The Federal Government has released their discussion paper for public comment/consultation: "Australia's children: safe and well. A national framework for protecting Australia's children".

A copy of the paper is attached and it is also available on the the FaHCSIA website [External Link]

Public comment is being invited through the FaHCSIA website [External Link] and FaHCSIA are seeking comments on the following six areas covered in the discussion paper.

1. Stronger prevention focus

2. Better collaboration between services

3. Improving responses for children in care and young people leaving care

4. Improving responses to Indigenous children

5. Attracting and retaining the right workforce

6. Improving child protection systems

They have asked that people either email comments (preferably as a Word attachment) to child.protection@fahcsia.gov.au or
mail them to:

Child protection discussion paper
Australian Department of Families, Housing,
Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
PO Box 7576
Canberra Mail Centre ACT 2610
Comments are due to FaHCSIA by 30 June 2008.


SNAICC will be providing a written response and has nominated various people from our networks to be participate in some/all of the four expert workshops that the Department is convening to comment on the discussion paper. As yet we have not received advice on who is being invited to the expert workshops.

SNAICC would encourage organisations to:

Make a submission directly to FaHCSIA (next week we will circulate a short list of issues/ideas that organisations may wish to include in their submissions)
Provide a copy of your comments to SNAICC
If you aren’t able to make a submission but have some comments you would like SNAICC to consider please forward them to julian@snaicc.asn.au or julie@snaicc.asn.au

For now we recommend you have a read of the discussion paper and for information on SNAICC policy relating to prevention of child abuse and neglect you can visit the SNAICC website Policy pages