The Children’s Court of Victoria

Abstract

Victoria, located on the mainland in south-east Australia, enjoys a ­relatively low youth crime rate and the lowest youth detention rate in Australia. The number of substantiated child abuse cases is 5.7 per 1,000. The Children’s Court of Victoria has two major divisions, the Criminal Division and the Family Division (which deals with child protection matters). The court is embedded in an adversarial legal system. The age jurisdictions of the two divisions are 10 years to less than 18 years and birth to less than 18 years, respectively. In child protection matters, the threshold for statutory intervention is a high one, namely, significant harm. The Victorian study involved data collection in both metropolitan Melbourne and regional locations. Individual interviews were conducted with 20 magistrates, while six focus groups were conducted involving 60 practitioners associated with the Children’s Court. Among the study’s most salient findings were concerns about the excessively adversarial nature of the Family Division, the court’s heavy workload, satisfaction with the court’s structure but concern about its overlap with other tribunals and the need for further training of magistrates, child protection workers who appear in court and lawyers. Further findings pointed to the inadequacy of court facilities, the challenges of an increasingly complex clientele, an environment in the Family Division often experienced as a hostile one by child protection workers in particular, the difficulty the court’s clientele experiences in understanding its processes and support for extending the Children’s Koori (Indigenous) Court. Among the reforms supported by study participants were ones that would permit ­ongoing case monitoring and case management and the use of alternative dispute resolution approaches, especially in the Family Division.