CHILD CONTACT CENTRE LITERATURE REVIEW

Children’s contact services occupy a difficult space in the family law system. They are useful for the courts as a mechanism to balance the rights of children to have relationships with all their parents and children’s rights to safety. Scholars have described Australia’s family law culture as ‘pro-contact’ since the 1996 reform of the family law act, following these reforms there has been an increase in them.

Existing literature tells us that there is confusion between service users, referral agencies (e.g. the family court), practitioners and CCS management about the central purpose of CCSs and the boundaries and expectations of service provision. This confusion is further exacerbated by the highly litigious nature of CCS service provision and the complexity of the families accessing the services, research is clear that CCS service users typically have cooccurring issues with family violence, mental health and alcohol and other drugs.

This project aims to complete a review of the Australian academic and non-academic literature on the role and impact of children’s contact services on children and their families.

SKILLS WISH LIST

If you’re a PhD student and meet some or all the below we want to hear from you. We strongly encourage women, indigenous and disadvantaged candidates to apply:

• Knowledge of the family and relationships sector and current sector reforms
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills including the ability to write reports
• High level communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to contribute to independent and team-based research
• Proficient in the use of computer applications including MS Office
• Ability to work with a wide range of people across multidisciplinary teams
• Excellent attention to detail and analytical skill
• Ability to work autonomously and as part of a team
• Self-motivated and comfortable achieving outcomes with minimal direct supervision

Full details of the internship project, including duration, eligibility, scholarship and application details can be found at:

https://aprintern.org.au/internship/better-place-australia-apr-1667/