Listen to thisAUSTRALIA
In recent weeks, two major reports have shed light on a sorry state of affairs for two of the most vulnerable cohorts in NSW, children in out-of-home care and homeless youth.
David Tune’s Independent Review of Out of Home Care in New South Wales and the NSW ombudsman’s report More than shelter, addressing legal and policy gaps in supporting homeless children, made a number of damning findings, mostly directed at the Department of Family and Community Services (Facs).
But it’s what’s written between the lines that causes greatest concern for us as the heads of three community service peak bodies in NSW: AbSec (Aboriginal Child, Family and Community Care State Secretariat), Homelessness NSW, and Yfoundations.
It took two years of sustained pressure for the NSW government to release the Tune review, a report commissioned with public funds and completed in 2016. The government’s efforts to restrict publication of the report by classifying it “Cabinet in confidence” were ultimately struck down by a motion from the Parliament, paired with a joint statement calling for the report’s release signed by our organisations as well as the Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies, NSW Council of Social Service, Domestic Violence NSW, and several others.
It’s hardly surprising that the government wanted to minimise the impact of the Tune review, which carries such scathing findings as this: “overall, the current NSW [out-of-home care] system is ineffective and unsustainable … the system is failing to improve long term outcomes for children and families with complex needs, and to arrest devastating cycles of intergenerational abuse and neglect”.
Without any information about this most vulnerable group of children, our agencies are in the dark as to how we can help.
But the NSW government needs to remember its duty of transparency to the public. We’re sure the families of the approximately 18,000 children in out-of-home care would feel they are owed an insight into the system that has assumed responsibility for their kids.
And as peak organisations striving to build better services for our state’s most vulnerable children, how are we supposed to do our jobs effectively without access to the research upon which government makes its decisions? How can we assess the validity of these decisions without seeing what they are based upon?
Thankfully, the NSW government could not interfere with the public release of More than shelter. The review found that in 2016-2017, just over 5,000 young people aged 12 to 18 presented on their own to a homelessness service to seek support – but the ability of services to provide this support was jeopardised by a number of serious gaps in law and policy.
For instance, authority to make decisions about a homeless child remains with their parents, even if the family is no longer in contact, limiting the ability of service providers to access vital services on their clients’ behalf. When a child attempts to access local homelessness services, it’s often unclear which responsibilities lie with the service and which lie with Facs; meanwhile, Facs takes the lead responsibility for children aged 15 or younger who present to a homelessness service, but the services express serious doubts about Facs’ capacity to manage so many cases effectively.
While these are all major issues, we remain concerned by the information that doesn’t appear in this report – because it’s not available.
“Neither Facs nor the sector were able to provide answers to a number of critical questions that we asked during our inquiry about these children – because basic data is either not being captured or is unreliable,” reads the executive summary of the ombudsman’s report.
Due to inconsistent and incomplete data, the ombudsman was simply unable to tell how many young people are both homeless and in statutory out-of-home care (in other words, how many children abandoned their assigned out-of-home care placement and then experienced homelessness).
We know that young people who’ve been in out-of-home care experience homelessness at far greater rates than their peers, but usually this happens after turning 18 and parting ways with the child protection system. For those young people who are encountering homelessness even earlier, it’s critical that we learn why they are leaving their care placements and how we can provide them with effective support.
Without any information about this most vulnerable group of children, our agencies are in the dark as to how we can help. We’re particularly troubled over the lack of data on Aboriginal children in this situation, who are statistically even more vulnerable, and who again we can’t quantify. These kids are truly lost to the system, and we fear that’s just the beginning of a life of falling between the cracks.
We are calling on the NSW government to get serious about its responsibility to provide information to the public. Transparency is a hallmark of democracy, and it’s absolutely essential in providing support services that hit the mark. We can’t play our part in solving community problems without having insight into those problems.
We understand that the government has accepted the findings of the ombudsman’s report and we look forward to working with them on implementing its recommendations. We ask them to work with us, not against us; this means committing to never, ever again forcing us to campaign for two years before granting us access to a vital review of government services.
We have more important work to do. We shouldn’t have to fight for the basics.
By Tim Ireland, Katherine McKernan and Zoe Robinson
17 July 2018
Tim Ireland is CEO of AbSec (Aboriginal Child, Family and Community Care State Secretariat), Katherine McKernan is CEO of Homelessness NSW, Zoe Robinson is CEO of Yfoundations
