AUSTRALIA

Children lost in court squeeze

Just eight years after Victoria's new children's court complex opened, its child protection workload has risen so sharply it has outgrown the building.

Work will soon start on an extra courtroom in the court's "family" division, where child protection is handled. But lawyers say a new courtroom will not be enough: more magistrates are needed to cut huge delays that distress and harm children. According to Joe Gorman, of the Law Institute of Victoria's children and youth issues committee, court delays keep children trapped too long in unhappy foster parenting or residential care unit accommodation. These "resi-care" units are run by charity organisations and mostly used to house older children with a history of difficult behaviour.

Mr Gorman said that some children's home circumstances were so bad that they were still better off in residential care units. "But there are cases where they would have been better off at home, with the undoubted deficits attached, than in 'resi-care', where the potential is huge for them to form new friendships and associations and be involved in activities that are really harmful."

Children removed from their families often had to wait three to four weeks for an "interim accommodation order" hearing — which is the first chance to alter arrangements made on the day children are removed from their parents by the Department of Human Services. Often, because the court overbooks its lists, they turned up at court but did not get their case heard. "Everyone associated with this system would acknowledge that delays are inherently potentially harmful for children," Mr Gorman said.

The president of the court, Judge Paul Grant, said the workload of children's courts was rising across Australia but that the nature of the cases being dealt with had not changed. "These are families in difficult economic circumstance and there are common problems within those families — drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, intellectual disability, mental illness, and sometimes all at once," he said.

But contested cases were increasingly complex, with parents, grandparents and children all represented. He said a spike of almost 20 per cent in Melbourne cases last year was partly caused by a Department of Human Services audit of its cases in one large region. New child protection legislation had also prompted DHS to bring more cases to court.

"We are bursting at the seams," he said. Two years ago the "family" division, separated by a wall from the court's "criminal" division, occupied only four courts in the building. "Family" cases are now filling six courts, with one of the court's "criminal" courtrooms in use for family matters. Sittings regularly run until 6pm and sometimes later. Waiting times for final child protection hearings have almost doubled since 2003, with a delay of four months.

Mr Gorman, who has been doing children's court work since 1975, said he was not criticising the court, but the fact that it was under-resourced. The shortage of good care was not the court's direct responsibility but it worried lawyers working there. Lawyers were also infuriated by delays caused by the junior status of the departmental workers sent to court. "You approach the legal officer representing DHS — they speak to the worker, who will ring their manager back at work. It goes backwards and forwards and takes interminable time to get a response."

Lawyer Liz Dowling said the court was unique in that parents turned up without knowing the material against them. "A box is ticked — the child has suffered 'physical harm' or 'emotional harm'," she said.

Liz Porter
3 June, 2007

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/children-lost-in-court-squeeze/2007/06/02/1180205580420.html

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