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Associate Professor Stephanie Taplin, Emeritus Professor Morag McArthur (Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University); Professor Cathy Humphreys (University of Melbourne)
Dr Aino Suomi, Associate Professor Tim Moore (Institute of Child Protection Studies), Dr Margaret Kertesz (University of Melbourne). We also acknowledge the contribution of many project staff members who moved on to other roles during the study.
Australian Research Council (Linkage Project 130100282), with significant partner contributions. ICPS was also funded by NSW Family and Community Services to expand the study into four NSW sites.
When children are removed from their parents by child protective services, 'contact' or 'access' visits between them and their parents are usually established. But current research evidence on contact provides little guidance as to what 'good quality contact' entails.
The kContact study developed and trialled a contact program for children in long-term care who were having supervised contact with their parents. The study aimed to contribute to the research evidence by conducting one of the first randomised controlled trials of a contact intervention between children in out-of-home care and their parents.
The project is a joint initiative between Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) of the Australian Catholic University, the University of Melbourne, and a number of government and community partners.
It was hypothesised that the kContact intervention would:
The trial took place between 2015 and 2017 in Victoria and ACT, and between 2017 to 2018 in NSW.
Findings
The kContact team partnered with a number of organisations in the ACT and Victoria who provided significant financial contributions.
ACT
Victoria
Under the umbrella of the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare:
NSW
Ethics approval was obtained from the Australian Catholic University's Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC); ratified by the University of Melbourne HREC. Approvals were also obtained from the responsible government and non-government partner agencies.
During the trial, when the program was implemented in full, caseworkers became more supportive of contact and parents were more satisfied with contact visits and less likely to cancel them. If the program were consistently implemented, workers might be better placed to provide additional supports for the parents.
Caseworkers' receptivity to supporting contact, parents' willingness to attend and their satisfaction with contact visits, might translate into improvements in child wellbeing over time as a result of more stable and improved contact experience.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Taplin, S., Lucas, N., Suomi, A., Humphreys, C., Kertesz, M., & McArthur, M. (2021). Parents' supervised contact visits with their children in care: Factors associated with cancellations. Children & Youth Services Review. 127, 106127.
Suomi, A., Lucas, N., McArthur, M., Humphreys, C., Dobbins, T., & Taplin, S. (2020). Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to Support Parental Contact for Children in Out-of-Home Care. Child Abuse & Neglect.
Bullen, T., Taplin, S., McArthur, M., Humphreys, C., & Kertesz, M. (2017) Interventions to improve supervised contact visits between children in out of home care and their parents: A systematic review. Child & Family Social Work. 22(2), 822-833.
Bullen, T., Taplin, S., McArthur, M., Humphreys, C., & Kertesz, M. (2016). Interventions to improve supervised contact visits between children in out of home care and their parents: A systematic review. Child and Family Social Work.
Taplin, S., Bullen, T., McArthur, M., Humphreys, C., Kertesz, M., & Dobbins, T. (2015). kContact, an enhanced intervention for contact between children in out-of-home care and their parents: protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 15(1), 1134. (open access)
Bullen, T., Taplin, S., Kertesz, M., Humphreys, C., & McArthur, M. (2015). Literature review on supervised contact between children in out-of-home care and their parents. Canberra: Institute of Child Protection Studies, ACU.
Taplin, S., & Suomi, A. (2020). Main findings from the kContact trial of a contact intervention to support parents with children in out-of-home care. Canberra: ACU Institute of Child Protection Studies.
Suomi, A., Taplin, S., & Tewson, A. (2019). How are foster carers and kinship carers faring in contact visits with birth parents? Findings from the kContact study, Research to Practice Series, Issue 24. Canberra: Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University.
Bullen, T., Taplin, S., & Barry, E. (2015). Supporting quality contact visits for children in out-of-home care. Research to Practice Series, Issue 10. Canberra: Institute of Child Protection Studies, ACU.
Taplin, S. & Mattick, R.P. (2014). Supervised contact visits: results from a study of women in drug treatment with children in care. Children and Youth Services Review. 39, 65-72.
Institute of Child Protection Studies. (2013, 3 July). Half-million dollar ARC grant for ACU's Institute for Child Protection Studies [Media Release]. Canberra: Institute of Child Protection Studies, ACU.
ACU News. (2020, 14 October). New ACU research will improve supervised contact visits for 45,000 children
Catholic Weekly. (2020, 9 October). ACU Newspaper and online article in Catholic Weekly: Improved contact visits helps foster kids
ACU News. (2020, 9 October). ACU research leads to better contact between children in out-of-home care and their parents
Mirage News. (2020, 9 October). ACU research leads to better contact between children in out-of-home care and their parents
2015 - 2017 in Victoria and ACT, 2017 - 2018 in NSW
For more information contact: icps@acu.edu.au
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