Micro Foundations of Democratic Governance

Looking After Kids Project:

Community Capacity Building in Child Protection

Capacity building is a key goal for child protection services. Child protection workers aim to build the capacity of parents to care for their children, the capacity of communities to support families, and the capacity of young people to look after themselves. However, these aims are often undermined by a number of significant factors. Some of these are:

Child protection intervention often occurs in contexts where there is limited knowledge about the extent of the problem and where what is considered acceptable parenting is contestable,
Intervention are often perceived as threatening by families and sometimes as unjust, which can affect the degree to which trust and cooperation are developed,
Substantial increases in reporting rates mean that services often struggle to identify which cases require the most attention and cope with mounting caseloads,
Intense scrutiny and criticism often means that child protection services need to justify every decision they make, meaning that risk assessment procedures and child protection laws are often relied upon to justify interventions rather than providing frameworks for best practice.

This project draws on various theoretical perspectives concerning responsive regulation, empowerment, restorative justice, shame management, defiance, and hope to explore how institutions can overcome these challenges in order to build the capacity of parents, communities and young people.

An important component of this project involves a series of studies, conducted in the Australian Capital Territory, that have been funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant. These studies will focus on learning from children, parents, child protection workers and other stakeholders about what works in child protection to increase their capacity to solve problems. Our linkage partner is the ACT Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services and other research partners are Prof. Dorothy Scott OAM, Australian Centre for Child Protection, and Morag McArthur, Institute of Child Protection Studies.

News & Current Events

Governing Beyond Command and Control: A Responsive and Nodal Approach to Child Protection.
Cover of Deflem (2008)

Nathan Harris and Jennifer Wood have published a chapter in Mathieu Deflem's book Surveillance and Governanace: Crime Control and Beyond. It argues for the need to re-imagine the governance of security in ways designed to both build and enrol the capacities of different actors. The authors draw on regulatory theory and the ideas developed in the areas of ‘responsive regulation’ and ‘nodal governance’ to explore the opportunities for, and the challenges associated with, designing governance institutions and processes that serve to de-centre hierarchy, command and interventionism as essential rationalities and practices. Its empirical focus is on the case of child protection, where the authors argue for the importance of nurturing the capacities of families and communities to govern both beyond and in tandem with hierarchical modalities. It is hoped that the theoretical issues raised and the agenda articulated can be engaged with across a variety of empirical domains.

Professional Development Seminar for Social Workers at Australian Catholic University
In June, a professional development seminar for social workers was presented at the Australian Catholic University by Mary Ivec. The presentation argued that we should understand 'regulation' as more than just 'rules' or 'control'. Regulation should include the notion of 'influencing behaviour', or 'steering the flow of events' as Parker & Braithwaite (2003) suggest. Drawing on Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulatory offers a unique approach to dealing with some of society's complex problems - ranging from international peace-keeping to child protection, and can inform social workers in their work, whether in clinical settings, state-based welfare service provision, including statutory services, community work or in policy.

Queensland Department of Child Safety Family Group Conference Workshop
In May, Nathan Harris presented at a two day workshop organised by family group conference facilitators from the Queensland Department of Child Safety. Most of the facilitators in Queensland have been recruited over the last year as the Department continues to develop their conferencing program as a result of amendments to their legislation in 2005. The presentaion explored the use of conferencing in child protection is Australia and New Zealand. A number of significant issues were identified: the constraints placed on empowering families by broader child protection practices, whether decision-making within conferences offers genuine scope for families to present their own plan, the impact that using conferences at the doorstep of court processes has on empowering families, the role that legal advisers play within conferences, and the need for stronger advocacy by facilitators.

Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in New South Wales
Mary Ivec, Valerie Braithwaite & Nathan Harris made a submission to the Wood Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in New South Wales. The submission draws on our work in regulatory theory and restorative justice to highlight an alternative approach to the current model of child protection. An over-reliance on rigidly applied and ‘statutory based’ responses that alienate communities creates many of the problems now experienced by the child protection system. Flexibility, inclusiveness of actors in the community as problem-solvers and a focus on repairing families while protecting children underlie a responsive regulatory and restorative justice approach. The submission can be downloaded here.

Family group conferencing in Australia 15 years on.
Cover of Issues paper

Nathan Harris has published a paper on family group conferencing in child protection as part of the National Child Protection Clearinghouse Issues series (no. 27, 2008). The paper examines the way conferencing has been implemented in Australia and argues that so far conferencing has been implemented "...in ways that fall short of the systematic empowerment of families that is envisaged in the New Zealand model". Despite the limited use of conferencing in Australia, important innovations can be found across states and territories. The paper can be downloaded here.

Mapping the adoption of Family Group Conferencing in Australian States and Territories.
Cover of FGC Report

Nathan Harris has published a report though the Australian Centre for Child Protection on the adoption of family Group Conferencing in Australian (2007). This report focuses in some detail on the way in which conferencing, as a New Zealand innovation, has been implemented or trialled in Australian jurisdictions. It is argued that the theory of responsive regulation provides a useful way of understanding the way in which governments use innovations like conferencing to engage families in making changes. The report can be downloaded here.

Study to explore the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Parents.
In September 2007 Mary Ivec joined RegNet as an executive-in-residence from FaHCSIA for 1 year to conduct qualitative interviews with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents, who have had experience with the child protection system.

Forming partnerships: The human rights of children in need of care and protection
In December (2006) Tali Gal and Sharon Bessel gave a seminar in the RegNet Seminar Series on the implications of human rights for child protection services. This paper draws on recent developments towards perceiving childen as rights-holders aims to suggest an alternative approach to child protection. One that regards children and young people in child protection proceedings as active partners, human rights holders whose wishes, opinions and concerns are all relevant to any decision made in the process of protecting them from abuse and neglect. A draft pdf copy of this paper can be downloaded here.

Workshop Series on Responsive Regulation at the Department of Disabilities, Housing and Community Services (DHCS)
As part of our Linkage Project with ACT Department of Disability, Housing and Community Support (DHCS) a series of 6 workshops were conducted for staff at DHCS and their community partners. The workshops explored the possibility of implementing the principles of responsive regulation to child protection in the ACT. Information derived from these workshops will inform interviews with key stakeholders in the child protection system about how responsive regulation might be used effectively. Further information on the Workshops

ARC linkage grant: Community capacity building in child protection through responsive regulation
An ARC linkage grant was awarded in 2006 (round 2) to researchers from the ANU, the Australian Catholic University, and the University of South Australia (Nathan Harris, Valerie Braithwaite, Morag McArthur, and Dorothy Scott), and the ACT Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services. The overall objective is to demonstrate how safety for children can be improved and care capacity in the child’s local community can be more effectively harnessed through a responsive regulatory approach.

The project aims are: (a) to test the feasibility of responsive regulatory interventions among key decision making actors in the child protection system, with the purpose of providing a map of potential responsive regulatory interventions in the child protection process; (b) to develop a deeper understanding of the emotional reactivity of families subject to intervention by child protection services, with the purpose of assessing how emotions of loss, failure and humiliation impact on the child and the family’s future capacity to care; and (c) to document changes in how responsive regulation is understood by key stakeholders as it is implemented, with the purpose of developing an evidence-based account of how organizational and socio-political factors shape the diffusion of innovative models generally, and responsive regulation particularly.

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Page last updated 2 January 2007
Feedback/comments/enquiries to Valerie.Braithwaite@anu.edu.au