For all the 'Ebonys' ...

The “Ebony” or “Starved Girl” case has once again highlighted Australia’s child protection crisis. But we are yet to fully understand, let alone address, the systemic problems that impede effective child rescue and contribute to tragic outcomes for the most vulnerable children.

Ever since child protection failures dominated the headlines in 2007, prominent child protection academics have been out there promoting a misleading account of the crisis, which has been widely accepted and gained policy traction, most recently in the Rudd Government’s National Child Protection Framework.

According to this account, the most appalling cases of child maltreatment fall through the cracks in the system due to the unintended consequences of inefficient mandatory reporting requirements. Overwhelmed child protection agencies have failed to effectively respond to the most serious reports of child abuse and neglect because centralised reporting systems (such as the Kids Helpline in New South Wales) are clogged by an ever growing number of less serious reports.

Because only 13 per cent of reports receive an investigation that includes a home visit by a caseworker, the Wood Commission into NSW child protection services recommended that the threshold for mandatory reporting be raised to risk of significant harm to reserve the DoCS Helpline for more serious reports. In response to Wood, the NSW Government has also established an alternative reporting pathway. New child wellbeing units are being established in six government departments including health, education and police, which will be responsible for directly referring families who are the subject of less serious reports to family support and other community services.

Inspired by the Victorian child protection reforms of recent years and pitched to policy makers as a way to free up agencies like DoCS to better protect the “Ebonys” of Australia, the NSW reforms will actually create a system which denies a child protection response to at-risk children. Far beyond establishing a separate pathway for less serious reports, Wood also recommended that DoCS directly refer allegedly lower risk of significant harm reports to support services.

This is typical of the flawed thinking that has contributed to the crisis. The primary aim is to substitute what is viewed in social work circles as a narrow, traditional approach to child protection work (forensic investigation of reports and statutory removal of at risk children from the custody of parents) with a broader preventive approach for more and more of the dysfunctional families involved in child protection matters.

Yet many so-called less serious and low risk reports are nothing of the sort. These reports concern dysfunctional families and children at risk of experiencing cumulative harm and permanent developmental problems caused by chronic parental neglect and abuse. In these cases, a full child protection response - a home visit and sighting of the child by caseworkers, and a complete assessment of the family circumstances and of the risk of harm is required.

These are just some of the problems with the accepted account and accompanying policy recommendations, which are an exercise in minimisation and denial of the real causes of the crisis.

Since the introduction of mandatory reporting in the 1990s there has been an enormous growth in child protection reports across Australia. But the increase has not been concentrated in less serious reports. Over the last decade in NSW, there has been little change in the proportion of reports (around two-thirds) requiring further assessment and investigation.

Rather than function inefficiently, mandatory reporting has mass screened disadvantaged families and works spectacularly well. Due to heightened surveillance, growth in reports has captured the increased level of parental dysfunction in Australia's expanding underclass of welfare dependent families. These families are over-represented in reports because they experience ongoing, difficult to resolve, and often intergenerational problems associated with domestic violence, drug abuse, mental illness, and single parenthood.

The crucial fact which entirely debunks the accepted account is that the most at risk children have consistently been identified and re-identified, mostly by mandatory reporters. As detailed in the NSW Government s response to the Wood Commission, 2,100 dysfunctional, repeatedly reported families account for a quarter of reports made each year, and 7,500 dysfunctional, repeatedly reported families account for nearly half of all reports.

The reason doctors, nurses, teachers, and police are frequent re-reporters of the same families is because, despite having reported serious child health and welfare concerns, nothing happens.

This is the root cause of the crisis. A relatively small hard core of dysfunctional parents retain custody of their children, despite being re-reported 10 and 20 times. Many children are not even seen to check on their welfare and child protection agencies fail to take appropriate statutory action in thousands of higher risk and potentially catastrophic cases. The most vulnerable children are exposed to increased risk of serious harm due to lack of intervention or intervention that comes too late.

Unfortunately, we don t know the percentage of reports that are re-reports in the rest of the country. As part of the National Child Protection Framework, the Rudd Government should insist the states collect and publish the number of re-reports each year, because these figures show the numbers of children the child protection system is failing.

The staggering NSW statistics reflect the ideological shifts that have occurred in the field of child protection since the 1970s. According to the radical family preservation-focused approach that has had a major impact on child protection policy and practice, the best way to protect vulnerable children is to defend parental rights, keep families intact, and try to prevent abuse and neglect by providing support services which attempt to address parent's complex needs.

Child protection agencies, which in most states are sub-departments of much larger departments of community services, have become increasingly confused about their core responsibility to intervene in the best interest of children. Traditional child protection work has been crowded out by the provision of family support services and other forms of social work with parents, such as drug counselling.

Based on the highly unrealistic and unproven premise that family preservation combined with support services can fix entrenched behavioural problems and transform dysfunctional people into functional parents, child removal has been relegated to a last and reluctant resort. Permanent removal and adoption of children has been rendered virtually unacceptable. Many stakeholders, both in government departments and in the NGO community sector, have a vested interest in keeping children with families so taxpayer funded services can be provided.

As a result, too many vulnerable children are placed on a destructive treadmill. Multiple, poor quality out of home care placements that frequently breakdown are interspersed with repeated failed attempts at family reunion. Churning children through the system permanently damages child development, curtails educational and life opportunities, and, in many cases, perpetuates the intergenerational cycle of poverty, dysfunction, and child abuse and neglect.

If we are serious about ending the crisis and protecting the “Ebonys” of Australia, the challenge for policy makers is to promote cultural and institutional change, and end the marginalisation of traditional child protection work. The first step is to create stand-alone child protection departments, which are staffed and led by specialists and overseen by a minister solely responsible for protecting vulnerable children, which rigorously assesses and fully investigate all risk of harm notifications.

The next step is to squarely face the unspoken truth of the crisis. In most hard core cases, early child removal and the provision of stable out of home foster placements and, better still, adoption of children by suitable families, is the best way to ensure that vulnerable children are protected from parents incapable of providing the proper physical, emotional, and developmental support that all children have a right to receive.