Australian social workers remain traumatised by the profession's involvement in past child removal practices involving the Stolen Generations of Indigenous children and the forced adoption of the babies of unmarried mothers.
This is the reason adoption is 'taboo' in this country. State and territory child protection authorities almost never take legal action to free children for adoption, even if they languish in state care and have little prospect of ever safely returning home.
In 2012-13, there were only 210 'local' (as opposed to 'overseas') adoptions, despite almost 28,000 children having been in state care for more than two years.
To avoid repeating the errors of the past, official child protection policy in all jurisdictions is to keep children with their parents, provide families with social service assistance, and only remove children into care as a last and temporary resort.
Policies designed to solve yesterday's mistakes are causing serious problems today. 'Family preservation' is damaging children by exposing them to prolonged maltreatment in the family home and then to lengthy and unstable care placements while extended and often repeat efforts are made to restore them to their parents.
The result is that every year more children enter and re-enter care than exit care, which is responsible for the constant blowout in the size and cost of the care system. In the last three years, total real national expenditure on 'out-of-home' care has increase by 16% to top over $2 billion, and the care population nationwide has increased by 13% to more than 40,000 children in 2012-13.
Last December, the Abbott government announced plans to make it easier for Australian parents to adopt children. The chief impediment to achieving this goal will be the anti-adoption attitudes prevalent among social workers.
This is why my new report recommends the Abbott government establish a national adoption target, with the aim of increasing the number of adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries, such as the United States, within 10 years.
The advantages of this approach include the fact that in bureaucratic systems like state and territory child protection authorities, objectives that are measured are those most likely to get done.
More importantly, however, a national adoption target would facilitate much-needed cultural change in child protection authorities.
A national adoption target would circumvent the social work profession's anti-adoption cultural resistance by providing clear political direction. Responsibility for reviving the use of adoption would be rightly and definitely assumed by the politicians, both federal and state, who are ultimately in charge of the child protection system. .
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, and author of Still Damaging and Disturbing: Australian Child Protection Data and the Need for National Adoption Targets.
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National adoption targets
This is the reason adoption is 'taboo' in this country. State and territory child protection authorities almost never take legal action to free children for adoption, even if they languish in state care and have little prospect of ever safely returning home.
In 2012-13, there were only 210 'local' (as opposed to 'overseas') adoptions, despite almost 28,000 children having been in state care for more than two years.
To avoid repeating the errors of the past, official child protection policy in all jurisdictions is to keep children with their parents, provide families with social service assistance, and only remove children into care as a last and temporary resort.
Policies designed to solve yesterday's mistakes are causing serious problems today. 'Family preservation' is damaging children by exposing them to prolonged maltreatment in the family home and then to lengthy and unstable care placements while extended and often repeat efforts are made to restore them to their parents.
The result is that every year more children enter and re-enter care than exit care, which is responsible for the constant blowout in the size and cost of the care system. In the last three years, total real national expenditure on 'out-of-home' care has increase by 16% to top over $2 billion, and the care population nationwide has increased by 13% to more than 40,000 children in 2012-13.
Last December, the Abbott government announced plans to make it easier for Australian parents to adopt children. The chief impediment to achieving this goal will be the anti-adoption attitudes prevalent among social workers.
This is why my new report recommends the Abbott government establish a national adoption target, with the aim of increasing the number of adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries, such as the United States, within 10 years.
The advantages of this approach include the fact that in bureaucratic systems like state and territory child protection authorities, objectives that are measured are those most likely to get done.
More importantly, however, a national adoption target would facilitate much-needed cultural change in child protection authorities.
A national adoption target would circumvent the social work profession's anti-adoption cultural resistance by providing clear political direction. Responsibility for reviving the use of adoption would be rightly and definitely assumed by the politicians, both federal and state, who are ultimately in charge of the child protection system. .
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, and author of Still Damaging and Disturbing: Australian Child Protection Data and the Need for National Adoption Targets.
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