11. NSW: children who died in care, 2022–2023, with and without a current health management plan
Show data
| Status | Children |
|---|---|
| No current health management plan | 13 |
| Current health management plan | 4 |
G12. Queensland: deaths of children known to Child Safety in the previous 12 months
Show data
| Year | Deaths |
|---|---|
| 2021–22 | 69 |
| 2022–23 | 72 |
| 2023–24 | 53 |
G13. Queensland: mortality rate per 100,000 children (five-year average)
Source: [12]
Show data
| Group | Deaths per 100,000 |
|---|---|
| Children known to Child Safety | 60.4 |
| All Queensland children | 34.5 |
G14. Victoria: 35 children who died by suicide within 12 months of child protection involvement (Lost, not forgotten) (%)
Source: [11]
Show data
| Experience | % of the 35 children |
|---|---|
| Contact with a mental health service | 89 |
| Experienced neglect | 89 |
| Disengaged from education | 83 |
| Sexually abused | 51 |
| Child protection reports closed at intake or investigation (% of 229 reports) | 90 |
G15. Carer households with children placed, 30 June 2024, and change since 2020
Source: [4]
Show data
| Carer type | Households | Change since 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Relative/kinship carers | 16,009 | +4.2% |
| Foster carers | 7,980 | −13.3% |
G16. NSW: children presumed at risk of significant harm, 2022–23
Source: [9]
Show data
| Outcome | Children |
|---|---|
| Presumed at risk of significant harm | 112,500 |
| Closed without a home-based assessment | 85,000 |
| Closed because no caseworker was available | 71,000 |
| Visited by a caseworker at home | 27,800 |
What accountability requires
For every child who dies in care or while known to child protection, the public record should answer these questions:
- What warnings were received, when, and by whom?
- Which agency, provider and decision-maker were responsible?
- What action was taken or refused, and why?
- Did the child have a current case plan and a current health plan?
- How many placements and caseworkers did the child have?
- What did the coroner or review body find, and was each recommendation implemented?
Governments should publish a national, annual count of deaths of children in out-of-home care, using one definition, broken down by placement type, Indigenous status and cause. Until that happens, the full extent of these deaths will remain unknown.
References
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Child protection Australia 2023–24 (insights report). https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/558c05da-13a9-4a2f-9afb-86a158318290/child-protection-australia-2023-24.pdf
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare / NIAA, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework, measure 2.12: Child protection. https://www.indigenoushpf.gov.au/measures/2-12-child-protection
- SNAICC – National Voice for our Children, Family Matters Report 2025. https://www.snaicc.org.au/resources/family-matters-report-2025/
- Productivity Commission, Report on Government Services 2026, Part F, Section 16: Child protection services (released 29 January 2026). https://www.pc.gov.au/ongoing/report-on-government-services/community-services/child-protection/
- NSW Ombudsman, Reviewable Child Deaths in NSW 2022 and 2023: Biennial Report to Parliament (tabled 17 November 2025). https://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/reports/reports-into-the-deaths-of-children/reviewable-child-deaths-in-nsw-2022-and-2023-biennial-report-to-parliament
- NSW Ombudsman, media release: "NSW Ombudsman tables the Reviewable Child Deaths in NSW 2022 and 2023 Biennial Report to Parliament" (17 November 2025). https://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/about-us/news-events/media-releases/nsw-ombudsman-tables-the-reviewable-child-deaths-in-nsw-2022-and-2023-biennial-report-to-parliament
- Commission for Children and Young People (Victoria), Annual report 2024–25. https://ccyp.vic.gov.au/assets/corporate-documents/AnnRep2024-25/CCYP-Annual-Report-2024-25-Final-for-publication.pdf
- Commission for Children and Young People (Victoria), Out of sight: Systemic inquiry into children and young people who are absent or missing from residential care (June 2021). https://ccyp.vic.gov.au/inquiries/systemic-inquiries/out-of-sight-systemic-inquiry-into-children-and-young-people-who-are-absent-or-missing-from-residential-care/
- Audit Office of New South Wales, Oversight of the child protection system (performance audit, 6 June 2024). https://www.audit.nsw.gov.au/our-work/reports/oversight-of-the-child-protection-system
- NSW Advocate for Children and Young People, Moving cage to cage: Final Report of the Special Inquiry into Children and Young People in Alternative Care Arrangements (August 2024). https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/tp/files/189024/Final%20Report%20of%20the%20Special%20Inquiry%20into%20Children%20and%20Young%20People%20in%20Alternative%20Care%20Arrangements%20August%202024.pdf
- Commission for Children and Young People (Victoria), Lost, not forgotten (media release, 13 November 2019). https://ccyp.vic.gov.au/news/report-on-suicides-of-children-and-young-people-known-to-child-protection-tabled-in-parliament-today/
- Queensland Family and Child Commission, Annual Report: Deaths of children and young people, Queensland, 2023–24, and Child Death Review Board, Annual Report 2023–24. https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Work-of-the-Assembly/Tabled-Papers/docs/5825T0036/5825t36.pdf and https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Work-of-the-Assembly/Tabled-Papers/docs/5825T0035/5825t35.pdf
- Guardian Australia, "Child abuse victim given tent to live in by Queensland Department of Child Safety before dying, report finds" (12 February 2025). https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/12/child-abuse-victim-queensland-child-safety-report-ntwnfb
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Safety of children in care 2023–24. https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/bca25e8d-b282-4ef0-b52b-ef5a31118d5e/aihw-cws-99-safety-of-children-in-care_1.pdf
- Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Volume 12: Contemporary out-of-home care (2017). https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/contemporary-out-home-care
- Child Protection Systems Royal Commission (South Australia), The life they deserve (2016). https://www.childprotection.sa.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications/child-protection-systems-royal-commission
- Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory, Final Report (2017). https://www.royalcommission.gov.au/child-detention/final-report
- Commission for Children and Young People (Victoria), Keep caring: Systemic inquiry into services for young people transitioning from out-of-home care (2020). https://ccyp.vic.gov.au/inquiries/systemic-inquiries/keep-caring/
- ABC News, "New report shows after leaving state care in Victoria, a third of young people experience homelessness" (9 December 2020). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-09/new-report-tracks-young-people-after-they-leave-state-care/12961630
- ABC News, "Whistleblowers claim children told to stay quiet about death of teen in Queensland residential care home" (8 August 2025). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-08/residential-care-death-whisletblowers-budget-estimates/105627474
- ABC News, "Report finds Queensland Department of Child Safety took six months to investigate care of non-speaking teenager" (11 February 2025). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-11/qld-child-safety-department-child-death-review-report/104923522
- Australian Institute of Family Studies / Australian Human Rights Commission, "Report reveals systemic barriers to supporting vulnerable children" (2024). https://aifs.gov.au/media/report-reveals-systemic-barriers-supporting-vulnerable-children
- ABC News, "Child protection practices in question as former kids in care slam residential group homes" (13 May 2025). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-13/child-protection-kids-unsafe-in-residential-care-homes/105133336
- ABC News, "Report finds 'shockingly low' government spend on preventing child removals" (10 December 2025). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-10/snaicc-family-matters-report-calls-for-investment-in-prevention/106114764