National Audit Finds Australian Child Protection Practice Falls Short on Domestic Violence

Cathy Humphreys and Lucy Healey of the University of Melbourne, with David Mandel of the Safe & Together Institute, published a peer-reviewed study in Australian Social Work examining how well Australian child protection practice addresses domestic violence. Using a case-reading tool built on the Safe & Together™ Model, 30 experienced child protection and domestic violence professionals audited 20 de-identified case files across five Australian states and found documented practice sits at the lower end of a domestic violence–informed standard.

Case readers found little to no documentation connecting a perpetrator’s pattern of coercive control to its impact on children, even in files involving near-lethal strangulation and other severe violence—incidents case notes sometimes described as “mutual combat” or “parental conflict.” Fathers were rarely engaged by caseworkers even when their whereabouts were known, and files showed limited evidence of genuine partnership with the non-offending parent. No single state stood out as notably better or worse, and the authors note the results were consistent with similar case-reading audits in the U.S. and U.K.

Despite the sobering picture of current practice, participants described the case-reading process itself as engaging and often transformative—both as a training experience and as a rare opportunity for child protection and domestic violence specialists to build shared understanding across agencies. Several participants said they planned to adapt the process into an internal quality-assurance tool.