How Victoria Is Strengthening Its Child Protection System

Victoria's child protection watchdog, the Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP), is significantly expanding its oversight work. In 2024, it launched compliance reviews across 140 organisations—meaning audits to check whether these organizations are following child safety rules properly. At the same time, the Commission has gained new legal powers to help children who are in contact with Victoria's child protection and foster care systems. Acting Principal Commissioner Meena Singh is leading the Commission through this intensified period of oversight following a major restructuring that moved some regulatory responsibilities to a new body called the Social Services Regulator.

New Laws Give the Commission Stronger Powers

From July 1, 2024 onwards, new laws have given the Commission additional authority to step in and help children involved with child protection or foster care services. These expanded powers are part of Victoria's ongoing reform of its entire child protection system. The state government also renamed the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing as part of these broader changes.

The timing matters: the Commission released its 2024 annual report this year, coinciding with the new legal changes. The Commission has framed this compliance work as part of its core job—making sure organisations responsible for protecting children are actually doing it well.

Awards Show What Good Child Protection Looks Like

At the same time the Commission expanded its oversight, Victoria announced the 2024 Protecting Children Awards during National Child Protection Week. These awards highlight organisations doing innovative work to keep children safe.

The Brave Foundation won the Child and Youth Empowerment Award, while the Garinga Bupup Early Intervention Program, run by the Bendigo and District Aboriginal Co-operative, won the Walda Blow Aboriginal Children and Young People Award. These recognitions reflect the Commission's effort to find and promote what actually works across Victoria's child protection landscape.

The decision to specifically award an Aboriginal-led program reflects something important: Victoria's child protection system has had particular gaps when it comes to supporting Indigenous children. This attention to cultural approaches stems from lessons learned in the Commission's past investigations.

Why This Matters Now: A Damning Earlier Investigation

To understand why Victoria is expanding child protection oversight so dramatically, it helps to know what prompted it. An inquiry called 'Lost, not forgotten,' released in November 2019, examined 35 cases of children and young people who died by suicide between 2007 and the inquiry's start. What was striking: all of these young people had been in contact with Victoria's child protection system within a year before their deaths.

Six of those 35 cases involved Aboriginal children and young people, revealing that Indigenous youth in state care face even worse outcomes. The inquiry produced six key recommendations, including more funding for early intervention programs and better systems to track whether families were actually receiving the help they were supposed to get. The Commission's findings showed a clear link between contact with child protection and increased suicide risk—a pattern the new compliance reviews are designed to prevent.

The broader context here matters. Similar institutional overhauls have happened in other Australian states after major child protection failures—think of New South Wales following the Wood Royal Commission or South Australia after the Layton Review. When system failures get exposed, governments typically create or strengthen independent watchdog bodies. Victoria is going through that same cycle now.

How Regulatory Responsibilities Are Being Divided

One piece of this overhaul involves splitting up who does what. The Commission is transferring responsibility for "Child Safe Standards" and "Reportable Conduct" oversight to the Social Services Regulator—a new body focused on compliance. This division of labor lets the Commission concentrate on what it does best: reviewing cases of children known to child protection who die within a year of their last contact, and investigating systemic problems.

This restructuring reflects institutional learning. Victoria recognised that after cases like those in 'Lost, not forgotten,' the system needed both stronger independent scrutiny (the Commission's job) and tighter day-to-day compliance monitoring (now the Social Services Regulator's job).

Checking 140 Organisations for Safety Standards

The Commission's decision to audit 140 organisations across the state marks a major shift in how it operates. Instead of just reacting to crises or individual complaints, it is now doing systematic, proactive checks of whether organisations are following the rules and protecting kids properly.

Acting Principal Commissioner Singh's leadership is meant to ensure these audits actually drive change—particularly the kinds of early intervention and better family tracking that the 'Lost, not forgotten' inquiry recommended. The organisations being checked include traditional child protection services, community groups, Aboriginal co-operatives like Garinga Bupup, and specialized intervention programs. This breadth suggests Victoria recognizes that protecting children requires coordination across many different types of organisations.

Why This Is Both Promising and Complex

Expanding the Commission's powers, running hundreds of compliance audits, and restructuring regulatory responsibilities all at once is ambitious. The Commission now has to work alongside the Social Services Regulator while also exercising new legal authority over children in the protection system—a complicated relationship that requires clear rules about who does what.

The focus on organisational accountability rather than just case-by-case crisis response appears to be a deliberate move toward prevention: if the system can catch problems earlier and coordinate better across organisations, it might prevent more tragedies. That aligns with what 'Lost, not forgotten' recommended. But pulling this off will test whether Victoria's institutions can genuinely coordinate across different agencies and service types.

As the system continues to change, the Commission's expanded oversight will serve as a test case: Can stronger oversight powers, combined with better coordination between agencies, actually prevent harm to vulnerable children?