Child Social Exclusion, Poverty and Disadvantage In Australia

The largest part of the system of child protection in Australia is informal – it consists of the cultural traditions and social norms surrounding the care and nurture of children, the families that provide primary care, and the communities which furnish those families with the institutional and social support they need to be good parents and carers. It is when this customary system fails that the formal system of statutory child protection is called in.

UnitingCare Australia places a high priority on preventive investment directed towards strengthening the informal system of child protection and ensuring that parents and communities have the resources they need to play their parts.

Identifying those areas of Australia where many forms of disadvantage interact to create high levels of child social exclusion fits with our priorities. These are areas in which the informal child protection system is weakened, areas where social cohesion is frayed, areas crying out for preventive investment in child and family support, high quality education from early childhood onward, areas desperate for creative partnerships between government, business, not-for profits, and communities themselves to stimulate inclusive economic development, environmental amenity and civic pride.

Child social exclusion means lost opportunity, marginalisation from the life of a community which may need revitalising, and the risk of leading lives of unfulfilled potential.