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Kids' care should be outsourced, says Queensland's child protection chief
QUEENSLAND'S child protection chief says the State Government should be stripped of its role in placing children and become an oversight body.
Commissioner Tim Carmody, who headed the child protection inquiry, says self regulation is risky and the Department of Child Safety should explain its decisions in allowing some children in care to remain in placements where they have experienced abuse.
"There is an argument that the department is conflicted in being both the parent and the policeman for children in care. It's something I'm concerned about that needs to be resolved," Mr Carmody said.
"There is an argument that the care system should be quite separate from the department and I think that's a plausible position to take."
"The child would be placed by the court perhaps, directly with a non-government entity, who would be the substitute parent and then would be answerable to the department, who would then be just the enforcer of the standards," he said.
"Whereas now, the department's responsible for the parenting but also responsible for the enforcement of parenting standards. So that's a bit of a conflict.
"You can't be both . . . either be the parent or be the enforcer of standards. The department probably wouldn't like that a lot because it would lose control and if you're carrying risk, you like to keep control . . . (but) there's always a risk with self-regulation."
Currently, children are placed in the department's care and then it places them with foster or kinship carers, who are often affiliated with non-Government entities such as Anglicare and Lifeline.
The Department of Child Safety only released 94 of 320 substantiated matters of concern in 2011-12, involving children being harmed either sexually, emotionally and physically under Right to Information laws.
The Courier-Mail revealed on Saturday that of those, one in five were not removed or were returned to their foster or kinship carers. Details of the abuse and the reasons they were placed back were omitted by the department.
Mr Carmody, a former Family Court judge, said the department shouldn't read confidentiality to mean secrecy.
"You're better off defending yourself on the basis of what you did than on the basis of what people think you might have done," Mr Carmody said.
He said the other problem with the information collected was that there was uncertainty over the repeat offences.
"I often ask that question myself. How many times has this child been reported to me, or this carer? But if the system can't tell me, that's really deficient. We need to know if they're re-reports, or re-notifications. I think they may be able to tell you about re-substantiations, but that's only part of the picture because you might be reported six times before you're substantiated."
When asked by The Courier-Mail about repeat cases of children being harmed while in care, the Department of Child Safety refused to say.
Child Safety Minister Tracy Davis last week blamed the previous Labor government for the current issues.
State Opposition leader Annastacia Palasczcuk said Ms Davis had been the Minister for more than a year and her response should be about the children not a political blame game.
Mr Carmody is due to hand down his report from the inquiry at the end of next month.
Alison Sandy
20 May 2013
