Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Monday, January 9, 2017
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
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
Monday, February 29, 2016
vulnerable children the losers from law changes the loser are the honest parents who doc dhs child protection cause to lose the child with there lyes and false reports in a law of court misleading information to the good parents like fathers who have no rights in a court of law this is dam rite discusting
Crystal Moon has experience of the child protection system. Pictured with son Luke and grandmother Helen Aldersey.
It's about time we got angry, says Crystal Moon.
Removed from her alcoholic and drug-addicted mum to live with her gran at the age of four, Ms Moon has seen the state's child protection system at its ugly, flawed worst.
She's furious that kinship carers, like her grandmother Helen Aldersey, often don't get enough support to cope with the traumatised children in their care.
Her grandma struggled alone to handle her volatile granddaughter, and it is only in recent years that they have healed the rift.
"She needed to be able to debrief and get skills and understand me in order to help me," says Moon.
She is also angry that changes to child protection laws, which come into force on Tuesday, mean parents will only have 12 months (or 24 in exceptional circumstances), to show they can care for their children or have them placed in permanent care.
She's furious that kinship carers, like her grandmother Helen Aldersey, often don't get enough support to cope with the traumatised children in their care.
Her grandma struggled alone to handle her volatile granddaughter, and it is only in recent years that they have healed the rift
"She needed to be able to debrief and get skills and understand me in order to help me," says Moon.
She is also angry that changes to child protection laws, which come into force on Tuesday, mean parents will only have 12 months (or 24 in exceptional circumstances), to show they can care for their children or have them placed in permanent care.
For Ms Moon, having a relationship with her troubled mother and the possibility of later reunification, was essential.
These changes will be retrospective, meaning they will affect families with children in out-of-home care. Once permanent care orders have been made parents can seek to have them revoked, but those working in the area say this is rare.
Ms Moon spoke to 200 concerned social workers, lawyers and child advocates who gathered at a forum organised by the Law Institute of Victoria and others on Tuesday to express disquiet over the law changes.
Law Institute of Victoria spokeswoman Fleur Ward, who acts for children in the Family court, said the changes take Victoria back to the days when wards of the state suffered without judicial or independent scrutiny.
Mandatory time frames are draconian and protect the court from acting in the best individual interest of the child, Ms Ward said.
Parents might take two or three years to address problems, but are then able to resume the care of their children, she said.
"The power to remove children permanently is comparable to the power to incarcerate – the responsibility is huge."
The law changes come in response to the damning Cummins report in 2012, which found it took, on average, over five years for a vulnerable child to be placed on a permanent care order.
The law changes reduce the role of the Children's Court and give greater power to the Department of Health and Human Services and its overstretched child protection workforce.
It is a system already under pressure: recently The Age revealed almost 3000 Victorian children suspected of being abused or neglected had not been assigned a caseworker by the end of June.
The changes will have a particular impact on Aboriginal families, who are over-represented in out-of-home care, said former Family Court justice Alastair Nicholson.
In 2012-13 aboriginal children were almost 15 times more likely to be in out of home care compared with non-aboriginal children.
Mr Nicholson told the meeting the changes have the potential to create another Stolen Generation, noting the lack of judicial review or court ability to direct the contact children have with families.
The state's newly-appointed Children's Commissioner, will oversee a review of the changes in six months, but advocates say damage could be done to children and their families in that time.
The Department of Human Services says it will not affect the number of children in out-of-home care or lead to an increase in the number of adoptions.
Last week the Minister for Families Jenny Mikakos announced an additional $2 million would be available to help families whose children are at risk of going into out-of-home care, including services like counselling.
"We need to strike a balance in giving families help to stay together, but ensuring children are in the best care possible and not left in a state of uncertainty.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
DID YOU NO THAT CHILD PROTECTION STALK THE PARENTS AFTER HOURS THEY FOLLOW THE PARENTS WHILE SHOPPING WITH THERE LITTLE ONES THEY PUT UNREGISTERD MAIL IN YOUR LETTER BOX THEY MAKE THREATS IN MEETINGS THEY TRY AND TELL PARENT WERE THEY CAN LIVE THEY HARRASS THE FATHER OF ONE CHILD SO BADLY THAT HE HAD A STROKE THEY ARE SCUM THEY WORK OUT OF TEXT BOOKS THAT ARE STONE AGE THEY HAVE NO IDEA ON THE FAMILY THEY ARE THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES CHILD PROTECTION DOC DHS CHILD FIRST THEY TAKE A CHILD OUT OF A NICE QUITE HOME AND THROW THEM IN A DRUNKEN DRUG INVESTED HOME WHERE THE MOTHER NEGLECTS AND THE BOYFRIEND BEATS THE CHILD AND PUT THE CHILD IN FORSTER CARE THE FATHER HAS DONE NO WRONG RETURN HIS BOY CHILD PROTECTION NOW THEY TELL LYES TO COVER UP WHAT THEY HAVE DONE IN COURT THEY EMPLOY CORRUPT WORKERS THEY ARE CORRUPT THEY ARE A GOVERMENT DEPARTMENT THEY HUMILATE PARENTS THIS IS THE CIRCUT FAIR GO FOR THE GOOD PARENTS
Friday, January 29, 2016
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