barnold law: Vulnerable Kids

The three volume report of the Report of the state inquiry into Protecting Victoria's vulnerable children (aka the Cummins inquiry) has been released.

The inquiry investigated systemic problems in Victoria's child protection system. Its report features recommendations to strengthen and improve the protection and support of vulnerable young Victorians.

Volume 1 includes the Executive summary and Lists of recommendations, findings and matters for attention as well as an Implementation plan. The second volume comprises contains 23 chapters dealing with the impact of abuse and neglect, Victoria?s current system for protecting children and young people, major issues raised in submissions, a policy framework for a system to protect vulnerable children and young people, major protective system elements (eg in out-of-home care), strengthening the law protecting children and young people and realigning court processes, funding arrangements, system governance, implementation and prioritisation. Volume 3 features the appendices.

The report notes that -

The vast majority of Victoria?s children and young people live in families where they are loved, cared for and encouraged by their families. These children will be supported by their families through the highs and lows of childhood and adolescence and will grow up with the personal resources and capabilities to live independent, well-adjusted and productive lives. However, a significant number of Victoria?s children and young people are not as fortunate. Every week, nearly 60 children and young people from across Victoria are removed from their parents by the State and placed in the care of another person or organisation because there are sound reasons to believe they are at risk of significant harm.

During 2010-11, about 3,000 children and young people were placed in accommodation away from their family home. While many will return home quickly, on average, these children stay in the care of the State for about 18 months and some will move between three or more separate placements in a single year. Over the past decade, the number of Victorian children and young people in out-of-home care has increased by 44 per cent ? an annual growth of around 4 per cent a year ? bringing the total number of children and young people in care to 5,700 at June 2011. Some children are never able to return to their parents? care.

People across Victoria felt so concerned about the welfare of children that they made about 55,000 reports to the Victorian Department of Human Services in 2010?11. Of these 55,000 reports, nearly 14,000 were considered sufficiently serious by the Department of Human Services that they were formally investigated. These investigations found that for 7,600 of these cases, the concerns about the safety or welfare of these children were well founded. If current rates continue, one in four children born in Victoria in 2011 will be reported to the Department of Human Services by their 18th birthday.

Of great concern is that Aboriginal children and young people are significantly over-represented in Victoria?s system for protecting children. While Aboriginal children and young people make up 1.2 per cent of the Victorian population,
they constitute around 16 per cent of children and young people on care and protection orders and are nine times more likely to be in State care than others in the general population.

Even though in 2010?11 Victoria will spend $533 million on Victoria?s statutory child protection, specialist support services and placement services and 1,200 child protection practitioners are employed in Victoria to keep children safe, young people known to the Department of Human Services still suffer significant harm or die. Over the past decade, this expenditure has increased at a faster rate than government expenditure generally. There have also been substantial investments in child and family welfare services (around $170 million in 2010?11).

The Inquiry heard many distressing experiences from and about individuals who have had personal experience with Victoria?s statutory child protection services. The Inquiry was deeply moved by individual accounts that demonstrated how child abuse and neglect, and involvement with statutory child protection, can have devastating long term effects on people, even many years after they have left the system. These experiences have influenced many of the recommendations in this Report and moved the Inquiry to make explicit and reiterate what the Inquiry believes should be a fundamental truth ? that Victoria has a responsibility to protect vulnerable children and young people. The Inquiry also believes that where child abuse or neglect has occurred, the government should provide a response that ameliorates the effects of such trauma and do all in its power to ensure it does not cause further harm.

Estimates prepared by Deloitte Access Economics for the Inquiry indicate that the total lifetime financial costs of child abuse and neglect that occurred in Victoria for the first time in 2009-10 is between $1.6 and $1.9 billion. Each individual case of child abuse and neglect continues to create costs for the community long after the abuse stops, or the neglect is addressed. This is because child abuse and neglect increases the costs of health care and education, housing and supported accommodation assistance, court-related matters and crime, and leads to significant
productivity losses.

The Inquiry consulted widely and sought input across the whole of Victoria through 18 Public Sittings covering 16 different locations, hearing verbal submissions from around 130 organisations and individuals. More than 220 written submissions were made to the Inquiry from a diverse range of individuals and organisations. Consultation sessions were conducted with children and young people, Aboriginal communities, culturally and linguistically diverse community service workers and people working in Victoria?s system for protecting children. A Reference Group advised the Inquiry on policy issues and stakeholder engagement.

In response it recommends - The performance of the system protecting children and young people

1. The Government should consider, as a matter of priority, investing resources in:

? The information management systems spanning vulnerable families and children including the statutory child protection system to incorporate information on the major demographic characteristics (including culturally and linguistically diverse and Aboriginal status) and the presenting issues of vulnerable families and children;
? The regular publication of information on the characteristics of families, children and young people who have multiple interactions with the statutory child protection system to facilitate research and transparency about the performance of the system; and
? Conducting cost-benefit and feasibility assessments, including the possible governance arrangements of:

? instituting cohort or longitudinal surveys of families and children following their involvement with statutory child protection services and, over time, related services for vulnerable children and families; and
? the approach developed in Western Australia of linking de-identified health data to de-identified data from the departments of Child Protection, Education, Disability Services and Corrective Services and Housing & Community, as a means of identifying for policy and program development purposes, the factors linked with child protection reports and the nature and dimensions of the subsequent experiences and issues.

A policy framework for a system to protect vulnerable children and young people

2. The Government should develop and adopt a whole-of-government Vulnerable Children and Families Strategy. The objective of the strategy will be to establish a comprehensive government and community approach for improving Victoria?s performance in responding to Victoria?s vulnerable children and families at risk. The key elements are:

? A definition of vulnerable children and young people;
? Identified whole-of-government objectives, including specific roles and responsibilities for departments, both individually and collectively, in addressing vulnerability in children and young people;
? A performance framework, or list of the accountabilities, performance measures or indicators to be used by government to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the strategy; and
? Accountability structures that set out appropriate oversight for monitoring the implementation of the strategy by departments and agencies, including reporting on such implementation to government and the public.

3. Performance against the objectives set out in a Vulnerable Children & Families Strategy, including information on the performance of government departments and statutory child protection services should be published regularly through The state of Victoria?s children report.

4. Area-based policy and program design and delivery should be used to address vulnerability and protect Victoria?s vulnerable children and young people. In particular, an area-based approach should be adopted for assessing outcomes specified in a Vulnerable Children and Families Strategy and for reporting on progress against performance indicators.

Preventing child abuse and neglect

5. In preparing the whole-of-government Victorian Alcohol & Drug Strategy, the Department of Health should consider the impact of alcohol and drug abuse on the safety and wellbeing of children in families where parents misuse substances.

6. The Department of Education & Early Childhood Development should implement strategies designed to encourage greater participation by the families of vulnerable children in universal services

7. The Government, through the Department of Education & Early Childhood Development, should:

? Examine the capacity of local governments in low socioeconomic status areas to provide appropriate Maternal & Child Health and Enhanced Maternal & Child Health services, consistent with the concentration of vulnerable children and families, particularly as the current funding formula for Maternal & Child Health is based on a 50% contribution by local government; and
? Increase investment and appropriate infrastructure in universal services including maternal and child health, kindergarten and community playgroups, to communities that have the highest concentration of vulnerable children and families to increase the participation of vulnerable children in these services.

The increased investment in maternal and child health and enhanced maternal and child health should focus on:

? Enhanced support to families whose unborn babies are assessed as vulnerable to abuse or neglect, especially as a result of pre-birth reports; and
? A more intensive program of outreach to families of vulnerable children who do not attend maternal and child health checks, particularly in the first 12 months of life.

8. The Department of Health should develop and lead a consistent statewide approach for antenatal psychosocial assessment so that problems such as family violence, parental mental illness and substance misuse in pregnancy can be more effectively addressed.

9. The Department of Education & Early Childhood Development, in partnership with the Department of Human Services, should develop a universal, evidence based parenting information and support program to be delivered in communities with high concentrations of vulnerable children and families, at key ages and stages across the 0 to 17 age bracket.

10. The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development should develop a wide-ranging education and information campaign for parents and caregivers of all school-aged children on the prevention of child sexual abuse.

Early intervention

11. The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development should implement the recommendations from the Auditor-General?s report on early childhood services by the end of 2012.

12. The Government should fund the expansion of early parenting centres to provide services to a greater range of vulnerable families and to improve access to families living in outer Melbourne, regional and rural areas.

13. The Department of Education & Early Childhood Development should improve its capacity to respond to the needs of vulnerable children and young people by:

? Undertaking a comprehensive evaluation of whether existing school-based programs are meeting the needs of vulnerable children and young people; and
? Introducing a population health and wellbeing questionnaire of students as they make the transition from childhood to adolescence, and publishing the outcomes in The state of Victoria?s children report.

14. The Department of Health should amend the framework for monitoring the performance of health services to hold services accountable for support they provide to vulnerable children and families, consistent with their responsibilities under the recommended whole-of-government Vulnerable Children and Families Strategy.

15. The Government should enhance its capacity to identify and respond to vulnerable children and young people by:

? Evaluating the outcomes of pre-birth reports to statutory child protection and pre-birth responses to support pregnant women;
? Providing funding to support universal early childhood services, schools, health services (including General Practitioners) and specialist adult services to identify and respond to the full range of risk factors for child abuse and neglect. This should include increased investment in the Department of Health?s Vulnerable Children?s Program; and
? Providing funding to support specialist adult services to develop family-sensitive practices, commencing with an audit of practices by specialist adult services that identify and respond to the needs of any children of parents being treated, prioritising drug and alcohol services

16. As part of a strategy to improve services for vulnerable children and families in need, the Department of
Human Services should strengthen area-based planning and coordination of family services and accountability arrangements under Child FIRST by:

? Establishing Area Reference Committees to oversee the monitoring, planning and coordination of services and management of operational issues within each catchment. The Committees would be co-chaired by the Department of Human Services area manager and the chief executive officer or area manager of the lead community service organisation, and comprise a representative of each community service organisation in
the local Alliance; and
? Ensuring the funding arrangements for Alliance lead agencies clearly specify the agencies? responsibilities for receiving referrals, undertaking an initial assessment of clients? needs, and facilitating an appropriate service response, with appropriate performance indicators.

17. The Government should expand upon the existing local Alliances of family services and statutory child protection services to develop broader Vulnerable Child and Family Service Networks ? catchment-based networks of services for vulnerable children and families, including statutory child protection, family services, specialist adult services, health services and enhanced universal services.

18. The Government should ensure the legislation governing relevant services establishes the responsibilities of services to act in the best interests of children and young people, and to prioritise service delivery to vulnerable children, young people and their families. In addition, health services and specialist adult services should be required to adopt family-sensitive practice guidelines.

Meeting the needs of children and young people in the statutory system

19. Following adoption of the Child FIRST governance changes and using a piloted approach, intake functions carried out by the Department of Human Services and by Child FIRST should be physically co-located on an area basis throughout Victoria. Statutory child protection intake should remain a separate process to child and family support services intake, but there should be an increased focus, particularly with common clients, on improving collaboration between statutory child protection and family support services and greater joint decision making about risks presenting to vulnerable children and young people.

Following implementation and evaluation of co-located intake throughout Victoria, and provided the key challenges and risks have been addressed appropriately, the Department of Human Services should aim to move towards a consolidated intake model where Child FIRST and statutory child protection intake processes are combined.

20. The Department of Human Services should introduce differentiated pathways as part of the statutory child protection response, with some increased case management by community service organisations.

The two pathways that should be adopted immediately should involve first-time contact families and the use of multidisciplinary centres to respond to suspected child sexual abuse victims. Following collaboration between the Department of Human Services and key stakeholders, two additional pathways should be adopted to address the needs of families that have repeated contact with the Department of Human Services and families experiencing chronic and entrenched vulnerability.

21. The Department of Human Services should simplify case planning processes and improve collaboration and pathways between statutory child protection services and other services, particularly family violence and disability services.
The Department of Human Services should increase case conferencing with other disciplines and services related to child protection issues including housing, health, education, drug and alcohol services and particularly for family violence and disability services. In relation to family violence, consideration should be given to the evidence base for establishing differentiated pathways that lead to improved outcomes along the lines of those pathways discussed in Recommendation 20. The protocol between statutory child protection and disability services should be strengthened, with more explicit statements around the roles and responsibilities of the different service agencies.

22. The Department of Human Services should simplify practice guidance and instructions for child protection practitioners.

The Department of Human Services should reduce practice complexity by consolidating and simplifying the number of standards, guidelines, rules and instructions that child protection practitioners must follow. This process should investigate and apply learnings from comparatively high-risk sectors such as health or aviation in the approach taken to risk management and adverse events.

23. The Department of Human Services should identify and remove barriers to achieving the most appropriate and timely form of permanent placements for children unable to be reunited with their biological family or to be permanently placed with suitable members of the extended family by:

? Seeking parental consent to adoption, and where given, placing the child in a suitable adoptive family;
? Pursuing legal action to seek the dispensation of parental consent to adoption for children whose
circumstances make them eligible under section 43 of the Adoption Act 1984;
? Resolving the inconsistency between practical requirements for child protection practitioners to simultaneously plan for reunification while contemplating permanent care arrangements; and
? Reviewing the situation of every child in care who is approaching the stability timeframes as outlined in the Children, Youth & Families Act 2005, to determine whether an application for a permanent care order should be made. Where it is deemed not appropriate to do so (for example, where a child?s stable foster placement would be disrupted), the decision not to make application for a permanent care order should be endorsed at a senior level.

Meeting the needs of children and young people in out-of-home care

24. The Department of Human Services and community service organisations should continue to support the Who Am I Project on out-of-home care record-keeping to enable children and young people to access all records of relevance and, as appropriate, be provided with a personal record when leaving care.

25. The Government should, as a matter of priority, establish a comprehensive five year plan for Victoria?s out-of-home care system based on the goal, over time, of the growth in the number of Victorian children and young people in care being in line with the overall growth in Victorian children and young people and the objective of improving the stability, quality and outcomes of out-of-home care placements. The key elements of the plan should include:

? Significant expansion in placement prevention initiatives to divert children from out-of-home care. In particular, increased investment in placement diversion and re-unification initiatives, when the safety of the child has been professionally assessed, involving intensive and in-home family support and other services for key groups such as families of first-time infants and young children;
? More timely permanent care where reunification is not viable;
? All children and young people entering out-of-home care undergo comprehensive health, wellbeing and education assessments;
? All children in out-of-home care receive appropriate therapeutic care, education and other services;
? Progressive adoption of client-based funding to facilitate the development of individual and innovative responses to the needs of child and young people who have been the subject of abuse and neglect;
? The introduction over time of a professional carer model to provide improved and sustained support for children and young people with a focus on lowering the use of residential care;
? Significant investment in the funding and support arrangements for:

? home-based care including a common service and funding approach across foster care, kinship and permanent care and improved carer training, support and advocacy arrangements;
? residential care including mandating training and skill requirements for residential and other salaried care workers (i.e. the proposed professional care model); and

? The adoption of an area-based approach to the planning, delivery and monitoring of out-of-home care services and outcomes involving the Department of Human Services, community service organisations and other relevant agencies.

Given the underlying trends and quality issues, implementation of this plan will require significant investment.

26. To provide for the clear and transparent development of a client-based funding, the Government should request the Essential Services Commission to advise on:

? The design of a client-based funding approach for out-of-home care in Victoria; and
? The unit funding of services for children and young people placed in care.

27. The Victorian Government should, as a matter of priority, give further detailed consideration to the professional carer model and associated arrangements and request that the Commonwealth Government address and resolve, as a matter of priority, significant national barriers associated with establishing this new category of worker including industrial relations and taxation arrangements.

The experiences of children and young people when leaving out-of-home care

28. The Department of Human Services should collect regular information on the experiences of young people leaving care and their access to leaving care and post-care services and report the initial findings to the Minister in 2012 and thereafter on an annual basis to the proposed Commission for Children & Young People.

29. The Department of Human Services should have the capacity, including funding capacity, to extend the current home-based care and residential care out-of-home placement and support arrangements, on a voluntary and needs basis, for individual young people beyond 18 years of age.

30. The Department of Human Services should:

? Ensure all leaving care plans identify stable initial accommodation options and that a ?no discharge to
temporary and inappropriate accommodation policy? is adopted;
? Review the levels and range of leaving and post-care financial assistance provided to care leavers as part of the development and implementation of the proposed Leaving Care Employment and Education Access Program, including appropriate representations to the Commonwealth Government on their current employment and education assistance programs; and
? Assess the impact of the current leaving care services and programs, as a matter of priority, to determine whether the necessary access to, and integration of, post-care support across the full range of health, housing and other services is being achieved.

31. The Government should consider, in the medium term, the availability of post-care support and periodic followup being extended, on a needs basis, until a young person reaches the age of 25 years.

Meeting the needs of Aboriginal children and young people

32. More detailed monitoring should be developed for the Victorian Indigenous Affairs Framework that provides reports on outcomes at the operational level regarding key areas of disadvantage (such as education attainment or family violence) and in specific localities with high prevalence rates of risk factors for abuse and neglect.

33. Aboriginal cultural competence should be a feature of the Department of Human Services standards for community service organisations. Further, the performance of agencies in relation to cultural competence should be an area of specific focus in the next cycle of community service organisation registration.

34. The Government should expand the use and effectiveness of culturally competent approaches within integrated family services and statutory child protection services through the Department of Human Services by:

? Establishing funding arrangements with the Aboriginal Child Specialist Advice and Support Service that enable cultural advice to be provided across the full range of statutory child protection activities;
? Using the Aboriginal Family Decision Making program as the preferred decision making process if an Aboriginal child in statutory child protection services is substantiated as having suffered abuse or neglect;
? Expanding family preservation and restoration programs so they are available to Aboriginal families in rural and regional areas with significant Aboriginal populations;
? Expanding Aboriginal kinship care support to provide support to all Aboriginal kinship carers; and
? Expanding Aboriginal family support programs so they are available to Aboriginal families in areas with significant Aboriginal populations.

35. As part of the creation of a Commission for Children and Young People, an Aboriginal Children?s Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner should be created to monitor, measure and report publicly on progress against objectives for vulnerable Aboriginal children and young people across all areas of government activity, including where government provides resources for non-government activities.

36. The Department of Human Services should develop a comprehensive 10 year plan to delegate the care and control of Aboriginal children removed from their families to Aboriginal communities. This would include:

? Amending section 18 of the Children, Youth & Families Act 2005 to reflect Aboriginal community decision making processes and address current legislative limitations regarding implementation;
? Developing a sustainable funding model to support transfer of guardianship to Aboriginal communities that recognises the cost of establishing an alternative guardianship pathway. These arrangements would initially be on a small scale and require access to significant legal advice, legal representation, practice advice, specialist assessments and therapeutic treatment;
? Developing a statewide plan to transfer existing out-of-home care placements for Aboriginal children and young people from mainstream agencies to Aboriginal community controlled organisations and guide future resource allocation (with performance/registration caveats and on an area basis);
? Providing incentive funds for Aboriginal community controlled organisations to develop innovative partnership arrangements with mainstream providers delivering out-of-home care services to Aboriginal children to connect them to their culture;
? Targeting Aboriginal community controlled organisations capacity building to these activities, that is, guardianship, cultural connection and provision of out-of-home care services; and
? Providing increased training opportunities for Aboriginal community controlled organisation staff to improve skills in child and family welfare.

The proposed Aboriginal Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner for children and young people should report on performance against this plan.

Meeting the needs of children and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities

37. To improve knowledge and data on vulnerable children of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds so that the appropriateness of current service provision can be considered:

? The Department of Human Services should collect data to record and track children and young people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who are involved with the child protection system, and the family services sector; and
? The Department of Education & Early Childhood Development should include data on the experiences of vulnerable children and young people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (including in Victoria?s system for protection children) in The State of Victoria?s Children report.

38. The Victorian Government, through the Council of Australian Governments, should seek inclusion of the needs of recently arrived children and families of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the National Framework for Protecting Australia?s Children 2009-2020, in particular:

? The need to provide advice and information about Australian laws and norms regarding the rights and responsibilities of children and parents; and
? Appropriate resettlement services for refugees to prevent abuse and neglect of refugee children.

Source: http://barnoldlaw.blogspot.com/2012/03/vulnerable.html

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