Victorian community legal centres support the Children, Youth & Families (Stability) Bill 2025 (Vic), which has passed the Assembly and is expected to be debated in the Council this week.
We encourage all lawmakers to act in the interests of the children the bill affects, and to legislate it without further delay.
Under the current legislation, parents of children in out-of-home care have just 12 (or 24 in some cases) months to demonstrate to a court that children can be safely returned to their care. These timeframes do not take into consideration housing waitlists, NDIS support delays, the likely length of therapeutic support programs for victim survivors of family violence or alcohol recovery timelines. Therefore, even if parents show significant progress, if reunification is not possible on that arbitrary date, those children will be permanently removed from their families.
Reunification of families must be the preferred outcome of all child protection decisions. The rigidity of the current framework limits the opportunity for reunification of families to occur and instead, contributes to placement instability, disrupted relationships and poorer wellbeing outcomes for affected children.
Aboriginal children are massively overrepresented in child protection services, as a result of racism and enduring structural disadvantage that is a direct product of the impact of colonial systems and persecution of First Nations Peoples in Australia. Many Aboriginal women who have had their children removed are experiencing extreme disadvantages, including homelessness, family violence, racial targeting, disability or mental ill health. By failing to take these extenuating circumstances into account, (and the imposed timeframes due to service limitations) the current system deprives many families of the opportunity for reunification, instead reinforcing structural disadvantage and intergenerational trauma.
The proposed Stability Bill presents a constructive opportunity to refine the approach to child protection, whilst maintaining a legislated requirement to focus on what is in the child's best interests. If passed, the bill would open up avenues for reunification where safe.
The bill proposes a child-centred system that protects safety while also investing in the supports that make lasting health, wellbeing and stability possible.
Supporting the passage of the proposed Stability Bill would reflect a shared commitment to strengthening and refocusing decisions on each individual child's situation.
Refining the framework to ensure genuine best-interests decision making, alongside timely and effective support for families, offers a constructive way to improve outcomes and promote genuine, lasting stability for children.
We thank Victorian Minister for Children, Lizzie Blandthorn MP, for her demonstrated commitment to championing this life-altering bill. We hope that other lawmakers will follow her lead, and pass the bill without delay.
Louisa Gibbs, CEO at the Federation said:
This bill is an opportunity to tangibly improve outcomes for children - for this reason, we wholeheartedly support it.
This week, I am cautiously optimistic that parliamentarians will prioritise the best interests of their electorates - who widely support the bill - and vote to pass it into law. Reunification with the family is unquestionably the best outcome for a child, and this bill will ensure that more children are safely returned to their families.
Antoinette Braybrook, CEO at Djirra said:
The over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care is not a failure of the system. It is the system operating exactly as it was designed to operate. The child protection system continues to expand while Aboriginal women are left grieving the permanent loss of their children, a separation driven by government and backed by legislation.
The Stability Bill must be passed to stop embedding permanent separation into law and to ensure Aboriginal children are not denied the right to grow up safe and thriving with their mothers.
Claudia Fatone, CEO at Women's Legal Service Victoria said:
The Victorian Parliament must urgently pass the Stability Bill. The current rigid statutory timeframes set parents up to fail and increase the risk that children will be permanently separated from their families, even when reunification could be safely achieved with the right supports in place. Each further delay increases the risk that children will fall through the cracks of a system that is known to be failing too many families.
