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Pregnant women involved with statutory child protection services could be considered hidden in society or 'silenced' due to the lack of published evidence on whether state intervention with this group is beneficial. Scholars continue to call for research exploring the experience of at-risk pregnant women, in particular, for research that examines the impact of prenatal state involvement on outcomes for newborn babies, their mothers, and their significant others such as fathers, partners, families and communities. This study describes a researcher's experience of attempting to recruit a purposeful sample of women who were the subject of an unborn child high risk birth alert in New South Wales, Australia. Short Message Service mobile telephone messages were utilised to invite participation via an opt-in approach, as a means to hear women's experiences of the services they received while pregnant with their last child. From a population of eighty-nine, the strategy recruited only two participants. By describing the process undertaken to recruit a non-biased sample of at-risk women to a qualitative research study, future researchers may be able to deploy recruitment strategies that enable and encourage at-risk women to participate in research, in turn, allowing us to hear their voices.

In this article we use qualitative data drawn from a sample of child protection cases to demonstrate how the process of attributing blame to parents and carers for child maltreatment is a significant influence on decisionmaking, sometimes to the detriment of assessing the future safety of children. We focus on two cases which both demonstrate how the process of apportioning blame can lead to decisions which might not be considered to be in the best interests of the children concerned. We conceptualise blame as an 'ideology' with its roots in the discourse of the 'risk society', perpetuated and sustained by the technology of risk assessment. The concept of blame ideology is offered as an addition to theory which seeks to explain the influences on decision making in child protection practice.

Child protection legislation has undergone a number of changes since its inception, changes that have redefined the population of children in need of protection. However, child protection data on notifications and substantiations remain the most common source of data for statistics on the rate of maltreatment and the breakdown of specific maltreatment types. In the present study, three factors are identified that have compromised the accuracy of child protection data reporting the incidence of child abuse and neglect: (i) the legislative changes that mandate child protection services to protect children from harm rather than from identifiable adult actions; (ii) the shift from the Harm Standard to the Endangerment Standard; and (iii) the assignment of responsibility solely to parents. The examples in this paper are drawn from Australian legislation, however, the legislative changes that have created these issues are evident internationally, rendering child protection data an unreliable and invalid source for statutory or research data on the rates of child maltreatment.

The need for policy and practice to be informed by a high-quality evidence base has been widely recognised. However, there are many barriers to overcome in order to realise this goal. This article describes a conceptual framework for understanding the drivers of policy and practice in the child and family welfare sectors, and profiles strategies being employed across Australia to facilitate evidence-informed practice.

A research-led reform strategy is urgently required in the field of child protection in Australia. While international research can be a valuable resource, a strong research base which is relevant to this country's needs, legislation and service systems is essential. Two recent audits of Australian research completed over the past decade – one on out-of-home care and the other on child protection more broadly – have highlighted significant gaps in existing research. There is a number of important topics that have not been addressed – as well as an over-reliance on small-scale, qualitative studies and a very low level of funding for research. This paper explores these gaps and identifies crucial areas for development, encompassing: the development of a national child protection and out-of-home care research agenda; adequate funding for research, especially for multi-site, cross-jurisdictional studies; and closer collaboration between researchers, policymakers and practitioners to close the gap between what we know and what we do.