Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants to make it easier for Australian parents to adopt children. In May, a Council of Australian Governments meeting will consider a report by an interdepartmental committee on ways to take adoption out of the too-hard basket.
The committee can help increase the number of adoptions in Australia by debunking the fallacies that surround child protection policy, which unfortunately resembles Einstein’s definition of madness — doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
In 2012-13, only 135 children were adopted from state care, even though more than 40,000 children were in care, and despite almost 28,000 of these children having been in care for more than two years. Despite an increasing number of children languishing in the ever-expanding out-of-home care (OOHC) system, child protection authorities almost never take legal action to free children for adoption, even if children have little prospect of ever safely returning home.
Instead, the policy advice routinely provided by social work academics and social service lobby groups is that rising numbers of children are in care because the child protection system needs to be reorientated away from “statutory” child removal towards the provision of family support services.
In reality, “family preservation” is official policy in all states and territories. Standard practice is to keep children suffering abuse and neglect with their parents and to remove them only as a last and temporary resort after extensive family support services are provided. When removal into care finally occurs, extended efforts are made to reunite such children with their dysfunctional parents.
Financial data recently made available by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare exposes the myth that the child protection system focuses too heavily on child removal and that children are too quickly removed into care.
In 2012-13, family support services accounted for 17.1 per cent of the $3.8 billion total national expenditure on child protection, compared with statutory (29.6 per cent) and OOHC (53.3 per cent) services.
Since 2000-01, real national expenditure on “intensive family preservation services” (designed to prevent imminent child removals) has grown by 316 per cent. Despite the high and increasing spending on family support, the size and cost of the care system has exploded, with the number of children in care more than doubling and real expenditure on care more than tripling.
The Victorian government spends the highest proportion on family support. Yet the 2012 Cummins inquiry found increased investment had produced no “marked change … in the incidence and impact of child abuse or neglect, or overall outcomes for vulnerable children taken into out-of-home care”.
Nevertheless, in Queensland the Newman government is implementing the chief advice of last year’s Carmody inquiry, which recommended increased spending on family support. This is despite the inquiry establishing that protracted efforts to reunite children with their parents were the reason for children lingering longer in care and blowing out the size of the OOHC population.
Family support services have failed to reduce child abuse and entries into care due to the intensity of parental problems in families most likely to abuse children and require removal.
To end the madness of throwing more resources at a failed approach, the interdepartmental committee should recommend the Abbott government provide national leadership and establish national child protection performance targets, which should include boosting the number of adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries within 10 years.
If Australian children in care were adopted at the same rate as in the US, there would be about 5000 adoptions each year.
The US adoption rate has been lifted by the Clinton administration’s Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997), which rewards states that increase the number of adoptions from care with additional federal funding for social services.
Similar arrangements (as an enhanced means of distributing existing federal funding for family and community services) should be considered by the Abbott government.
A national adoption target would encourage other jurisdictions to emulate the pro-adoption regime recently legislated by the NSW government, which mandates strict time limits within which realistic decisions have to be made about whether restoration to the biological parents is feasible.
Once it is determined that a child cannot safely go home, application will then be made in the Supreme Court for an order to free children for adoption.
Policymakers should no longer be misled by red herrings about family support.
By holding the states and territories to account, the Abbott government can save generations of vulnerable young Australians from a child protection system that is manifestly failing to give them safe and stable adoptive homes.
Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of Still Damaging and Disturbing, available at www.cis.org.au
Home > Commentary > Opinion > Let’s adopt a more sensible approach to kids in care
Let’s adopt a more sensible approach to kids in care
Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants to make it easier for Australian parents to adopt children. In May, a Council of Australian Governments meeting will consider a report by an interdepartmental committee on ways to take adoption out of the too-hard basket.
The committee can help increase the number of adoptions in Australia by debunking the fallacies that surround child protection policy, which unfortunately resembles Einstein’s definition of madness — doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
In 2012-13, only 135 children were adopted from state care, even though more than 40,000 children were in care, and despite almost 28,000 of these children having been in care for more than two years. Despite an increasing number of children languishing in the ever-expanding out-of-home care (OOHC) system, child protection authorities almost never take legal action to free children for adoption, even if children have little prospect of ever safely returning home.
Instead, the policy advice routinely provided by social work academics and social service lobby groups is that rising numbers of children are in care because the child protection system needs to be reorientated away from “statutory” child removal towards the provision of family support services.
In reality, “family preservation” is official policy in all states and territories. Standard practice is to keep children suffering abuse and neglect with their parents and to remove them only as a last and temporary resort after extensive family support services are provided. When removal into care finally occurs, extended efforts are made to reunite such children with their dysfunctional parents.
Financial data recently made available by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare exposes the myth that the child protection system focuses too heavily on child removal and that children are too quickly removed into care.
In 2012-13, family support services accounted for 17.1 per cent of the $3.8 billion total national expenditure on child protection, compared with statutory (29.6 per cent) and OOHC (53.3 per cent) services.
Since 2000-01, real national expenditure on “intensive family preservation services” (designed to prevent imminent child removals) has grown by 316 per cent. Despite the high and increasing spending on family support, the size and cost of the care system has exploded, with the number of children in care more than doubling and real expenditure on care more than tripling.
The Victorian government spends the highest proportion on family support. Yet the 2012 Cummins inquiry found increased investment had produced no “marked change … in the incidence and impact of child abuse or neglect, or overall outcomes for vulnerable children taken into out-of-home care”.
Nevertheless, in Queensland the Newman government is implementing the chief advice of last year’s Carmody inquiry, which recommended increased spending on family support. This is despite the inquiry establishing that protracted efforts to reunite children with their parents were the reason for children lingering longer in care and blowing out the size of the OOHC population.
Family support services have failed to reduce child abuse and entries into care due to the intensity of parental problems in families most likely to abuse children and require removal.
To end the madness of throwing more resources at a failed approach, the interdepartmental committee should recommend the Abbott government provide national leadership and establish national child protection performance targets, which should include boosting the number of adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries within 10 years.
If Australian children in care were adopted at the same rate as in the US, there would be about 5000 adoptions each year.
The US adoption rate has been lifted by the Clinton administration’s Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997), which rewards states that increase the number of adoptions from care with additional federal funding for social services.
Similar arrangements (as an enhanced means of distributing existing federal funding for family and community services) should be considered by the Abbott government.
A national adoption target would encourage other jurisdictions to emulate the pro-adoption regime recently legislated by the NSW government, which mandates strict time limits within which realistic decisions have to be made about whether restoration to the biological parents is feasible.
Once it is determined that a child cannot safely go home, application will then be made in the Supreme Court for an order to free children for adoption.
Policymakers should no longer be misled by red herrings about family support.
By holding the states and territories to account, the Abbott government can save generations of vulnerable young Australians from a child protection system that is manifestly failing to give them safe and stable adoptive homes.
Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of Still Damaging and Disturbing, available at www.cis.org.au
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