Health
Report highlights child-protection failings. What Paul Mason says.
Tasmania’s Commissioner for Children has released a report highlighting what she describes as a “disturbing” lack of support for children and carers in the state’s child-protection system.
The report looked at the files of more than 200 children and 88 carers.
It shows many foster children are not being visited often enough and 30 children were not visited at all between June 2009 and May 2010.
Commissioner for Children Aileen Ashford says a lack of staff training means good policy is not being followed.
She says child protection has been underfunded for the last 30 years and should be exempt from budget cuts.
Ms Ashford also says there needs to be a significant investment in training.
“What we’re seeing is when the rubber hits the road it’s not happening,” she said.
TAKEN SERIOUSLY
Committee to Pay Close Attention to Commissioner’s Report
Paul ‘Basil’ O’Halloran MP
Greens Children spokesperson
Monday, 4 April 2011
The Tasmanian Greens today said the Commissioner for Children’s recent report on foster children will need to be considered in detail.
Greens Children spokesperson and Chairperson for the Child Protection Parliamentary Committee, Paul ‘Basil’ O’Halloran MP said the recent report auditing children in out-of-home care, reveals some serious and potentially alarming situations if left unchecked.
“I will request that the Parliamentary Committee into Child Protection considers in serious detail the information contained in the recent report by Commissioner for Children, Eileen Ashford,” Mr O’Halloran said.
“Clearly a process is failing when vulnerable children are unsupervised with carers, and this is a very serious child protection issue.”
“All detail and recommendations of the Children’s Commissioner’s report warrants close examination.”
“We must all continue to work for the best interests of the children in our community,” Mr O’Halloran said.
• Paul Mason, :Independent Candidate for Rumney, www.masonrumney.com.au
Tuesday 4th April 2011
The Commissioner for Children’s media release today is remarkable.
The data for this audit report was collected by August and it was being drafted in October. The last I heard the report was “being checked” by the Department (!). It is now released publicly six months later. It is being released in the middle of Minister Thorp’s attempt to be re-elected and may be used by Minister Thorp to show how responsive and caring are the Government and herself.
But why did Minister Thorp not make her own announcement, accept responsibility for the failure and make her own promise to implement the recommendations?
Minister Thorp has passed the “good news” story to the Commissioner to spin for her, so she can dodge the “bad news”.
The Minister has not said that she is surprised or shocked at the results, because she is neither. The Commissioner says this is the first time the Report has gone direct to the Minister, but the two previous audit reports went to the CEO of Chid Protection and the Commissioner’s website, so the maybe Minister wasn’t told or just wasn’t interested.
The Commissioner in the 2008 and 2009 Audits made similar or identical recommendations about visits, the correct form to use, time alone, photos on the file and staff training: the Government accepted the recommendations then, but clearly those are empty words then and now and the Minister refuses to implement her own policy.
No wonder kids in care continue to fall through the cracks.
The Report into the Circumstances of a 12 year old Child in State Care made similar recommendations about complying with visiting schedules, pretending to follow the visits schedule, and talking alone to kids, one to one, to build trust and get the real story. On that occasion the Government rejected the recommendations: or quibbled that the visits were not required under the Complaints in Care Policy.
They are requirements that might just have protected the 12 year old from Devine and the 200 men in 2009 and Ms Ashford has been sent out to do her Minister’s dirty work.
The Commissioner’s Media Release asserts: “Ms Ashford said that the Department has accepted all of the recommendations…”The Department is now implementing my recommendations”.
How can the Commissioner know if the Department is or is not “implementing my recommendations” unless she is part of Child Protection or so close to it as to be indistinguishable?
Perhaps Minister Thorp doesn’t say she will implement them because she has no intention it any more than the 2009 and 2010 recommendations and does not want to build up the voters’ hopes.
Perhaps Minister Thorp does not want to expose herself to questions about why these failures are so persistent, so pervasive and so serious. She doesn’t need to while the Commissioner is willing to act as her media unit and take the flak for her.
The Policy for visiting kids in State Care is crystal clear and is routinely ignored except by the model Child Protection Workers working with Team Leaders who know why it’s there and why it’s important.
Under the Charter of Rights of Children in Care, kids have a specific right to solo visits with their worker. Their rights are being ignored by a Government which for years has bleated the spin that kids “are at the heart of everything we do.”
The Minister should stop spinning and take full responsibility for failing the 73% of kids in State care identified as not getting the service that we pay for, and for ignoring the recommendations of the previous Audit Reports.
Minister Thorp should tell us what she is going to do about it.
Meanwhile the Child Protection is plotting to change the Complaints in Care Policy so that fewer actual complaints surface, which should make things easier for her in the future.