Jimmy_041 wrote:gadj1976 wrote:Booney wrote:6 year old at Munno Para. Sick to the stomach.
I did some work some years ago for Child Protection.
I've never seen a more thankless task.
I feel for their employees that would've no doubt done everything they could to get the child removed but couldn't due to the laws in place.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/truecrim ... 8167a73cf4Interesting comment gadj - Someone really needs to sit down and review all of this - mind you - we've had so many inquiries that have never been acted upon dating back to 2003 and Robyn Layton QC's review that was principally ignored by the government back then and ever since
I was there about 7 years ago, so I need to preface this with 'my comments may be dated'.
When I was there and viewing it from the outside looking in, the counsellors would talk amongst themselves about cases and realise there was nothing they could do because the Departments' strategy was to keep the kids with the parents/step parents (nearly) at all costs.
You had to do something pretty bad for kids to be taken off you and put into care.
Essentially, if Child Services visited and advised the parent that they might take the child off them and if the parent promised and signed the documentation to look after the kid, then Child Services is bound by that agreement. I can't recall what threshold determined if an agreement had been breached.
Hence you have situations where 5 kids have been taken away from a woman but if she's pregnant with the 6th, the Department can't do anything until there are grounds to take the child away ie, she has to do something to the child (physical, drug abuse, abandonment) before the Department can step in.