As a society, we stereotype and we judge, we have a mental picture of what families in child protection look like and how they got there. 

But with so many demands facing our society today, families from all walks of life can struggle. 

According to Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services annual report, the average daily number of children in out-of-home care in the state was 1110 in 2015-16.

This comes at the same time as families are struggling to find work, to afford rent, and at a time where one woman a week is dying at the hands of her partner across Australia.  

The current national minimum wage sits at $18.29 per hour, almost $700 a week.

According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data, the average household income in Tasmania is $1100 a week. 

The average weekly rent in Tasmania is $230, with one in every 10 households in Tasmania under rental stress, meaning at least one third of the household’s income is spent on rent each week.

Tasmania’s Affordable Housing Strategy, released in 2015, shows Tasmania currently has three different intervention processes - prevention, targeted early intervention, and rapid response and recovery.

The report found that Tasmania would need an average of 2392 new dwellings a year until 2031 to meet long-term demand. 

Of this, about 27 per cent needed to be low priced affordable homes.

“Tasmania has the nation’s highest proportion of low income households with a third of households receiving their main source of income from government pensions and allowances,” the report found.

The most likely people to be under housing stress were lone households, about one third, followed by one-parent families, and couples with children.

Putting all this together, it is easy to see how the cracks start to appear, how, as pressures build up, it can be hard to cope. 

Add this to issues such as intergenerational abuse or parents in jail, and often innocent children are left feeling unwanted, neglected, or as if they are a burden.

In an effort to aid these hardships, Tasmania currently has 35 Neighbourhood Houses dotted around the state, from George Town to Rosebery and Geeveston.

Each of the houses works in the local community, bringing forward new opportunities for those who need a little help or just want somewhere to socialise. 

Neighbourhood Houses Tasmania president John Hooper said the houses do everything possible to build strong supports around parents and families.

Mr Hooper said that the services offered meant that when someone in the community was not coping, they had other people to turn to rather than “a neighbour picking up the phone to call a gateway service, or it the worst case, the child protection service”. 

“There’s a fine line for any parent between being overtired and stressed and how you react in a certain situation that can put you on a pathway,” he said. 

“Kids ending up in care is the worst possible outcome and will affect generations to come. 

“We certainly think that you shouldn’t underestimate the value of safe places where people can go and be vulnerable, but not be judged.” 

Mr Hooper said that for those who grew up in difficult homes themselves, this was often the only model that was in their head and could be passed on through their own parenting style. 

“In the regional communities that we deal with, they’re just not seeing those services to support people around drug and alcohol issues, to support people to get out of family violence situations,” he said. 

“I think a reality that no one talks about is that no one knows what they’re doing when they bring home a baby. 

“So if you’ve got lots of other things happening in your life, it’s really hard.” 

CREATE Foundation national chief executive Jacqui Reed said each of the different forms of care, kinship, foster, and residential care, offered different experiences for children. 

“Notifications are generally dealt with in a tiered response, so the age of the child really dictates their vulnerability and then it will be rated on the immediacy of the harm,” Ms Reed said.

“Somebody would eventually go out, whether it’s urgent or non-urgent, and do an investigation.” 

She said while the issue is investigated, a child can be placed in a foster care arrangement with people who had been assessed to look after children.

“The child could stay on a short-term order while they wait for a parent to make the home safe or remove the harm,” Ms Reed said.

She said Tasmania was not on the radar of the national organisation as a state that was “fraught with inquiries and commissions”. 

But Ms Reed said it was important that a child’s parents were still in their lives, and also that carers were offering them a quality of care that they might not have otherwise received.  

“Children love their parents even though they’re abusers, they often have very little understanding because that’s their way of life,” she said.

Ms Reed said children leave the child protection system when they are 18, which it is much younger than the average child not in the system would. 

“We have the most vulnerable population who have been abused and neglected in their lifetime often suffering from post-traumatic stress, suffering from trauma, and we let them out of the system and let them be independent adults at age 18,” she said. 

“It’s going to be a problem until we get that transition phase to have more prominence.

“We need to increase the care age to 21 so they have an option to stay with their existing carers should they want to – that’s a no-brainer.

“What it takes is leadership, particularly from a government perspective, to bring all people together.” ​