Foster crisis: Kids knowingly sent to carers with serious criminal charges

VULNERABLE foster children were placed in homes with carers who had serious criminal records, including rape, ­assault and drugs charges, with the full knowledge of the state government.

The Sunday Telegraph has obtained a leaked 2010 internal report that raises concerns with senior management in Family and Community Services (FACS) about five carers with serious criminal records.

One foster carer on the mid-north coast had an 18-page record, including two convictions for rape, three for assault, five for stealing, four for domestic violence and one of malicious wounding. The carer had done significant jail time.

The carer and his wife were paid $128,000 in foster payments each year to care for 10 children from 2005 onwards.

The report has surfaced as the NSW Upper House inquiry into the role of FACS and non-government organisations in protecting young people at risk of harm, has uncovered cases of children being raped by carers who had not had background checks.

The report written by a manager raises concerns about five carers who have criminal or child protection records.

The carers ­include one who served six years for rape and is now looking after 10 children and one looking after five children, with six other children in a household and “an extensive criminal history, not to mention departmental records of neglect of her own children”.

It is understood the report was again raised in 2013 with FACS chief Maree Walk, ­director-general Michael Coutts-Trotter and then minister Pru Goward.

Child protection expert Professor Chris Goddard from the Australian Childhood Foundation and a former child protection worker said the ­report was “horrifying” and an “indictment on the state”.

A case worker also said political correctness had hampered action because the carers were Aboriginal, caring for ­Aboriginal children.

A spokesman for FACS said the foster carer with the 18-page criminal history still had the children in his care and had his working with children check assessed by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal in 2014 who found “he does not pose a risk to the ­safety of children.”

The spokesman said the foster carer had “reformed” and that the children were his grandchildren.

“FACS has not received any risk-of-significant-harm reports in relation to the children in this person’s care,” he said.

New child protection laws to remove kids will be retrospect this is so they put your child in care and make money out of the parents

Child protection laws come into effect next month giving parents two years' grace before permanently losing custody of their children.

• 'Systemic deficiencies': Auditor-General slams DHHS child protection failures
• Law reforms on children in care could create 'stolen generation'

VIctoria Legal Aid and the Law Institute have raised serious concerns about tough new child protection laws that will come into effect next month, giving parents two years to get their acts together before permanently losing custody of their children.

The laws will be retrospective, meaning thousands of parents currently subject to a Children's Court order could have just months to prove their ability to look after their children. Others will automatically lose that chance.

The changes will increase the number of children the department can place up for adoption, limit the powers of the Children's Court of Victoria to review decisions made by the department, and make it easier for children to be permanently removed from their parents' custody.

Legal groups are concerned that support services parents have to complete before their child is returned to their care, like men's behavioural change programs, are overburdened and subject to lengthy waiting lists.

The Law Institute says it is unfair to prevent children being returned to their parents due to lack of resources or waiting lists to access services.

Legal Aid's child protection program manager, Lucia Danek, said waiting lists at men's behavioural change programs were several months.

"Those arbitrary timeframes are overlaid on  a system that is exhausted," she said.

Legal Aid's family, youth and children's law executive director, Nicole Rich, said the Department of Health and Human Services was doing its best, but the Children's Court should retain its oversight of department decisions.

"We know that no government department ever gets everything right, and these are really serious decisions, and we need to make sure that every decision is properly scrutinised."

Deb Tsobaris, the chief executive of the Centre for Excellence, a peak body representing nearly 100 child and family services, said the new laws would address the problem of kids floating around "from placement to placement".

But she agreed that more services were needed to support parents trying to have their children returned to them. "We're all worried about that."

Fleur Ward, a lawyer who represents families in the Children's Court and is chairwoman of the Law Institute's children and youth issues committee, said the change "amounts to the permanent, systematic deprivation of children from their parents".

"You can't create these timeframes and not empower the courts to take into account these waiting lists. How can you have a timeframe ticking against people if they're up against waiting lists they have no control over?"

An Auditor-General's report last year found the number of children reported to the Department of Health and Human Services had increased by 92 per cent in the past seven years, to more than 82,000 in the 2013-14 financial year.

Auditor-General John Doyle found that DHHS's early-intervention system was characterised by "systemic deficiencies" and a lack of oversight, and the failure to keep or analyse proper records from the agencies it relies on to deliver early-intervention services to children and families.

"The department does not know whether the services provided are effectively meeting the needs of vulnerable families," Mr Doyle found.

The government says it will review the changes in six months