Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle ‘Little Children are Sacred’: Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, which has come to be known as the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ Report, was released in late June 2007 (Wild & Anderson 2007). The Report has received little analysis. Rather it is the response by the Commonwealth Government to the Report's findings that has dominated debate. Despite repeated accounts of child neglect provided to the inquiry, these accounts seemed to be viewed as the landscape in which child sexual abuse occurs, rather than a significant and urgent issue in their own right. The relegation of child neglect to background mirrors what research elsewhere tells us about what happens to child neglect referrals; lacking the sense of immediacy and danger of child sexual abuse, they are frequently minimised or overlooked.

This paper is an attempt to refocus attention on the Report itself through a lens of child neglect, and suggests that in limiting the terms of reference to child sexual abuse, the Report missed the opportunity to engage with the significant issue of child neglect and the practice of child protection work in cases of child neglect.

This article deals with various implications arising from evidence of slavery experienced by children placed in orphanages and children's homes between 1910 and 1974. Slavery was an integral part of the day-to-day realities of many of these children who also experienced forms of sexual, physical and emotional abuse in institutions that were supposedly responsible for their care. It is argued that slave labour in care settings contravened various provisions contained in welfare legislation of the period and was used to supplement the incomes of care institutions. The end result was that children were often compelled to work rather than receive the education to which they were entitled, rendering them ill-prepared to deal with various challenges in later life. This largely hidden story of slavery among the ‘Forgotten Australians’ is one of crude exercise of self-serving authority over children – authority aimed at serving the interests of institutions rather than the children they were meant to help.

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.

Universities play an integral role in training teachers in the areas of understanding and preparedness to deal with child abuse and neglect while at the same time advocating for the ‘rights of the child’. Unfortunately pre-service teachers are at risk of being ill-prepared to meet their mandated and teaching responsibilities if their course content is not approached strategically. While numerous studies have investigated teachers' understandings of child abuse and the barriers in detecting and reporting this abuse, this research investigates pre-service teachers' understandings of child abuse and their preparedness to deal with the signs, symptoms and disclosures of child abuse. This paper reports on findings concerning pre-service teachers ‘views of their professional role in child protection and their recommendations for content to be included in their undergraduate degrees in teacher education.