|
AUSTRALIA
Children in care a special duty
THERE are three questions that any conscientious
parent ought to be able to answer immediately, ACT Commissioner for
Public Administration Cheryl Vardon remarks in her report on the safety
of ACT children in care: How many children do you have? Where are they?
How are they? It's a question the ACT, as guardian of children in care,
has been unable to satisfactorily respond to. When children come under
the care of government, whether through an encounter with the justice
system, welfare system, health system or any of the other mechanisms by
which the state assumes a responsibility for the young and vulnerable,
the same — indeed a higher — standard of responsibility applies. The
Vardon report shows systematic failures in the exercise and supervision
of that duty over a considerable period — to the point where even these
basic question could not be answered, with any certainty, by responsible
officials.
She has recommended an entirely new vision for looking
after such children, "implemented through a new system, with new
practices, strategies, quality partnerships and views informed by the
most recent research into the management of child safety", all overseen
by a new agency, a Children's Commission, "that can be the voice of
children, who often have no-one to speak for them".
Some senior heads will roll as a result of her
findings. One is that of Ms Vardon's own successor from her earlier role
as head of the ACT Education Department, Fran Hinton. Ms Hinton is
primarily an educationist whose administrative functions came to embrace
Youth and Family Services when its control and management, and the
carriage of its legal responsibilities for children in care, was said to
have been dysfunctional. She has been told her contract will not be
renewed in September. As the person at the top, from whom the
delegations flow, she must bear a share of the responsibility for
administrative failures, but she is well entitled to reflect bitterly
that some of the practical failures were by professionals below her and
by politicians above her, and perhaps by the broader community. She must
be responsible for how she has deployed her troops and her resources,
and must take responsibility for shortcomings, particularly of meeting
legal duties. She can, however, hardly be blamed for the inadequate
resources with which she has had to operate, or lapses by professionals
and executives in practical charge of carrying out functions allocated
to them. Nor can her masters — including those directly involved in her
punishment — claim ignorance of the fact that the system they gave her
to administer was, like mental health care, inadequately resourced and
staffed.
A whole new set of slogans, visions, focuses and
commissions are unlikely to make much difference if not accompanied by a
greater sense of purpose by politicians, and the resources, staff and
time to do the job properly. The mere change, and the shame and
embarrassment of the latest disaster, may make the field, for a while, a
little better organised, but a new system cannot guarantee that. Indeed,
often the very efforts going into establishing new frameworks (and
meetings about them) detract from the time and resources needed for an
on-the-ground focus on the welfare of children in care. We do need
better statistics on such children, but even more crucial is that they
are not statistics.
There is no field like child welfare for damned if you
do and damned if you don't. Or for accepted wisdoms of one day being
found to be positively malign the next. Some seem to suggest that social
workers and welfare officers are always negligent or at fault if they
fail to intervene in the lives of dysfunctional families where children
are plainly at risk. The death, through neglect or brutality, of a child
in contact with the welfare system is always treated by some as proof of
the system's indifference and mismanagement. The same people will often
criticise the system for over-intervening in people's lives, for
excessive institutionalisation, or for enforcing middle-class notions on
others. It is very hard to find children who have positively benefited
from institutions or confrontations with the criminal justice system;
whether they are marginally better off than in the hell from which they
have been taken is sometimes moot.
Cheryl Vardon has introduced the notion of the
Territory Parent to encapsulate the responsibility that the state
assumes when it intervenes. This concept is developed in terms of formal
plans, with prescribed outcomes and performance agreements, and, of
course, external oversight and independent advocacy. It seems a good
idea. What must be also wedded to it is the idea that the child in care
is a particular responsibility of a particular person, rather than
merely a file in a general cabinet. The legal notion has the minister as
parent or guardian, responsibility delegated down many levels so that,
at the end, practical responsibility and accountability is much diluted.
Yet these, the most vulnerable (and expensive) children in our
community, need more, not less, personal attention than almost anyone
else.
Saturday, 7 August 2004
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your%20say&subclass=general&category=editorial%20-%20leader&story_id=326898&y=2004&m=8
home /
Previous
viewpoint
|
