Money counts: challenging poverty in families to protect children

Abstract

This paper fits within the Conference theme regarding evaluating what counts in child protection practice and policy. It presents the outcomes of interviews with child protection workers in the Mackay-Whitsunday region of the Department of Families. Workers were interviewed regarding their understanding of the relevance of family poverty to child protection concerns. The results indicate that workers did indeed consider family poverty to be a key issue. The author notes that while this link has been long understood, it continues to be neglected as a practice concern. The author presents four major recommendations for improvement in the responses of statutory child protection departments to, so that we count poverty as an issue in families where children are harmed or at risk of harm..