Child Protection and Domestic and Family Violence

Students undertaking child protection and domestic and family violence studies are expected to comply with relevant legislation, professional standards, codes of ethics, university policies and course requirements. Students are accountable for maintaining professional conduct in academic, simulated and practice-related settings.

The student demonstrates knowledge of, and consistently engages in, ethical, lawful and professionally accountable behaviour.

The course addresses circumstances involving vulnerability, safety, privacy, statutory responsibilities and human rights. Ethical and professional conduct is essential to safe analysis, decision-making and engagement with others. Students must understand that confidentiality may be limited where disclosure, reporting or information sharing is legally or ethically required.

Adjustments may support students to understand and demonstrate ethical and professional expectations. Adjustments must not compromise applicable legislation, confidentiality, professional standards, safety requirements or academic integrity.

• Maintaining privacy, confidentiality and appropriate information-sharing practices.
• Maintaining appropriate professional and interpersonal boundaries.
• Identifying and appropriately managing actual or potential conflicts of interest.

The course requires students to engage with material relating to child abuse, neglect, coercive control, sexual violence, homicide, suicide, trauma and systems failure. This material may evoke strong emotional responses, including for students with relevant lived or professional experience.

The student demonstrates behavioural stability and emotional self-regulation to participate safely, respectfully and effectively in required learning activities.

Engagement with confronting content is unavoidable because students must critically examine the nature and impacts of child maltreatment and domestic and family violence. Students must be able to manage their responses sufficiently to maintain respectful participation and meet essential learning outcomes.

Reasonable adjustments may include support plans, breaks, alternative participation arrangements or access to wellbeing services. Students are not expected to be unaffected by the content. Emotional responses, disclosure of lived experience or accessing support do not indicate an inability to meet this requirement. Adjustments must still enable students to demonstrate the essential course learning outcomes.

• Recognising and managing emotional responses during sensitive discussions. 
• Responding constructively to feedback, disagreement and challenge. 
• Maintaining professional conduct when discussing emotionally charged matters.

Child protection and domestic and family violence work involves engagement with children, families, victim-survivors, communities, practitioners and agencies across diverse cultural, social and professional contexts.

The student demonstrates respectful, collaborative, non-discriminatory and trauma-informed interpersonal engagement.

Respectful engagement is necessary to support safety, trust, dignity and collaboration. Victim-blaming, discriminatory, collusive or disrespectful responses may cause harm and undermine psychologically and culturally safe learning and practice environments.

Adjustments may support communication and participation in interpersonal or group activities. They must still enable the student to demonstrate respectful behaviour, appropriate boundaries, collaboration and responsiveness to others.

• Demonstrate understanding while maintaining appropriate boundaries. 
• Recognising power differences within professional and interpersonal relationships. 
• Engaging constructively with feedback and differing perspectives. 
• Working collaboratively across professional and service-system boundaries.

Students must communicate complex and sensitive information with children, adults, families, communities, peers and professional audiences across academic and practice-related contexts.

The student demonstrates effective receptive and expressive communication appropriate to the context and audience.

Inaccurate, ambiguous, stigmatising or inappropriate communication may affect safety, assessment, interagency decision-making and the rights of children and victim-survivors.

Adjustments may include assistive technologies, communication supports, interpreters or alternative communication formats. Adjustments must enable the student to communicate information accurately, respectfully, securely and within required timeframes.

• Comprehending complex written, verbal and visual information. 
• Using clear, non-stigmatising and developmentally appropriate language. 
• Participating in discussions, presentations and online learning.

Child protection and domestic and family violence involve complex circumstances in which information may be incomplete, contested or influenced by trauma, fear, coercion, power imbalances and organisational factors.

The student demonstrates the cognitive and conceptual capability required to analyse complex information and develop evidence-informed, defensible conclusions.

Graduates must be able to integrate theory, research, legislation, policy and practice frameworks when analysing unfamiliar and complex circumstances. Inadequate reasoning may result in unsafe or poorly justified conclusions.

Adjustments may support how information is accessed, processed or demonstrated. They must not replace the student’s ability to achieve the required postgraduate learning outcomes or be able to demonstrate essential analysis and reasoning.

• Critically evaluating evidence and competing sources of information. 
• Integrating information from multiple and potentially conflicting sources. 
• Recognising gaps, inconsistencies, bias and uncertainty. 
• Applying knowledge to unfamiliar cases and contexts.

The course requires students to engage with legislation, policy, research, case information, professional reports and other complex written materials.

The student demonstrates sufficient literacy and information-interpretation skills to meet academic and professional communication requirements.

Written information may contribute to risk assessment, statutory responses, legal processes and service coordination. Errors, ambiguity or misinterpretation may affect safety, rights and professional decision-making.

Adjustments may include assistive technologies, accessible formats or additional time where appropriate. They must still enable the student to interpret essential information and produce clear, accurate and appropriately referenced work.

• Interpreting legislation, policy, research, case information and professional reports. 
• Synthesising information from multiple sources. 
• Writing coherent analyses, assessments, reports and recommendations. 
• Referencing information accurately.

Child protection and domestic and family violence operate within complex statutory, legal and policy environments that vary across Australian jurisdictions.

The student demonstrates lawful, accountable and contextually appropriate legal and policy reasoning.

Students must understand how legal and policy requirements influence safety, autonomy, privacy, family integrity, information sharing and statutory intervention. Misapplication of these requirements may affect people’s rights and safety.

Adjustments may support access to, or navigation of, legal and policy materials. They must not replace the student’s capacity to interpret and apply relevant requirements accurately and identify the limits of their authority.

• Locating and interpreting relevant legislation and policy. 
• Applying mandatory reporting, consent, confidentiality and information-sharing requirements.

Students must understand how culture, colonisation, racism, dispossession, forced child removal and structural inequality influence experiences of child protection and domestic and family violence systems.

The student demonstrates culturally safe, responsive and critically reflective reasoning and engagement.

Culturally unsafe assumptions or practices may reinforce structural inequality, discourage help-seeking and contribute to harmful professional and statutory responses. Cultural safety is determined by those receiving a service, not solely by practitioner intention.

Adjustments may support access to cultural learning and different forms of engagement. They must not compromise the requirement to demonstrate respectful, anti-racist and culturally safe behaviour or excuse discriminatory conduct.

• Recognising the continuing impacts of colonisation, dispossession, racism and forced child removal. 
• Understanding the importance of kinship, culture, Country, community and collective wellbeing. 
• Recognising the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families in statutory systems. 
• Avoiding stereotyping, deficit framing and culturally unsafe assumptions. 
• Recognising community strengths, cultural authority and self-determination. 
• Reflecting on personal cultural identity, position, bias and professional power.

Students must understand how trauma, fear and coercion may affect memory, communication, behaviour and decision-making without pathologising victim-survivors or removing accountability from people who use violence.

The student demonstrates trauma-informed and violence-informed analysis that recognises context, agency, resistance, responsibility and the potential for systems to cause further harm.

Responses that minimise violence, blame victim-survivors or misinterpret survival strategies may contribute to unsafe assessments and interventions. Students must maintain accountability for the person using violence while recognising the impacts of trauma.

Adjustments may support students to engage with complex trauma-related content. They must still enable students to demonstrate accurate, non-blaming and violence-informed reasoning.

• Recognising varied responses to trauma. 
• Avoiding unnecessary repetition of traumatic accounts.

The course is delivered and assessed through digital systems. Digital technologies are also relevant to service delivery, information security and technology-facilitated abuse.

The student demonstrates sufficient digital capability to participate in the course and protect confidential and sensitive information.

Inappropriate use of technology may compromise privacy, safety, academic integrity or cybersecurity. Students must also understand the role of technology in facilitating coercion, surveillance and abuse.

Adjustments may include accessible technologies, training or alternative methods of accessing digital content. They must still enable students to meet privacy, security, academic integrity and course participation requirements.

• Accessing and navigating university learning systems. 
• Participating in online learning and professional communication. 
• Creating, storing and submitting digital documents securely. 
• Locating and evaluating credible online information. 
• Protecting confidential and sensitive information. 
• Using artificial intelligence transparently and only as permitted.

Reflective practice supports students to recognise how personal experiences, values, biases and professional power may influence their interpretation of complex circumstances.

The student demonstrates critical self-reflection and the capacity to use feedback, supervision and new evidence to improve their reasoning and practice.

Unexamined assumptions and biases may contribute to discriminatory, unsafe or poorly reasoned responses to children, families and victim-survivors.

Adjustments may support the format or process through which reflection is demonstrated. Students are not required to disclose private or traumatic personal information. Adjustments must still enable critical examination of assumptions, conduct and professional decision-making.

• Identifying how personal and professional experiences may influence interpretation. 
• Recognising bias, assumptions and gaps in knowledge. 
• Considering power, privilege and structural inequality. 
• Receiving, evaluating and applying constructive feedback. 
• Acknowledging mistakes or limitations. 
• Revising conclusions when presented with new evidence.

Postgraduate study requires sustained engagement with complex content, assessment requirements and collaborative learning activities.

The student demonstrates the capacity to manage the expected workload and maintain sufficient participation to achieve course learning outcomes.

Continued engagement is necessary to develop and demonstrate the required knowledge, reasoning and professional capabilities. Extended or repeated non-participation may prevent achievement of essential learning outcomes.

Reasonable adjustments may include modified timeframes, flexible participation arrangements, leave or approved extensions. Adjustments must still enable students to complete essential learning and assessment requirements and demonstrate course learning outcomes.

• Preparing for and participating in essential learning activities.
• Managing the expected course workload.
• Completing assessments within required or approved adjusted timeframes.
• Managing competing academic responsibilities.
• Recognising changes in capacity and seeking support early.
• Using appropriate extension, leave and support processes.

Given the subject matter of the course, students may encounter disclosures concerning abuse, violence, risk or personal safety during discussions, simulations or other learning activities.

The student demonstrates the capacity to respond to disclosures and safety concerns in ways that maintain safety, dignity, privacy, appropriate boundaries and role clarity.

Inappropriate responses may cause further distress, compromise privacy, interfere with required reporting processes or create additional safety risks. Students must recognise when a matter exceeds their competence or role and seek appropriate assistance.

Adjustments may support students to understand and apply disclosure and escalation procedures. They must not compromise duty-of-care, reporting, privacy, safety or information-sharing requirements.

• Listening respectfully without assuming an unauthorised investigative or counselling role.
• Responding without judgement, blame or disbelief. 
• Recognising when reporting, escalation or duty-of-care responsibilities may apply. 
• Seeking guidance from the appropriate academic, professional or emergency contact. 
• Documenting and sharing information only through authorised processes. 
• Maintaining appropriate boundaries with peers. 
• Recognising when a situation exceeds one’s competence or role.