Our 50th Story
This year, CAPS turns 50! Read this message from our CEO to learn about what brought us to the CAPS we know today.
Fifty years ago, Mrs Dorothy E. Ginn began volunteering at the Wayside Chapel in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
There she helped to support runaway children and people struggling with addiction. Through this work she soon noticed that childhood maltreatment and neglect were often the root cause of the trauma being experienced by the people in her care.
One day Dorothy encountered a distressed man in the chapel. His wife had killed their baby that morning. He asked her “Where do you go when something like this is happening, before it’s too late?”.
Dorothy would soon have the answer. In March 1973 she founded an organisation called Prevention. Though it was only comprised of a handful of volunteers, its mission, to prevent all forms of child maltreatment, was not small in scope.
This was because Dorothy was a leader of remarkable foresight and ambition. Long before most, she understood the need for society to come together to provide early intervention support by proactively addressing the many factors that can lead to abuse and neglect. As she would often remark, “Prevention is so much better than cure”.
Her immense talent, humanity and passion would become well-recognised. She was awarded the Sir Lorimer Dods Award in 1984 for “service to children beyond the call of duty”, became a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987, and was a founding member of the World Health Organisation (Defence for Children Association) and the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Dorothy passed away in 2011 but her spirit is still with us. Her legacy is reflected in our programs, which remain firmly anchored in the prevention space, and in our day-to-day work where the best interests of the child are at the heart of everything we do.
Today, we are known as CAPS. Our staff are experienced psychologists, educators and policy experts who are well-equipped to create positive childhood experiences through our award-winning community education programs, national case review platform, training workshops and child safe organisation solutions.
Some highlights of our work over the last fifty years include:
Creating the first 24-hour national phone line for people in need of help or advice concerning child maltreatment. At its peak over 80 trained counsellors provided life-changing casework support to around 5000 clients each year around the country.
Operating five Parent and Stress Centres across NSW, where support services were provided at no cost to anyone who needed them – be it ongoing counselling or just a place to have a supportive and non-judgemental discussion about their needs.
Delivering an award-winning protective behaviours program, Safe Communities, Safe Children. Created in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the program reduces children’s vulnerability to abuse and enhances the protective capabilities of their caregivers.
Launching Safe Arrival, our domestic and family violence (DFV) prevention program for migrant and refugee women. Its aim is to raise awareness of DFV in a culturally safe, compassionate manner and provide critical harm prevention skills for this especially vulnerable cohort.
Scaling-up Safe, an innovative case review platform that uses AI to identify and support vulnerable children well before risks can escalate further. With a database of over 230,000 children nationwide and eight years of machine learning experience, the platform currently has a 96.2% accuracy rate in identifying at-risk children.
Dorothy’s philosophy was always that CAPS should remain in operation “for as long as is needed”. Despite the tens of thousands of children and families that we have been honoured to help since 1973 and the great strides that have been made in our society towards the realisation of Dorothy’s vision, I’m sure we can all agree there is still so much to be done.
Now, in our fiftieth year, CAPS is still here for anyone that needs us. My team and I are humbled to continue on the journey that Dorothy began so long ago at the Wayside Chapel. For the next fifty years, and for as long as it is needed, we will advocate for prevention over cure and ensure that as many children as possible are safe, supported and loved.
Reegan Barber
CEO
