The Stability Bill amending the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 (Vic): What the Changes Mean for Children and Families

On 5 March 2026, the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Act 2025 (Stability Bill) was passed by the Victorian Parliament and came into effect on 12 May 2026. The Stability Bill reforms Victoria’s Child Protection laws to provide additional time for parents to take the steps needed to resume care of their children, including accessing necessary supports and services to address protective concerns.

Since the implementation of the Child Protection ‘permanency reforms’ in 2016, there has been widespread opposition to the inflexible 12- or 24-month legislative timeframes for reunification which provided a fixed and ‘one size fits all’ approach to supporting parents to resume care of children. These timeframes meant the Children’s Court could only make Family Reunification Orders which had the effect of placing a child out of parental care for up to 24 months. This rigid approach denied the Children’s Court the ability to take into account the significant barriers families face in accessing necessary services, including long wait times for alcohol and drug treatment, mental health services, access to stable housing and family violence interventions.

While the Victorian government has emphasised that Child Protection legislation maintains a focus on ensuring children receive certainty and stability in their long-term care arrangements at the earliest possible opportunity, the Stability Bill gives the Children’s Court the discretion to prioritise and support ongoing plans for reunification in appropriate circumstances. The Children’s Court can now extend Family Reunification Orders past 24 months with a child out of parental care, for further periods of up to twelve (12) months, having regard to:

(a) any previous family reunification order and the duration of each order; and

(b) the extent to which a parent of the child has engaged with services and supports necessary for the safe reunification with the child; and

(c) any circumstances that have impeded the progress of a parent’s safe reunification with the child including circumstances preventing timely access to services and supports necessary for reunification.

In the Second Reading Speech for the Stability Bill, the Honourable Ben Carroll described the need for more flexible legislative provisions that reflect the individual needs of Victorian families, saying: ‘the journey of reunification is unique to a family unit – each journey to reunify a child with their parents may take a different period of time’. Carroll went on to explain that the Bill ‘places human rights at the centre of decision-making, notably to promote and protect the family bond by keeping families together when it is in the child’s best interests to do so. The Bill achieves this by supporting the reunification of families and ensuring they have enough time to access the necessary supports to make the necessary changes for children to return to their parents’.

In addition to amending the relevant provisions that govern the duration of a family reunification order and extension of that order at sections 287A and 294 of the Children Youth and Families Act, the Bill amended one of the significant section 10 best interests principles, removing the recognition of the desirability of ‘continuity and permanency’ in a child’s care, and replacing this with an expanded definition of ‘continuity and stability’ in a child’s care at section 10(3)(f) which now provides as follows:

“(f) the desirability of—

(i) continuity and stability in the child’s care, including stable and enduring arrangements for care and parental responsibility; and

(ii) the child having physical stability, cultural stability and relational stability;”

The Bill also removed adoption from the hierarchy of case plan objectives for children at section 167 and provides for an independent review of the Stability Bill and the broader Child Protection system in five years.

At Coulter Legal, we assist parents, grandparents, foster carers, kinship carers and other family members who are navigating Child Protection involvement and Children’s Court proceedings.

If you or your family are dealing with Child Protection concerns or Children’s Court proceedings, our experienced team can help you understand the process and move forward in a clear and informed way. Contact Coulter Legal on (03) 5273 5273 to discuss your circumstances.