Media Releases
The Child Protection System in Australia is Fatally Flawed
It is not underfunding or an overwhelming workload that has caused child protection services to fail the vulnerable children they exist to protect, it is the failure to investigate reports and remove children in danger, says a new report being released by the CIS today.
The report, Fatally Flawed:The Child Protection Crisis in Australia, by Dr Jeremy Sammut answers the terrible question—why are the “starved girls” of Australia left with their obviously dysfunctional parents by child protection services?
Sammut’s research shows that child protection authorities have identified a ‘hard core’ of dysfunctional families that are reported over and over again and yet are allowed to retain custody of their children.
“In NSW alone 2,100 families account for around one quarter of the 300,000 reports made each year to the Department of Community Services. And 7,500 families are re-reported so often that they account for nearly half of all reports.”
Australian child protection services have changed their focus from child rescue to family preservation.
Instead of investigating reports and saving vulnerable children, they aim to keep families, even the most dysfunctional, together by providing counselling and support services.
Child removal has been relegated to a last and reluctant resort, and permanent removal and adoption is seen as unacceptable.
“It not underfunding that is stopping child protection services from keeping kids safe. DoCS budget has increased from $241 million a decade ago, to $1.3billion this year. Rather than paying for more frontline case workers to investigate reports, this money is being spent on expanding a bloated bureaucracy,” says the report.
Child protection organisations blame the mandatory reporting of ‘less serious’ child welfare cases for overwhelming staff. But in NSW, the proportion of reports categorised as ‘less serious’ has remained constant at one third of all notifications over the last decade.
If we are serious about better protecting children, the marginalisation of traditional child protection work must end. Stand-alone child protection departments fully committed to investigating all risk of harm notifications must be created and a minister responsible solely for child protection should be appointed in each state.
In most hard core cases, early child removal and, better still, permanent adoption of vulnerable children by suitable families is the best way to protect them.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies
The report is available online at http://www.cis.org.au/policy_monographs/pm97.pdf
For interviews with the author contact:
Jeremy Sammut: (02) 9438 4377 Mob: 0406 122 966 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
