Australian Child Maltreatment Study

Minister for Social Services
The Hon Amanda Rushworth MP

Attorney-General
Cabinet Secretary
The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP

Joint media release

The findings of the Australian Child Maltreatment Study are shocking.

These aren't just statistics. These are children.

This is a wake-up call to all of us, across all levels of government, and the community. We must do better.

This landmark study, the first high-quality, nationally representative study of prevalence of all five forms of child maltreatment, must focus our minds on prevention and response to child maltreatment.

The Albanese Government thanks the authors for their vital work.

We will be looking carefully at the findings of this report and we will use this data to inform better, more targeted, policies.

These findings also underscore the important work already underway.

The Albanese Government leads coordinated national strategies including the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030; Safe and Supported: The National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children 2021‑2031; National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032; Australia's Disability Strategy 2021-2031; and The National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

The Government will continue to work with governments across all jurisdictions to develop a nationally coordinated response to combat the prevalence of maltreatment identified in the report.

Background

Under the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030, the Government has committed $22.4 million to further work by the Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS).

This funding will cover a wave 2 scoping study, cognitive testing and pilot analysis, data collection, data analysis and report writing, and publication release and knowledge transfer of the study.

Funding for the second wave of the ACMS reflects the need to undertake complex co‑design processes to develop options for the capture of representative data for prevalence estimates of child maltreatment in priority groups not captured in wave one, including First Nations Australians, people with disability and CALD people.

The second wave of the ACMS results will also show changes in the prevalence of child maltreatment over time.