- Target:
- Families SA, Department of Families & Communities
- Region:
- Australia
"The Foster Generation" is made up of children who continue to be wrongfully removed from their families. This is a practice that has become entreched for almost three decades. Often this is done on little or no wrongdoing on the part of the family, other than the might of the Dept being triggered against the Parents, Grandparents or Foster Carers through a specific critical incident. Usually this happens when they dare to question or complain about bad practice, poor service [eg. failing to provide goods, services or information during times of extreme need (eg. respite; child-parent relationship counselling; parenting support/ advice; financial assistance; emergency housing; etc...)], breaches of Duty of Care or breaches of Youth or Family Court Orders.
Families SA have a long and established history of failing families in SA. Almost every Minister has failed to take the Department's bureaucrats to task. Consequently, each has defended the bad practices of social workers within the department, who are typically unable to account for their assessments, decisions and actions. Invariably, their interventions are not officially recorded nor notified to the family. Families are given no rights of defence as the practitioners hide behind confidentiality and secrecy. Even independent reports commissioned by the Dept to look into their handling of cases are kept from public scrutiny, however, spin-doctors use every case of malpractice as an example of how allegedly "under-resourced and understaffed" the Dept is to justify its own empire-building.
We reject the notion that the Dept is "understaffed or under-resourced". We say the Department is wasteful and vexatious.
In recent years, State and Federal Governments have had to apologize to the "Stolen Generation" of Indigenous children removed from birth families simply for being Indigenous. However, this practice of forced removal was always concealed under the guise of "the best intersts of the child" to assimilate into white culture.
The wrongful removal of innocent children from their families has continued under what we now refer to as "The Foster Generation", but with no legal "duty of care" to hold the Minister to account.
Even when kids are placed in alternate care, it is usually not just with one Foster parent (who has no rights of Appeal or Review of such a decision) but, commonly with multiple carers and often these children end up separated and eventually alienated from other siblings with almost no contact over time, with the excuse that it is "too onerous" on the Department to sustain that contact.
These cases are exemplified by the cases of John Ternezis, Tom Easling, Dianne Brown, Barbara & Kevin Cowell/ Jacquie Wood/ Peggy Rollins, David Middendorp, Stephen Perkins, David & Sabastian Newman & many others in which the Department can be proven to have behaved dishonestly, negligently or in a corrupt manner towards pre-intervention families (including Parents, Grandparents and Foster Parents) AND acted AGAINST the best interests of the child through their wrongful removal.
Please join Ann Bressington and Parents Against Families SA (Pafsa) on Facebook
We recommend that:
Duty of Care
1. The clear and decisive recognition, in law, of the Crown's Duty of Care to pre-intervention families, and especially children. Such DOC to extend to the Crown and all of its agents. This must be legislated and made legally binding and expressly state that the same standard which binds parents and carers will bind the Crown and all its agents. Crown Law must not be permitted to question or renege upon this commitment to children and their Families.
Family Preservation.
2. That Family Preservation (via Child Protection Act) and Parental Rights (via Family and Community Services Act 1972) within that context be legislated. This is to include that Family Preservations Plans to be considered legally binding contracts with fines and/ or penalties for breaches (including public officials who interfere with the rights of parents and children).
Quality Assurance.
3. Quality Assurance Unit to be re-established as a permanent part of the Departmental structure and work in unison with the Special Investigation Unit, Training and Complaints investigations teams.
4. The practice of litigating families before offering goods and services, including Counselling, Financial support, Mediation, Family Preservation and Reunification be ceased immediately - except for those cases in which the personal safety, welfare and well-being of a child is at such risk that Foster Care or institutional placement must be considered ahead of the rights of the family.
5. All forensic interviews and assessments to be recorded on videotape from the time of first contact, and made available to all relevant parties, including those carried out by Social Workers and Police in the Child Protection Units, and be available to the tests of transparency and scrutiny by all parties to ensure the integrity of such assessments.
6. Regular and ongoing, intensive training and education of frontline child protection workers, Child Separate Representatives and Judges (e.g. Youth Court), to Nationally Accredited Standards, to ensure ethical conduct, competency, consistency, fairness and accountability in investigative, assessment and intervention procedures, especially with respect to professional understanding of, and compliance with:
• Clearance and endorsement procedures of Foster Carers and Relative Carers;
• The Family Preservation Model (using the concept of the “pre-intervention family”);
• Shared/ Joint/ Equal Parenting (using the “least angry parent” principles);
• Early Childhood Development;
• Forensic Methods for Investigating Child Sex Abuse {Refer to Dr Keith Le Page’s paper, by same title};
• Crisis Intervention;
• Conflict Resolution; and
• The use, and limitations, of delegated authority within the public sector.
7. Appropriate training and education be provided to all child protection workers with the view to educating practitioners about the dangers of practices such as those described in the “Miami Method” of child sex abuse investigation and “Defensive Social Work Practice”. Such training and education be matched by proper policy and procedural safe-guards aimed at ensuring that child assessments themselves do not:
a. serve to sexualize children and / or
b. follow a process centred on establishing a legal case rather than attaining the truth and / or
c. be conducted in a manner that has the serious potential of causing the child or other party/ies to make false statements / affirmations of violence or abuse (i.e. False Positives).
8. Self-represented litigants at Youth Court to have unfettered equal access to all resources and information as would be afforded Crown Law and Ministerial representatives, in keeping with the ideals of transparency and natural justice. This must include all transcripts, Coroner’s reports, “independent” reports commissioned by the Department and/ or all other documents tendered to, for or by any court and accessible to the Minister and/ or the Crown.
9. That all submissions to the Youth or Family Courts be overseen by the Quality Assurance Unit so that there can be absolutely no misleading of the Courts and to ensure that interview procedures that give rise to false, tainted, implausible, impossible or incredible testimony from any source cannot be made admissible.
10. Prosecuting/ litigating authorities (including Crown Law) be required to carefully assess the veracity of allegations, and ensure they do not actively contribute to the misrepresentation and misleading of witnesses and/ or the courts; especially where bizarre claims are part of the allegations and that all parts and versions of a complainant's story should be routinely revealed to a court and to all parties and their representatives (e.g. professional witnesses).
Enforcement (of Court Orders and Rules of Law)
11. Breaches of Family and Youth Orders to attach strict penalties, including dismissal or demotion if FSA fails to adhere to them.
12. Enforceable perjury laws for false statements to all Government enforcement agencies and Courts. Where perjury has been shown to have occurred then action against the perjurer, and remedy for the wrongly accused, must be vigorous, and consider the use of Polygraphs for substantiation or clearance.
Best Interests of the Child
13. That the notion of “The Best Interests of the Child” be defined, with some minimal benchmarks to serve as a consistent, decision-making framework from which the Department will operate.
14. A recognition by child protection authorities that:
• All breaches in compliance with Policies and Procedures is a Breach of Duty of Care and must be subject to immediate and reciprocal remedy (i.e. in keeping with notions of Restorative Justice).
• False allegations of any type of abuse, that are demonstrated to be malicious (especially if intended to separate one parent from the child/ ren of a marriage, such as in the course of custody/ access dispute), do not serve the child’s best interests.
• Breaches in compliance with the Procedures by the Department which give rise to contamination of evidence or false beliefs are always in breach of “the best interests of the child” {ie. the end DOES NOT justify the means}.
15. Any person engaged by the department to undertake psychological evaluations of a person must have had the relevant experience and training to undertake such evaluations and accredited tests must be applied to psychological profiling as an adjunct to developing those reports.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Stop The Foster Generation petition to Families SA, Department of Families & Communities was written by Ann Bressington and is in the category Children's Rights at GoPetition.