Victorian community legal centres commend the Victorian Government for the passage of the Children, Youth & Families (Stability) Act 2025 (Vic) (the Act), which came into effect today.
This legislation supports reunification of families wherever possible, while maintaining a legislated requirement to focus on what is in the child's best interests. It promotes genuine best-interests decision making and a child-centred system that protects safety while also investing in the supports that make lasting health, wellbeing and stability possible.
The Victorian Government's support for the Act reflects a shared commitment to strengthening and refocusing decisions on each individual child's situation.
We thank community legal centres for their advocacy that informed the development of the Act, and Victorian Minister for Children, Lizzie Blandthorn MP, for her demonstrated commitment to championing this life-altering legislation.
The Act sets out a solid foundation on which better outcomes for children and families can be achieved. However, more can be done to make the child protection system fairer, clearer, and safer.
Community legal centres work with children and families involved in the child protection system, people experiencing or at risk of family violence, and people experiencing homelessness. Through our work, we have acute visibility of the intersecting and complex issues people experience that lead them to interacting with the child protection system. Too often, we see children facing removal from their families before meaningful supports have been provided. Children consistently achieve better safety, wellbeing and life outcomes when supported to remain safely with their families, so child protection should prioritise the provision of early, practical and culturally safe assistance that prevents unnecessary separation and builds family stability from the outset.
Early access to independent and integrated legal assistance helps families understand their rights and responsibilities early and enables them to respond to protective concerns, engage constructively with child protection, access appropriate supports, and stabilise risk factors
before matters escalate to court. Embedding legal assistance as a core, preventative component of the child protection response strengthens outcomes for children and improves system efficiency.
To strengthen child protection reforms further, we ask the Victorian Government to consider the following recommendations:
- Prevent child removal from victim-survivors of family violence through stronger support responses for victim-survivors, greater consideration of family violence dynamics, mandated training in family violence for all child protection workers, and stricter enforcement of reporting requirements.
- Establish a Child Protection Notification and Referral System, to automatically notify legal services when child protection receives a report. This would embed legal assistance as a formal, funded competent of the notification stage.
- Embed a clearer, enforceable statutory requirement that all reasonable and active efforts by the Department have been taken before children are separated from their families.
- Implement stronger protections to prevent those leaving care from homelessness. These changes would demonstrate a true understanding of the dynamics that lead to interactions with child protection systems, and a commitment to severing the pathways that lead to child removal.
Louisa Gibbs, CEO at the Federation said:
"The Stability Act is an incredibly important piece of legislation that we know will improve outcomes for Victorian children and families involved with the child protection system. Reunification and keeping families together when it is safe to do so is recognised best practice, and these reforms are testament to the Victorian Government's commitment to evidence-based decision-making that puts the best interests of children and families first."
"We thank Minister Blandthorn for meaningfully engaging with community legal centres on this issue, and for keeping conversations open for further improvements in the future."
