NEWS COVERAGE: Child safety expert warns that mandatory reporting frightens families from seeking help

In an extraordinary critique of the child protection systems she has worked with for decades, professor Leah Bromfield, the 2025 Australian of the Year for South Australia, suggested that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being taken from their families at rates akin to the Stolen Generation.

Professor Bromfield, who heads the Australian Centre for Child Protection, said mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect is making struggling families too scared to seek help.

She said state powers to take children from parents should only be used “when other avenues have been exhausted, not as the first step”.

“We’ve never changed the fundamental expectation that all suspected abuse and neglect should be reported to child protection to assess risk and decide whether to step in,’’ she told the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare in Melbourne.

Read the full story at The Australian.