Amplifying young people's voices
Highlights
- ACU's Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS), established in 2005 in partnership with the ACT Government, has informed every major child and family policy reform in the ACT over the past two decades, as well as contributing to national reforms and inquiries.
- The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commissioned ICPS to lead a series of research projects with children and young people across Australia, helping to implement the Commission's final recommendations.
- ICPS advocates for a public health approach to child protection, while maintaining that meaningfully involving children and young people in research produces safer and more effective policy outcomes.
In the early days of ACU’s Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS), a young study participant was handed a camera and asked to take photos of things that were important to her. The seven-year-old, who had experienced homelessness with her family, immediately took a picture of the researcher’s voice recorder.
When asked why she chose to photograph the device, she replied: “Because that’s special. It’s got my story on it.”
This moment has stayed with the ICPS researchers involved in that study. It captured something essential about their work: the notion that children and young people should be involved in research that focuses on their lives, and that their voices matter.
“In that early research, we learned pretty quickly that children in difficult circumstances were incredibly aware of what was going on,” says Associate Professor Tim Moore, the institute’s Deputy Director. “It was children’s voices that helped to shape our understanding of issues like homelessness, family violence and out-of-home care. And when used well, their voices can have a huge impact on policy and practice.”
Over the past two decades, this principle – that systems work best when they are shaped by the people they aim to serve – has guided everything the institute does.
Established in 2005 in partnership with the ACT Government, ICPS has led the charge in co-research with young people, amplifying perspectives that had historically been marginalised. While ‘child-centred practice’ had long been considered the norm in the child protection space, for the most part, the adults still made the decisions.
“We’d often talk about the ‘triad’ of the child, the parents, and the child practitioner,” says Associate Professor Moore, “but in practice, it was still the parents and practitioners who would determine what should happen and what services and supports were required.”
In other words, when families were in crisis, children’s needs and wishes often got lost in the process. ICPS has successfully shifted the dial, transforming how systems listen to, engage with, and protect young people.
“I think that’s been a key contribution of the institute over the past two decades,” adds Associate Professor Moore, who worked alongside the institute’s founding director, Emeritus Professor Morag McArthur, to establish participatory research methodologies that would reshape the field. “We were able to champion genuine child-centred practice, putting some real scaffolding around the idea of children’s rights and children’s voices.”
Since its inception, the institute’s work has informed every major child and family policy reform in the ACT, and has also played a role in national reforms and inquiries. Perhaps most notably, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commissioned ICPS to lead a series of research projects with children and young people across the country – work that helped to implement the Commission’s final recommendations, and demonstrated the institute’s national influence.
“The feedback we’ve received from practitioners is that we’ve consistently provided the evidence to show their practice is actually effective and has positive outcomes for children and young people,” says Associate Professor Moore, whose work as a child and youth researcher is internationally recognised. “In many cases, that evidence just wasn’t available before.”
Reframing child protection
This evidence has done more than validate practice; it has provided the foundation for the institute’s push towards a public health approach, which aims to design systems that prevent harm before it occurs rather than simply responding to crisis.
In a recent opinion piece in The Canberra Times, Associate Professor Moore notes that child protection “isn’t just about fixing what’s broken”.
“Listening to children isn’t a sentimental exercise … it’s what makes systems safer, smarter and more effective,” he writes.
“When children are engaged meaningfully in reform, they don’t just highlight problems. They offer solutions. They want to contribute, they want systems to work better, and they want adults to take what they say seriously.”
Another researcher, Dr Vicky Saunders, remembers a young study participant who was so taken with an ICPS poster about children’s rights that they photocopied it – first displaying it around their home, then distributing it to peers at school.
“I think this reminds us that when we listen to young people, we’re telling them that their voices matter,” says Dr Saunders, who was one of the first team members of the institute when it was formed in 2005, and recently returned as a senior research fellow.
She notes, however, the constant tension between preventing harm and responding to crisis. It’s a challenge the institute has grappled with throughout its 20-year history.
“The focus on prevention and early support is really critical because we know about the long-term benefits, and research plays a big part in that,” she says. “But there is this pendulum effect where crisis situations arise and there’s an immediate need to respond. And when that pendulum shifts, resources tend to get directed into that pointy end, and funding for early support and prevention tends to tail off.”
Grounded in practice
One of the keys to the institute’s success has been its focus on bridging the gap between research and practice.
Through its collaboration with both government and non-government partners, ICPS has shown that research can quickly move from publication into the real world, with evidence translated into tangible improvements for children and families.
“One of our strengths is that most of our researchers have been involved in practice and worked in the field,” says Associate Professor Moore, whose own research and advocacy has drawn on his experience as a youth worker. “That gives us a strong focus on research that has a real impact on the people we’re trying to support.”
This practitioner perspective has helped ICPS researchers to identify gaps that others miss. Dr Saunders recalls approaching a local school to be involved in her doctoral research, which explored the impact of parental incarceration on young people. The school administrators dismissed her: “Oh no, we don’t have children here with those experiences.” She knew otherwise.
“I knew for certain that there were several kids in that school who had a parent in prison,” she says.
“There was a real sense that our on-the-ground experience gave us an understanding of children from their perspectives, rather than seeing them as a blanket population that we studied from afar, and I think that elevation has been really critical.”
In recent years, the institute has cultivated a new generation of researchers, many with practitioner backgrounds. There’s Ulrike Marwitz, a social worker who completed her PhD on domestic and family violence in 2024, and now develops evidence-based training for child protection workers. And Gabrielle Hunt, a registered psychologist whose clinical work taught her the complexities of child maltreatment. She has also since completed her PhD, and continues to explore safeguarding practices as a research associate with ICPS.
Dr Hunt’s motivation is straightforward. Working directly with young people was important and meaningful, but her research could have a wider impact.
“As a clinician I had all this information in my head around people being harmed, but it felt like there wasn’t much I could do with that information,” she said in 2024. Her goal is to advance child protection from a primary prevention perspective, “to stop [harm] from happening in the first place”.
Preventing harm
Under the leadership of its current director Professor Daryl Higgins, the institute has strengthened its focus on this public health approach, which makes protecting children everybody’s problem. The challenge ahead is to build a stronger base of evidence and make the case for policies that focus on prevention – even when the pendulum swings to crisis mode.
