'Crossover' Children in the Youth Justice and Child Protection Systems

"Crossover" Children in the Youth Justice and Child Protection Systems explores the outcomes faced by the group of children who experience involvement with both child protection and youth justice systems across several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Situated against a backdrop of international evidence and grounded in a two-year study with the Children’s Court in Victoria, Australia, this book presents a cohesive picture of the backgrounds, characteristics, and pathways traversed by crossover children. It presents statistical data from 300 crossover Children’s Court case files, alongside the expert evidence of 82 professionals, to generate a comprehensive picture of the lives of crossover children, and the individual and systemic challenges that they face. The book investigates the crucial question of why some children involved with child welfare systems experience particularly poor criminal justice outcomes, demonstrating how the convergence of cumulative childhood adversity, complex support needs, and systemic disadvantage produces acutely damaging outcomes for some crossover youth. It outlines the implications of the study, including how these findings might shape diversion and differential justice system responses to child protection-involved youth, and the innovative approaches adopted internationally to avert the care to custody pathway.

This book is internationally relevant and will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology and law, social work, psychology, and sociology, as well as legal, welfare, and government agencies and policy developers, non-government peak bodies and services, professional probation services, case managers, health and mental health services, disability and drug treatment agencies, and others who work with both young offenders and the design and implementation of policy and legislation.

Susan Baidawi is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Social Work, Monash University, Australia. Her research studies lie at the nexus of the child welfare and criminal justice fields, areas in which she holds significant research experience. She has conducted research and authored numerous studies, reviews, and evaluations in the fields of child protection, out-of-home care, and criminal justice. In 2019, Dr Baidawi was awarded a three-year Early Career Fellowship from the Australian Research Council to conduct ongoing research focusing on crossover children in collaboration with the Children’s Court in Victoria, Australia.

Rosemary Sheehan is Professor at the Department of Social Work, Monash University, Australia, and held, until recently, a Governor-in-Council post as Dispute Resolution Convenor in the Victorian Children's Court. Her published research investigates child welfare and the law, mental health, and judicial and corrections' responses to offenders, particularly women offenders. Her major study of children’s courts in Australia, co-authored with Allan Borowski, Australia’s Children’s Courts Today and Tomorrow, is widely claimed as a unique study examining the role, operation, and challenges in courts, and what models and legislation more effectively respond to the socio-legal problems children and young people present to the courts.