Australia: Foster children returned to unsafe homes

“More than one in 10 Queensland foster children are reunited with their families only to be taken away again within six months for safety reasons, new figures show.

Eleven per cent of foster children were returned to unsafe environments in 2012-13, according to the latest “Key Outcomes Indicators Update” by the Queensland Child Guardian.

The Update is the third of its kind, which analyses the performance of the state’s child protection system.

Eighty-eight per cent of foster children reunited with their birth families remained with their families for more than six months.

But the Update does not show whether those children were removed again at a later date.

One mother told the Child Protection Commission of Inquiry last year that the Department of Child Safety was “absolutely hopeless” at reuniting children with their families.

The woman said she had little choice but to repeatedly surrender her disabled son to the department, because she could not afford the health care he required.

“We’re here without any choice,” she said.

“We love him to bits, but we can’t do it without the funding package and we’ve just, we’ve used all our savings to get into a house which we all agreed was the right thing.

“Everyone agrees the best place for [our child] is at home with his family … We were promised up to 65 hours a week and three days a week of respite plus emergency care and, they’re really good at taking people’s kids away. They’re absolutely useless at trying to reunify families, absolutely useless.”

Commissioner Tim Carmody said children and young people who were happy and stable in their foster care placement should be able to stay there without “unnecessary disturbance”.

“There is little point in tearing a family apart just to try to put it back together again later,” he said.

Yet, he said priority could be given to cases where Child Safety staff believed that a child could safely return to his or her family.

Mr Carmody said more support should be given to families in these cases.

The Department of Child Safety said reunification rates were often affected by factors beyond its control, “such as changes in family circumstances, for example, a new partner or illness”.

“The department works on an ongoing basis with children, young people and their families, and the frontline staff are dedicated to providing family support and assistance,” the department said.

“To help prevent re-entry, the department funds prevention and early intervention services for families to have access to appropriate support services.”

In his final report, Mr Carmody noted there was little information about the department’s success in reuniting children with their families.

“While we know the numbers of children that exited the system to the care of their families at a point in time, we don’t have the depth of information that might inform the system about how well it is performing in reunifying children with the families,” he said.

“Additional research, perhaps of a longitudinal nature, would help the department judge the success of its efforts in this area.”

The Child Guardian’s Update also found that 121 children who left foster care in 2012-13 had experienced seven or more placements in their lives.

More than 73 per cent of children who left foster care in the same year had been shuffled between up to three placements each.

The Update also revealed that 519 children in the system did not receive adequate mental health and thereputic [sic]care – an increase of 7 per cent from 2011-12.”

 

Foster children returned to unsafe homes[Brisbane Times 6/9/14 by Marissa Calligeros]

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