The National Children’s Commissioner is calling for urgent action following what she called “shocking” research on child maltreatment in Australia.
The Commissioner Anne Hollonds called on Federal, State and Territory Governments to build a national agreement to prioritise child wellbeing and create a roadmap for reform.
Commissioner Hollonds said that confronting new findings from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study provided evidence, for the first time, of the scale of child maltreatment in Australia.
“Child maltreatment is a much bigger problem than we thought, leading to serious negative lifelong harms for children, and massive costs to the community,” Commissioner Hollonds said.
“The ground-breaking nationwide study of 8,500 Australians aged 16 and over has painted a truly harrowing picture of the scale and impact of child maltreatment in this country, with a staggering two-thirds of respondents reporting having experienced maltreatment in childhood,” she said.
“Thirty-two per cent of these respondents had experienced physical abuse, 28.5 per cent had experienced sexual abuse, 30.9 per cent had experienced emotional abuse, 8.9 per cent had experienced neglect, and 39.6 per cent had experienced domestic and family violence.”
Commissioner Hollonds said 39.4 per cent of respondents had experienced two or more types of child maltreatment.
She said that unlike other countries, Australia had no National Strategy for Child Wellbeing with clear accountabilities; no reporting on budget allocations for child wellbeing, no Minister for Children and “we have had no urgency for change.”
“In the past we have had no ‘compass’ to guide our decisions and our investments,” she said.
“An evidence-informed, overarching National Strategy for Child Wellbeing, built on the foundations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, could be our guide,” the Commission said.
The National Children Commissioner’s 51-page Australian Child Maltreatment Study can be accessed at this PS News link.
