Introduction: Australia’s Children’s Courts – The Study and Its Context

Abstract

This chapter introduces this first Australian study undertaken of Children’s Courts which comprehensively analyses the core business of the Children’s Court in each of Australia’s eight child welfare and juvenile justice jurisdictions. It presents judicial officers’ and key stakeholders’ perspectives of the contemporary status of, and current challenges faced by, Australia’s Children’s Courts and identifies what reforms they believe might be necessary and feasible to respond to these challenges and their degree of support for any such reforms. The chapter outlines how Children’s Courts in Australia have become specialised courts with an exclusive jurisdiction. Child welfare legislation has been established that provides the legal parameters for child protection intervention and the statutory framework to respond to children in need of care and protection. However, the adversarial system which underpins the Children’s Court is seen as less amenable to the multidisciplinary approaches and welfare role of the Children’s Court, which feature in many US and European jurisdictions. The nexus between child protection and juvenile justice systems, with young people moving from state care to state custody, is noted by this study and remains a challenge for Children’s Courts. The juvenile justice domain of the Children’s Court and patterns of youth offending are compared with international trends and what approaches these might offer to Australia’s Children’s Courts. What is clear from the Australian study is that child maltreatment and youth offending continue to be significant social problems and challenge judicial decision-makers and others responding to the complex needs these problems create.