Hoarding disorder (HD) has been recently added as a separate diagnostic category in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. HD is a common and disabling disorder, with an estimated prevalence in the general population of 2–6%. Although evidence suggests that the onset of hoarding symptoms is usually during childhood and adolescence (youth), relatively little is known about HD in this population. The present article is a selective review of emerging literature on the clinical features of hoarding in youth.

This commentary aims to start a debate about various dimensions of social disadvantage and the relationship to child abuse and neglect (CAN). These dimensions include poverty, educational attainment, employment status, sub-standard housing, disadvantaged neighbourhoods and social isolation from family. Other aspects such as mental health issues, domestic violence and substance misuse are compounding factors that are critical influences on the relationship between disadvantage and CAN. New South Wales is used as the exemplar Australian state.

This contribution, written by a recently retired social worker, reflects on the impact of his early casework experience in child welfare. It discusses, via case examples, how these formative experiences influenced his social work career. These case examples illustrate the power of mentorship and continuing reflective learning. The article concludes with suggestions for the profession, for the employing organisations of social workers and for the newly graduated social work professional.

This article examines child protection practice when the Department of Communities and Justice in New South Wales takes the view that an injury to a child is non-accidental. The position taken in this paper is that once a child protection caseworker takes the position that an injury is non-accidental, then a strict liability or absolute liability approach is adopted. In effect, any of the child’s parents or caregivers are identified as persons who may have caused the injury or harm. What follows is the decision that a child must never be restored to the parents or caregivers, unless a person confesses to causing the harm and completes specific child protection counselling. Our concern is with the process of investigation, the reliance on one medical opinion in a context where the parents or caregivers are not in a financial position to obtain a second opinion, the failure to observe the rules of evidence when considering medical opinion, and the manner of substantiation of the non-accidental injury. In addition, we argue that there is a lack of knowledge about the factors that influence a paediatrician’s decision-making and that the guidelines for judicial decision-making derived from case law need to be examined further.

Hoarding disorder (HD) is characterised by difficulties in discharging or parting with possessions irrespective of their actual value, urges to save and acquire new items and excessive clutter in living areas. There is an urgent need to advance the understanding of HD in child and adolescent populations. The aim of this paper is to cover the assessment, treatment strategies and tools currently available. In general, data on assessment of paediatric HD are scant. Only one psychometrically sound scale, the Child Savings Inventory, which is a parent-rated scale used to assess the severity of hoarding symptoms, was found. However, this scale is not sufficient to produce a diagnosis of HD. Regarding treatment, there was only a limited number of case studies suggesting the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy that includes exposure to discarding and not collecting new items, using contingency management for exposure and oppositional behaviour, cognitive training and instructing parents to assist with home-based exposures. In conclusion, there is an urgent need for properly validated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders assessment tools, and we encourage practitioners and researchers to develop and test a Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) protocol for paediatric HD based on the aforementioned components.

Families who attract the attention of child protection services most often have ongoing lived experiences of poverty, gender-based domestic and family violence, problematic substance use and, sometimes, formally diagnosed mental health conditions. Without broader contextual knowledge and understanding, particularly regarding ongoing poverty, decision-making by child protection workers often leads to the removal of children, while the family’s material poverty and experiences of violence remain unaddressed. Case studies are a common tool to succinctly capture complex contexts. In this article, we make explicit, through case examples and analysis, how poverty is almost always the backdrop to the presence of worrying risk factors before and during child protection intervention. Further, we expose the existential poverty that parents live with after they lose their children into care and which invariably exacerbates material poverty. In the final section, we consider the multi-faceted organisational poverty that blights the work environment of child protection workers, and we suggest strategies for improved practice with families living in poverty.

To date, little is known about manifestations of child sexual abuse (CSA) within ultra-orthodox Jewish communities both in Australia and abroad. There is a paucity of empirical studies on the prevalence of CSA within Jewish communities, and little information on the responses of Jewish community organisations, or the experiences of Jewish CSA survivors and their families. This paper draws on a case study of two ultra-orthodox Jewish organisations from the recent Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to examine the religious and cultural factors that may inform Jewish communal responses to CSA. Attention is drawn to factors that render ultra-orthodox communities vulnerable to large-scale CSA, religious laws and beliefs that may influence the reporting of abuse to secular authorities, and the communal structures that may lead to victims rather than offenders being subjected to personal attacks and exclusion from the community. Commonalities are identified between ultra-orthodox Jews and other faith-based communities, and reforms suggested to improve child safety across religious groups.

In early 2020, the world as we knew it began to change dramatically and rapidly with the COVID-19 outbreak. Social distancing restrictions and lockdown measures have been the most effective course of action and an inarguably imperative approach at this time. However, in trying to keep the global population safe, social distancing measures unwittingly placed children already experiencing maltreatment and disadvantage in harm’s way. This paper will consider the evidence base which attests to the importance of considering the accumulation of adversity when seeking to understand risk and impact of child maltreatment and disadvantage. Given the unique and unprecedented circumstances which have accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak, and the dearth of research pertaining to the impact of pandemics on child welfare, the paper draws on an emerging body of literature about the effect of natural disasters, conflict and significant global events on child maltreatment. The paper synthesises the research to date in order to call attention to the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children already experiencing abuse and neglect. The paper concludes with an outline of the implications for practice in the helping professions.

This paper throws a spotlight on the systemic disadvantage experienced by parents who have their children removed from their care. With data drawn from the annual reports of the Legal Aid of Western Australia, the child protection agency in Western Australia, and the Productivity Commission, the authors illustrate the disconnection between the agency’s policy to reunify children once removed from their birth parents; the resources made available to support families to overcome their difficulties; and how the gap is further widened when parents without financial means and who are disempowered face legal proceedings on their own. We profile the increasing numbers of infants who are removed, the decreasing numbers of these infants who are discharged from care, and the shortfall of grants of legal aid that are provided to parents when they go to court. For this group of parents, permanent loss of their children is a reality. The aim of the paper is to capture the extent to which there is a fundamental blemish on the principles of due process and fairness, and once statutory processes are triggered, the best interests of the child and the support of parents are contingent, with poverty being the key mediating factor.

This qualitative study used a narrative approach to address the vulnerabilities and problems experienced by the children of sex workers in Iran. A purposive sample of women who were referred to drop-in centres were invited to take part in semi-structured interviews. An analysis of the data identified 8 main themes and 12 sub-themes, most of which related to risks and harm being perpetrated on the children of sex workers. The main risk to these children was the likelihood that they would escape from home and become sex workers themselves. Also identified as problematic was the risk of child labour, becoming members of offending groups and becoming a member of a brothel.

Hoarding disorder (HD) is a psychiatric condition that negatively impacts individual sufferers, their families and the larger community. The disorder goes beyond problems with excessive clutter; it also presents with deficits in executive functioning, attachment and affect regulation deficits. This paper focusses on the needs of adult children of parents with HD, who directly experience the consequences of the disorder throughout their life cycle. We explore the existing research on the psychological, relational and social impact of parental hoarding on adult offspring. We discuss the clinical implications of these findings and offer possible psychological interventions that may be of help in this vulnerable population.