ABSTRACT
This chapter reports what welfare and legal professionals, who are associated with the child protection system, say about children before the youth justice court. Key to exploring the nexus between child offending in the “crossover kids” study, presented in this book, are the stakeholder consultations. Twenty-five interviews and focus groups were undertaken with 82 key stakeholders, across metropolitan and regional Victorian children's courts, including judicial officers, child protection and youth justice professionals, legal representatives, police officers and police prosecutors, child and family welfare professionals, specialist child and family welfare mental health clinicians, and alternative education specialists. Their knowledge of this cohort of children made plain the complexity and challenges these children present to those working with them, and the difficult circumstances of their young lives. The professionals offered suggestions about what policy and practice frameworks need to be in place to be effective, and how essential inter-agency cooperation is to achieve this. They describe the limits of the legal system in its responses, and the tension between a government “law and order” response and a more helpful “social capital” response to diminish re-offending and sustain these young people in the community.
