MEDIA RELEASE: Big tick for accountable child protection in NSW. - The Centre for Independent Studies
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MEDIA RELEASE: Big tick for accountable child protection in NSW.

 

cis logo 640x360The Baird Government’s response to the Independent Review of Out Of Home Care in NSW should be applauded for making child protection services in the state more accountable, says Dr Jeremy Sammut, author of The Madness of Australian Child Protection.

“As Four Corners showed on Monday night, for too long out of home care had been an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff for kids failed by the system” says Dr Sammut, who as a Senior Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies has also published several research papers on the crisis in child protection.  His work on the child protection crisis in Australia helped shape the NSW Government’s Adoption Reform Agenda.

“Ineffective social services provided to families has led to thousands of children being damaged — often permanently — by parental abuse and neglect at a cost of thousands of wasted lives and billions of dollars across the whole of government.”

“The Their Futures Matter: A New Approach strategy will allow government to finally find out what works and what doesn’t to keep kids safe at home.”

“Not-for profit charities will no longer receive a blank cheque from taxpayers and be allowed to practice ‘family preservation’ no matter the long-term cost to kids and the budget.”

“If  support services don’t keep kids safe at home as promised, then funding can be removed — and children rescued from bad homes.”

“This is crucial. There are some dysfunctional families that can never be fixed no matter the support.”

“This is why the Baird  government also needs to push on with its adoption reforms to give kids who can never go home safe,  secure and stable adoptive families for life and avoid the kind of residential care exposed by the ABC.”

Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and the author of several research papers on child protection, including The Kinship Conundrum: The Impact of Aboriginal Self-Determination on Indigenous Child Protection and Still Damaging and Disturbing: Australian Child Protection Data and the Need for National Adoption Targets