Child Abuse and Neglect: a socio-legal Study of Mandatory Reporting in Australia

Acknowledgments

The authors express their sincere appreciation to the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for sponsoring this national research project, and to the Victorian Department of Human Services which had administrative carriage of the project. In particular, we thank Beth Allen (Assistant Director, Child Protection, Statutory and Forensic Services), and Graham Brewster (Statutory and Forensic Services - Child Protection), both from the Victorian Department of Human Services. Their ongoing project monitoring for quality assurance through correspondence, teleconferences and in personal meetings has been invaluable.

The authors also express deep gratitude to child welfare agency staff from every State and Territory for extracting and providing the data used in Stage 2 of this project. The authors also thank agency staff from State and Territory child welfare departments for their time and expertise in providing feedback in a three stage process on drafts of sections of this report. Without this support and helpful commentary from government agency partners nationwide, this research project would not have been possible.

The authors thank support staff for their administrative assistance on this research project. In particular, we express our gratitude to Dr Sandra Coe (Senior Research Assistant) for extensive assistance. We also thank Stephanie Jowett, Anne Overell and Ivan Ingram for their assistance in the closing stages of the project. The authors thank their University research centres for intellectual and administrative support, and two international expert academic reviewers for their technical evaluation of the project methodology.