Marianne Berry - Child abuse and neglect - Developing an Australian solution - Knowledge Works

In Australia today, child abuse and neglect remain as serious problems. Abuse and neglect often cause long term, devastating impacts on children including developmental delay; relationship, physical health, behavioural and educational difficulties; and serious lifelong mental health problems. One response is to remove children from dangerous homes and place them into foster care, but this can also create lifelong difficulties in a person's self esteem, trust, and coping abilities.
Obviously, the prevention and reduction of maltreatment is not simple; solutions require a skilled workforce of service professionals. These individuals and organisations want to know what works, for whom, and under what circumstances.
In seeking to be optimally effective, the Australian child protection sector has often imported treatment strategies from the US and the UK, based on the effectiveness found in large, controlled evaluations there. Implementation of these models can fail however, if cultural and social factors in any given state or location are not recognised and incorporated into practice.
From a 30-year career of research on international programs to prevent and treat child maltreatment, Professor Marianne Berry will distil knowledge about the essential elements of effective programs in child protection. In wanting to keep and make the nation's children safe, it is imperative that our responses are appropriate to Australia.