People behind the stats: Child Welfare and Prisoner Health Unit
(L to R): Jenna Pickles, Kirsten Morgan, Georgie Jepsen,
Arianne Schlumpp, Kristy Raithel,
Sam Chambers, Tim Beard,
Rhiannon Kelly and Ingrid Johnston.
(Not in picture: Nicole Hunter)
Who we are
The Child Welfare and Prisoner Health Unit is part of the Continuing and Specialised Care Group at the AIHW.
Our team, led by Tim Beard, is a diverse group with a variety of backgrounds and experience, including statistics, epidemiology, psychology, education, health sciences and clinical practice.
Did you know?
- More than 7,000 young people were under youth justice supervision on an average day in 2010–11, or 1 in every 386 young people.
- There were only 333 finalised adoptions in 2011–12—the lowest annual number on record. For the first time since 1998–99, more Australian children (184) were adopted than children from overseas (149).
- In 2010 two-thirds of prison entrants reported illicit drug use in the previous 12 months, and 83% were current smokers.
- In 2011–12, almost 38,000 children were the subject of a substantiated child protection notification, or 1 in every 135 children.
What we do
We collect and report on data covering four main subject areas—child protection, adoptions, youth justice and prisoner health. We produce regular reports on a range of topics including:
- Child protection Australia (annually, since 1996–97)
- Adoptions Australia (annually, since 1990–91)
- Juvenile justice in Australia (annually, since 2000–01)
- The health of Australia's prisoners (since 2009).
Our unit also produces reports and bulletins on special focus topics, including recent bulletins on Indigenous young people in the juvenile justice system and The mental health of prison entrants in Australia.
In addition to reports, we regularly undertake projects aimed at either improving existing data collections or developing new measures to fill specific data gaps. Recent examples include outcome indicators for prisoners being discharged, and a new module to measure educational outcomes for children in the child protection system.
Why we do it
We are confident that governments and the community use the statistics and related information that we produce to make better decisions on policies and programs that make a positive difference to the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in Australian society.
What lies ahead
In addition to our regular work, our team has been busy recently on several projects that will either enhance the national data we collect, or improve how we communicate with all of our audiences. For example:
- We will be introducing a new child protection data collection later in 2013 that focuses on children (through child-level unit records) rather than services.
- From 2013 the Youth justice in Australia report (formerly Juvenile justice in Australia) will be summarised in a bulletin with accompanying online fact sheets, which will give readers easier access to the key points.
- In response to regular requests, we will be providing easy online access to adoptions trend data.
Further information
Communications, Media and Marketing Unit
Phone: 02 6244 1032
Email: