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This studyofmanagement informationprovidesdataonall reports, investigations andfindings of maltreatment of children inWestern Australia from their birth in 1990 or 1991 until their eighteenth birthday. It provides prevalence rates of children being reported, investigated and found to have beenmaltreated. A study of more recent cohorts shows trends in recent years. A key finding is that over 13 per cent of all children born in 1990 and 1991 were reported before reaching the age of eighteen, although 71 per cent of them were not found to have beenmaltreated. International data suggest this rate of one in eight children being reportedmay be equalled or exceeded in countrieswith anAnglo-American forensic child protection system. Therewas also a disturbing increase in reports of Aboriginals andTorres Strait Islanders in recent cohortswithanestimatethatalmosthalfof thoseborn in 2004 had been reported before their fifth birthday. These findings add further evidence to the need for socialwork to address and severely limit investigative approaches. In this way, social workers will provide support rather than continuing practices involving high rates of surveillance and a focus on parental blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a comprehensive database about children in adversity collected over the 16-year period from 1990 to 2005 in the state of Western Australia. The focus of this interrogation is the effect of major changes in responses to information about children brought to the attention of the Western Australian statutory authority in a 10-year period during this 16 years. The initiative for these changes was termed New Directions , and its associated policy and practice changes were aimed at differentiating information expressing concerns about children and families from allegations of child maltreatment. They emphasized the provision of supportive and empowering services to families experiencing difficulties – a form of differential response to children in adversity. The article covers the period leading up to the policy and practice change and the 10 years during which these changes were implemented. It examines some effects of the new policy and comments on whether the changes resulted in missed opportunities to protect children from harm, which in turn, might have led to higher rates of re-reporting. The authors present an overall picture of the nature of the information accepted by the statutory authority and how the interpretation of that information might have affected subsequent outcomes for children. In doing so, it shows that the policy and consequential practice changes associated with a differential response mechanism had long lasting positive effects that, despite dire warnings, did not compromise the protection of the small group of children identified as requiring protective interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]