Inside Australia’s National Study on Child Protection and Domestic Violence Collaboration
Two systems meant to protect the same children—child protection and domestic violence services—often operate as though they’re on different planets. A five-year national research project set out to change that, and its findings are blunt about how far there is to go. The PATRICIA Project, published by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) in 2017 and led by Cathy Humphreys and Lucy Healey of the University of Melbourne, drew together five strands of research across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, and Western Australia: a literature review, an analysis of five years of state child protection data, a national case-reading study, five case studies of collaborations that were working well, and a new practice framework.
Across the three states with usable data, reports involving domestic violence grew far faster than other child protection reports—by as much as 70% in Western Australia between 2010 and 2014. Yet a structured reading of 20 case files nationally found many workers still treated that violence as an isolated event rather than an ongoing pattern: incidents involving near-lethal violence, including strangulation, were sometimes recorded in files as “mutual combat” or “parental conflict,” and there was little documented effort to engage or assess the men responsible.
The five case studies—in Sydney, the Gold Coast, regional South Australia, Melbourne, and the Kimberley—found no single formula for success, but a consistent set of enablers (strong leadership, shared vision, information sharing, formal protocols) and a consistent set of challenges (holding perpetrators accountable, resourcing, culturally appropriate practice, sustaining the work past any one “champion”). One piece of this research, developed with David Mandel, applied Safe & Together™ Model principles to the case-reading component specifically.
The project’s synthesis produced a Collaborative Practice Framework for Child Protection and Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Services, along with recommendations spanning governance, risk assessment, perpetrator-focused practice, and further research.