Out of Home Care Submission 67
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From: To: Community Affairs, Committee (SEN) Subject: Out-of-home-care Date: Wednesday, 5 November 2014 10:21:55 AM . 1. Drivers of the increase in the number of children placed in out of home care, types of care that are increasing and demographics of the children in care. a. Parents who are drug/alcohol dependent and negligent. b. Parents who are mentally ill as a result of the above . c. Children who are abused in the home . d. Previously – girls who had children solely to receive the government allowance e. Types of care increasing – group home care in which children are supervised by inadequately qualified staff working alone on shifts, ie no consistency of care. This is extremely damaging to the development of young children given that there is no opportunity for attachment. It will be noted that the Adelaide carer charged with raping babies and toddlers and creating and possessing 100,000 pornographic images, had only a youth work certificate and was allegedly unsupervised. Despite that, the SA department recently advertised for 200 carers with “no qualifications necessary”. At the very least they should have child care certificates given that they are caring for the most traumatised children in the state. Kinship care is also increasing. In my recent experience, elderly grandparents have been threatened by social workers that if they don’t take in their young grandchildren, the children will be placed in group homes with dangerous older children. It would be useful to talk to Grandparents4 Grandchildren if they have not already made a submission. 2. The outcomes for children in out of home care (including kinship care, foster care and residential care) A statement made last week by the CEO of Anglicare (SA) to the SA Parliamentary Select Committee on foster care summed up the situation. Foster care is in crisis. About 8 years ago I conducted research for the Australian Foster-carers’ Association and carer after carer said that when the current foster child left they would never foster again. I presented the findings at a conference in Adelaide. Other researchers had given warnings before me. They were not heeded. Carers said they enjoy caring because they can see children learn to trust and develop well. One hundred percent said that the worst thing about fostering was “the department”. I can send the paper if you wish. The common complaints then and now are that new graduates with no life or parenting experience are children’s case-workers. In a recent case involving the death of a child, the case worker was a university student on field experience. They are inadequately trained and training is not child focussed: (eg The Social Work Honours course at UniSA has no child development or child abuse content). Carers complain that case workers don’t know how to talk to children and don’t listen to their carers. They often don’t even see the children but write reports. When obtained by FOI, they are often found to contain fabrications. Carers have no rights and no voice. Some children have had 4 different case workers in a year. They often feel threatened by middle aged educated women who have had many foster children. When they feel inadequate, the social workers use their authority and bully. One third of the carers in our survey had been threatened with the loss of the foster children in the previous year and yet only one had been de-registered. Threats were used to bully them. The department’s policy is family reunification. Children are allegedly forced to spend weekends or holidays with abusive drug addicted parents prior to being returned home against their wishes. When the home placement breaks down again, the child is not returned to the foster home that she knows but goes to yet another placement. The CEO of Anglicare (SA) confirmed that foster carers are inadequately supported. Although we have known since the work of John Bowlby (1953), Michael Rutter, James and Joyce Robertson in the 1970’s, that children need gradual preparation for foster care, the message has never reached foster care services. In the 1970’s Britain’s NSPCC warned about the risks to children from being sent from placement to placement, referring to them in the report entitled “Yo-Yo children”. And yet I still hear of children having 4 placements in a year. I agree with Anglicare that social workers are not appropriately educated for their role as case-workers and we need specialists with a substantial background in child development and all forms of abuse. 2a. A few months ago, 50 foster carers met informally in an Adelaide park. They had travelled from as far afield as Port Pirie. They had identical stories relating to the sudden removal of their foster children. Most were middle class, well educated mothers who worked in health and other related professions. One couple had fostered over 400 children and received a national award. They had all been told that the children were being removed because they were “unable to meet their FUTURE emotional needs”. One family was told that they were giving the child unrealistic ideas about her future by sending her to a private school. They cited abuse by the social workers: a) 30 minutes preparation to leave the only home she knew in the week before Christmas b) Not allowed to take her Christmas presents, toys, all her clothes or photo albums c) Told that she was just going for a car ride d) Deprived of her education and friends e) Deprived of her hobbies such as ballet classes and swimming lessons She was moved from an indulgent family home to one catering for 11 children and, of course, she didn’t settle and is now in placement 4 with 5 different schools in 2 years. When challenged, the department’s administrators could not define “future emotional needs” given that they are unpredictable. Their ignorance of child development was also exhibited by their stated unrealistic expectation that the child will automatically “love” new carers and forget the “mum and dad” who brought her up for the first eight years of her life. These foster parents assisted the child to maintain regular contact with her own mother and grandparents and should have been given guardianship. The department now tries to prevent the child from contacting them and her former foster sister to whom she is devoted. 3) The notion that a bad home of your own is better that someone else’s good home came from the UK and had no research backing. UK professors confirm that this was an economic measure to reduce the budget for foster care. In the 1950’s London University offered a course for Children’s Officers who were specifically trained as social workers for children. I undertook that course. In the 1970’s the British Government decided that it was more expedient to have a single social work course to create generic social workers. Unfortunately, as here, they threw the baby out with the bathwater and children have been the sufferers. Social work courses tend to be politically driven - social justice, social policy, family policy etc. Administrators justify this by saying that not all graduates will work with children but as SA Minister Jennifer Rankine recently said, “They all can” and furthermore state departments are the biggest employers of new graduates. 4) the cost of child protection – Professor Chris Goddard, Director of the Child Abuse Research Centre at Monash University claims that child sexual abuse alone is costing the taxpayer up to $30 billion a year. Foster carers report that most of the children coming into foster care have been sexually abused AND exhibit sexually abusive behaviours, placing other children in the family at risk. Carers also complain that they receive no help for managing these behaviours and there is often a reluctance at department level to make therapy available. There is ample evidence to show that child sexual abuse can cause lifelong harm. Dr. Bill Glaser told the AIC that victims are 16 times more likely than others to suffer from a mental illness, depression, PTSD, self-harm and suicidal tendencies, drug and alcohol addiction to blot out memories and sexual crimes. Dr. Bruce Perry, a frequent visitor to Australia and expert in trauma, and others, have shown that child sexual abuse causes brain damage resulting in learning and memory problem and later risk-taking behaviour, promiscuity, STIs and risk-taking, anti-social behaviours. Victims are often unable to maintain trusting relationships and provide protection for their own children, creating a cycle of children in care. ACE research shows that the child who is sexually abused has more physical illness than others and if s/he experiences another trauma, has a lifespan that is 20 years shorter than those who have not been abused. WA, NSW and Victoria Police have confirmed that younger and younger children are being targeted for sexual abuse and most of this occurs in the family. As the Royal Commissioner said recently, our justice system is not protecting children. The Commissioner for Children also noted in the same edition of the Australian that the Family Court is failing to protect incest victims. What is happening is that state services avoid assessing child victims when the parent is accused; they leave it to the Family Court which lacks the facilities and the expertise to investigate allegations. Furthermore AIFS research has confirmed that most Independent Children’s Lawyers (who don’t have to be independent according to SA Justice Dawe and are minimally trained) do not even talk to the children whose needs they supposedly represent when they advise judges.