Children Australia: Publisher's welcome

I am delighted to bring Children Australia to life again under the stewardship of the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare.

The Centre is the peak body for child and family service organisations in Victoria and Tasmania, supporting children, young people and families, and the community service organisations that work with them, for over 100 years. We keep children and families front of mind for our state governments and ensure there is collaboration with our members to shape services and policy that have real and lasting impacts on people's lives. As the chair of Families Australia, I also have the privilege to work with our member organisations and government at a national level.

As a peak body, the Centre actively promotes collaboration between practitioners and our university and research partners to share the best available evidence. Through these partnerships, we can drive continuous improvement in practice and feed frontline insights back into academic work. We encourage practice–research collaborations that can transform outcomes for clients.

Through the Centre's Outcomes, Practice and Evidence Network (OPEN), we provide information sharing and events that translate research and data into actionable practice improvements. We also document and share best-practice examples and evidence-informed service design.

I am very excited to support the revival of Children Australia after a 4-year hiatus. The journal was first published in 1976 and has a reputation for being an important vehicle for inter-sectoral conversations and for setting the agenda for child, youth and family services in Australia. My thanks go to the previous publishers for entrusting us with this task, and to the journal's most recent long-term editors, Dr Jennifer Lehmann and Dr Rachael Sanders, for their incredible work and dedication to the journal in the past.

There is no doubt that we need a platform like Children Australia as we grapple with increasingly complex problems in the current national and international context of child welfare and wellbeing. Research evidence from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study and subsequent studies paints a concerning picture of past and current childhood experiences in Australia while also shining a light on progress and the path forward to making Australia a better place for children and young people.

As a digital journal with continuous publishing, we can be innovative in the ways we present research alongside practice insights and the voices of children and young people. The new editorial board, with their diverse expertise, experience and knowledge, is capably led by three impressive co-editors-in-chief, Professor Sharon Bessell, Associate Professor Tim Moore and Adjunct Professor Dave Vicary.

We all know that the welfare and wellbeing of children and young people, and their families and communities, is incredibly important. The early-intervention, education and support services our sector provides are key to addressing intergenerational challenges across poverty, mental health, family and gendered violence and child maltreatment in all its forms. By sharing diverse research, knowledge, evidence and ideas across this complex multidisciplinary landscape, we have a unique opportunity to make things better for children and young people now and for future generations of Australians.

Children Australia will be an invaluable resource for sharing ideas, theory and practice, and for creating opportunities to integrate current thinking into practice in the child welfare sector.

I am excited to see how the sector, our member organisations and the children and families they work with benefit from the return of the journal.

Deb Tsorbaris
CEO
Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare