A new report by the Commission for Children and Young People has raised serious concerns about Victoria’s child protection system, revealing many vulnerable children are being repeatedly reported to authorities while underlying safety concerns remain unresolved.
The report found re-reports account for 75 per cent of all intake reports received by Child Protection in 2025, with more than half involving a child who had been the subject of a report within the previous 12 months.
The Commission also examined 35 child death inquiries and found those children and young people had collectively been the subject of 267 reports to Child Protection, an average of eight reports per child. One child had been the subject of 28 reports from the age of six days.
The report found 67 per cent of those reports were closed during the intake phase, while a further 19 per cent were closed during the investigation phase.
The Commission observed that many of those reports contained information about ongoing and/or escalating risk, including family violence, parental substance abuse and mental ill-health.
The report also found:
- Children’s voices are not sufficiently sought and acted upon within Victoria’s child and family system.
- Family violence services for children and young people remain a critical service gap, including inadequate specialised therapeutic services and case management.
- High demand on the child protection system is impacting the ability of practitioners to conduct comprehensive risk assessments and make decisions at intake.
- Child Protection referrals to voluntary services often do not contain all the information required by those services to engage effectively with families.
- Family services investment in 2024-25 met only one-third of demand.
Shadow Minister for Child Protection Nicole Werner said: “This government was warned seven years ago that system failures were leading to child deaths, yet it has let the same systemic failures fester and nothing has changed.”
“This government has built a child protection system with a revolving door instead of a front door, where too many frightened children simply do not get the help they need.
“The most confronting finding in this report is that many of the children who later died were already known to the system.
“They had been reported. Concerns had been raised. Risks had been identified. Yet too often the response was to refer and close their case, and come back later when it was too late.
“Every child deserves to be safe. This report shows Victoria’s child protection system is too often leaving vulnerable children in harm’s way instead of protecting them.”
