Children's Court of Victoria - Research Materials

This section contains comprehensive legal information on the jurisdiction and operation of the Children’s Court of Victoria. It has been compiled specifically for legal professionals, social workers and other professionals working in disciplines associated with the work of the Court, and students studying in these areas.

Research Materials has been assembled by Magistrate Peter Power. Mr Power graduated LL.B. (Hons) from Monash University in 1980 and won the Supreme Court prize in that year. In 1982 he was an associate to Justice Brennan (as he then was) in the High Court of Australia. From 1983 until 1990 he practised at the Victorian Bar. He was sworn in as a Victorian Magistrate on 26 April 1990. Mr Power was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia on 26 January 2007 for service to the community as a magistrate, particularly through developing improved case management procedures and programs, and raising public awareness of court processes. For 13 of the last 15 years he has sat primarily at Melbourne Children’s Court. In earlier lives he was a teacher and a computer programmer.

A small amount of the material contained in this section is reproduced with kind permission from the website of the Family Court of Australia.

You can navigate Research Materials via the left hand menu, or you can download each chapter as a Word document in PDF format via the links below. Please note that the complete document prints out to approximately 553 pages.

A separate PDF file contains a running list of amendments which have been made to both the Research Materials text and to the associated PDF files.