2026-10-17
ACU child protection and family work: assessment, support and court reports
Explore the child protection and family-work duties in ACU’s workshop, including assessment, home visits, parenting support and cross-service coordination.
ACU's 2026 Shantou social work workshop illustrates child protection and family work through six activities. Its example combines assessment, practical support and coordination with other services, from investigating child-safety concerns to preparing court reports.
The list is an introduction for people considering social work. It does not describe one real family, prescribe how to handle a particular concern or establish the legal powers attached to every social work position.
Assessment includes risks and protective factors
The workshop names investigating concerns about child safety, conducting home visits, and assessing risks and protective factors. These are related activities, but they are not a step-by-step investigation procedure.
For applicants, the reference to both risks and protective factors is worth noticing. The presentation does not frame assessment only as a search for problems. It identifies both dimensions without supplying an assessment instrument, threshold for intervention or rule for deciding a case.
If you want to understand this field through study, ask how assessment skills are taught and supervised. Do not treat a short career example as training to conduct an investigation yourself.
Work with parents as well as other services
Working with parents to support parenting practices is another duty named on the slide. This sits alongside the assessment activities, showing that the example includes support as well as investigating concerns.
The workshop also describes coordination with schools, police and health services. That broadens the picture beyond a single worker's contact with a family. It does not specify who leads a case, what information may be shared or which organisation makes a decision.
Those details depend on the particular role and its governing procedures. The slide is not authority to disclose a family's information or to make assumptions about the powers of a worker in a different service.
Written work can have a formal purpose
Preparing court reports appears in the workshop's example. Applicants should therefore recognise that the field can involve formal written communication, not only conversations and home visits.
The presentation provides no report template, court procedure or instruction about how to assess evidence in an individual matter. It also does not establish that every graduate or family-support role prepares these reports. When researching an actual position, examine its responsibilities and any additional requirements rather than carrying the entire slide into every job description.
Keep this role example in perspective
Useful questions for a course or career enquiry include how students develop assessment and writing skills, how supervised learning relates to family work, and which responsibilities belong to a specific employer's role. These are enquiry prompts, not promises of a particular ACU placement or job.
Slide 12 also contains a separate refugee and asylum seeker role example. Its interpreter, settlement and referral activities should not be merged into a universal child-protection duty list. Each example has its own purpose and limits.
Source note: The six duty examples come from the child protection and family-work section of ACU's official 2026 Shantou social work workshop, slide 12. This is a career introduction, not case-management or legal advice.