Opinion & Commentary
Some kids really need to be rescued
As a researcher your gut always churns when you are about to release a new report, but when the Centre for Independent Studies published my report on child protection earlier this year, it was something else again.
This report argued that child protection authorities should be removing more children from the custody of their dysfunctional parents because our research found that present child protection policies, which emphasise the importance of family preservation, are jeopardising the futures of thousands of children in Australia’s growing underclass of welfare-dependent families.
It isn’t pleasant advocating greater state intervention to break the parental bonds that are elemental to who we are.
What also induced gut-churning was anticipating the reaction. Would I be accused of wanting a return to the days when social workers ripped newborn babies from the arms of single mothers?
Would I be accused of encouraging the creation of another generation of stolen or forgotten Australians?
Quite rightly, the debate about the best way to protect vulnerable children is haunted by the horrors of the past.
The federal parliament’s apology to the forgotten Australians has vividly reminded us all of the tragic ordeals of separation and physical, emotional and sexual abuse experienced by many children placed in institutions in Australia throughout the 20th century.
Naturally, the sentiment in the community at this time is that we must do our best to make sure this never happens again.
This is appropriate given the well-documented effect of institutionalised care on children. As detailed in the 2004 Senate report into the forgotten Australians, many children subjected to institutionalisation have endured life sentences and have never overcome the resulting personal problems.
Hopefully, the heartfelt parliamentary apology on behalf of the nation, and the recognition of the harm done, is a step towards healing.
But the debate about child protection needs to continue.
Just because we no longer consign wards of the state to orphanages, we can’t assume children are not being exposed to harm at the hands of their parents and other adults in the household.
The truth is that increasing numbers of children are being left with dysfunctional parents who have entrenched problems including domestic violence, drug abuse and mental illness, and are fundamentally incapable of providing the physical, emotional and developmental support that all children need to thrive.
The longer child protection authorities wait to remove vulnerable children, the more severe and permanent is the damage; the more these children’s educational and life opportunities are curtailed, increasing the likelihood the inter-generational cycle of disadvantage and child abuse will be perpetuated.
Child protection is always a complex issue, stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place.
Finding a way forward in the best interests of vulnerable children requires reassessing present practices while avoiding the worst of the past.
Alternatives to institutional care must be pursued, which means that the debate about adoption of at-risk children by suitable families must be reopened.
In 2007-08, there were just 70 local adoptions in Australia. Meanwhile, in NSW alone last year there were more than 300,000 reports of suspected child neglect and abuse. About 50 per cent of all these reports concerned a hard core of about 7500 dysfunctional families that have a long history of being known to the Department of Community Services.
A high proportion of reports and re-reports are mandatory, made by doctors, nurses, teachers and police. These professionals frequently re-report the same dysfunctional families because in too many cases child protection authorities fail to take the expected statutory action to remove children, despite report after report of serious child health and welfare concerns. These children are exposed to increased risk of severe harm because of the lack of intervention, or intervention that comes too late.
Our parliamentarians are sadly mistaken if they think they are keeping children safe by apologising for the past while turning a blind eye to what is going on today.
The ideology that says permanent removal and adoption is unacceptable must be reconsidered. Otherwise the danger, I fear, is that we could be apologising all over again in 50 years for the policies of non-removal that are harming a new generation of children.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. His report Fatally Flawed: the Child Protection Crisis in Australia was published by the CIS in June 2009.
