Matthew Wilson, a Churchill Fellow from Victoria, has been advocating for the implementation of the first specialist Infant Court in Australia. He regards this as a “proven, evidence-based innovation” that holds significant promise for driving essential reforms within the child protection sector.

He regards the proposal as necessary given that Australia’s child protection systems are currently in a “state of crisis” as a result of the consistently rising number of children being taken from their parents’ care and put into out-of-home care each year.

In his research report, titled Improving the lifelong trajectory of Australian infants who enter out-of-home care, he shed light on how First Nations children are disproportionately impacted by the current system, with a significantly higher rate of out-of-home care placements compared to non-First Nations children.

Wilson said: “In 2020–21, First Nations children experienced this trauma and disruption at a rate of 69.1 per thousand of population, compared with 10 per thousand for non-First Nations children.”

He also said that over the 10 years leading up to 2020–21, the rate for First Nations children increased by 32.6 per cent, while the rate for non-First Nations children increased by 18.9 per cent during the same period.

In the report, Wilson exposed how, for infants, the “situation is worse – both in terms of their over-representation in out-of-home care and the likely adverse lifetime trajectory associated with that entry at a time of critical neurodevelopmental processes”.

He further outlined the significant concern of infants entering these systems by stating how they are “more likely to experience development delays, adverse physical health, and attachment problems and are more likely to experience adverse longer-term outcomes than other children”.

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Wilson’s proposal for establishing infant courts in Australia is inspired by the successful implementation of such courts in over 100 jurisdictions across 36 states in the United States.

He also highlighted the successful outcomes achieved by these courts within the US, stating:

• “Infants exit out-of-home care up to three times faster than those in traditional justice approaches;
• “Infants are five times less likely to re-enter out-of-home care than those in traditional adversarial approaches; and
• “A reduction in future applications relating to abuse or neglect in participant families.”

“It is recommended that Australia’s care and protection jurisdictions invest in evidence-based, solution-focused approaches such as a specialised Infant Court over traditional adversarial approaches to jurisprudence which fail to contribute to urgent reform within the child protection and child and family welfare sectors,” he said.

He further pointed out that “while a specialist Infant Court is not an exclusively First Nations-focused initiative, it does hold particular promise to address the significant over-representation of First Nations infants, their families and communities in child protection and out-of-home care systems”.