Of these 379,459 notifications 177,056 (47%) were assessed as requiring further investigation while the rest were dealt with by other means such as referral to a support service. 

This data is not consistent around Australia due to the way different jurisdictions collect and record data and treat notifications due to different state and territory legislation and organisations.

40% of the notifications came from either police (21%) or schools (19%)

In 2016 – 2017 168,352 children had an investigation, care and protection order and/or were placed in out of home care.

This is equal to 1 in every 32 children in Australia.

74% of these children were repeat clients who had come to the attention of child protection more than once.

These numbers are not reports. They relate only to the number of reported concerns that result in a child protection agency recording a Child Protection Notification.

In 2016 – 2017 49,160 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children received child protection services, a rate of 164.3 per 1,000 children, compared with 22.3 per 1,000 for non-Indigenous children.

Indigenous children were 7 times as likely as non-Indigenous children to have received child protection services.

The rate of increase in the number of children per 1,000 has increased for all children since the 2012-13 benchmark year. The increase was from 18.5 to 22.3 for non-indigenous children and 126.9 to 164.9 per 1,000 for indigenous children.

The report identifies some of the research into why this is likely to be the case.

It appears that children in Very Remote areas are 4 times as likely as those in Major Cities to be the subject of a substantiation.

Substantiation means that there is considered to be sufficient reason, after an investigation, to believe that the child has been or is likely to be abused, neglected or harmed.

There has been a continued increase in rates of interventions. The report compares rates of key interventions between 2012 – 2013 and 2016 – 2017.

• There was an increase in the rate of reports that were substantiated from 8.2 to 9.9 per 1,000
• There was an increase in the number of children on Care and Protection Orders from 8.2 to 9.9 per 1,000
• There was an increase in out-of-home care from 7.7 to 8.7 per 1,000

In 2016-2107 the national recurrent expenditure on child protection and out-of-home care services were $4.3 billion, a real increase of 8% from 2015 – 2016.

 Of the substantiated reports of abuse or neglect reported a “primary” or most severe in the sort term type of abuse or neglect was recorded.

Nationally, emotional abuse was the most common primary type of abuse or neglect substantiated for children (48%), followed by neglect (24%), physical abuse (16%), and sexual abuse (12%). However, there was some variation between jurisdictions (Figure 3.3).

 Of the substantiated reports of abuse or neglect socio-economics appears to play a role. Read the report

About 32,600 children have been in out of home care for 2 years or more.

62% were wards of the state with 24% living with a carer who had long term legal responsibility for them.