Established in 1973, the Child Abuse Prevention Service is the oldest organisation in Australia dedicated to the prevention of all forms of child maltreatment.

Our story began when nurse and mother Dorothy Ginn began volunteering at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross. There she helped to care for runaway children and people struggling with addiction.

Through this work she began to notice 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. She and a handful of other volunteers went on to found Prevention, the first-ever organisation in Australia dedicated to preventing all forms of child abuse.