Child care report sounds abuse alarm. - Darren Gray, The Age, December 14th 2001
CHILD CARE REPORT SOUNDS ABUSE ALARM
The number of children in special care rises dramatically.
By Darren Gray
'A soaring number of Australian children are living in special accommodation because their parents cannot properly care for them, or because serious concerns exist about their safety and well being.
State governments human services departments around the nation received a massive 107,134 notification, or claims, of child abuse or neglect in 1999-2000, a 17 per cent rise on figures just four years earlier. Many of this allegations of child abused almost one in four, were substantiated by authorities.
The startling revelations about welfare of thousand of troubled Australian children are contained in a national report released yesterday in Canberra by Family and Community services Minister AmandaVastone.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report showed that the number of children on care and protection orders - which delivered part of the child's welfare to a state community services department - has jumped in recent years in almost all states and territories.
In Victoria , the number of children covered by those orders rose almost 25 % between 1999 and 2000, to 4752.
The report has also revealed:
a) A 60 % increase in the number of sole parents on income support between 1990 and 2000.
b) 2237 Victorian children lived in foster care at June 2000, up 21 % over four years
c) A jump in the rate of children affected by divorce from 9.8 per 1000 children in 1990 to 11.3 per 1000 in 1999.
d)There were 239,200 single-parents families in June 2000, with the parent unemployed.
e) big rise in the number of children in child care in the 1990s.
Senator Vanstone said there were significant differences between the states in the trends regarding children in special care .
"Life is becoming more complex, people are finding life much more stressful… in same areas you pour more and more money in and you won't make a difference unless you get some behavioral changes somewhere, unless other people or other institutions or other groups join in and change what's causing the problem., "she said.
" Money can be used as a fix, but it's very rarely the thing that will in fact get rid of the cause of the problem. Money in a Band-Aid in other words," she said.
Melbourne welfare workers said the report showed that the benefits of economic growth were going predominantly to the wealthy and the middle class while the disadvantage were becoming increasingly marginalised.
Jesuit Social Services, director Peter Norden said the report confirmed what he saw every day on the streets of Melbourne.
Doug Dalton, chief executive officer of the child and family welfare agency Uniting Care Connections many of the problems high-lighted in the welfare report could be blamed on Australian unemployment rate.
The Human Family Media Alliance
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