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

but does not include duties of the kind undertaken —

3. 
   by a teacher’s aide or a teacher’s assistant, or by a student teacher on practicum placement; or
   
4. 
   by a person employed or engaged to provide care at a child care centre but who is not employed or engaged to teach at that centre; or
   
5. 
   by an unpaid volunteer, unless the volunteer is undertaking duties of a kind, or to an extent, prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph; or
   
6. 
   by such persons, or in such circumstances, if any, as are prescribed.’
   

‘Educational venue’ is defined in s 4 as ‘any of the following — (a) a school as defined in the School Education Act 1999 s 4; (b) a kindergarten registered under the School Education Act 1999 Part 5; (c) a child care centre; (d) a detention centre; (e) any other place prescribed as an educational venue’. ‘Educational programme’ is defined in s 4 as ‘an organised set of learning activities designed to enable a student to develop knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes relevant to the student’s individual needs’.

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^ Initially, by Ben Mathews, Leah Bromfield and Kerryann Walsh. Graham Vimpani was subsequently added to the team. The team combine their diverse disciplinary backgrounds (Mathews: law; Bromfield: psychology; Walsh: education; Vimpani: medicine) and jurisdictional locations (Mathews and Walsh: Queensland; Bromfield: South Australia; Vimpani: New South Wales). The team are: Associate Professor Ben Mathews (QUT Faculty of Law, Australian Centre for Health Law Research), Associate Professor Leah Bromfield (University of South Australia, Australian Centre for Child Protection), Associate Professor Kerryann Walsh (QUT Faculty of Education, Children and Youth Research Centre), Professor Graham Vimpani (University of Newcastle).

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^ The second part of the initially proposed study, which complements the funded project, broadened the project as it would explore the influence of contextual factors (e.g. reporter training and knowledge, child’s ethnicity, gender) on mandatory reporting, including failure to report, and unjustifiable reports, with a focus on four key reporter groups (police, nurses, doctors, and teachers). Key questions explored in this second part of the study, using qualitative and quantitative methods would be: (1) What contextual factors influence the failure to report child abuse and neglect, and the making of unjustifiable reports, and to what extent? (2) How effective are current mandatory reporter training models? (3) Are barriers to effective reporting modifiable through reporter training? The initially proposed study was narrower in only focusing on three selected jurisdictions rather than including all eight States and Territories.