The issue of child abuse and neglect has been increasingly recognised and approached as a public health issue in Australia, with South Australian research having demonstrated that close to 1 in 4 children will have had a notification to child protection by age 10, with 80% of these children receiving no statutory response from child protection services. Schools are a key source of notifications to the child protection agencies, as well as a touch point for reaching children and families with timely support when concerns become apparent.

The Child Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) program was conceived as an education workforce development program designed to better connect education and child protection staff to improve the outcomes for vulnerable children and families before reaching the level of concern that necessitates a child protection response.

In October 2016, the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Education and Child Development) engaged the Australian Centre for Child Protection and the Telethon Kids Institute to undertake a 2.5 year evaluation of the CWP. The evaluation took a mixed methods approach to assess program implementation and identify impacts on schools and students.