Dorothy Scott was the Foundation Chair in Child Protection and the Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia between 2005 and 2010. Before taking up the appointment in 2005 she was the Head of the School of Social Work at the University of Melbourne, and prior to that, the Executive Director of The Ian Potter Foundation, one of Australia’s largest philanthropic trusts.

Dorothy’s career in child welfare began when she was a seventeen year old child care worker at the Allambie Reception Centre in Burwood, Victoria. Moved by the suffering of children who were admitted to State care, she studied social work at the University of Melbourne in the early 1970s and then worked for the then Social Welfare Department in the area of foster care and adoption. She then worked in the field of mental health, becoming Senior Social Worker in the Family Psychiatry Department of the Queen Victoria Medical Centre in Melbourne. There she helped establish specialist services for women experiencing post-partum psychiatric disorders, and services for women and children who had been sexually assaulted.

In the 1980s she began an academic career, lecturing social work students at the University of Melbourne, and conducting research in areas including maternal depression and child welfare. Since then she has conducted numerous reviews and inquiries in Australia in the field of child protection and served on Ministerial advisory bodies in several States and Territories.