20 March 2007

Rising reports of child abuse

| johnboy
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The ABC has a story on huge rises in the numbers of reported child abuse in the ACT since the Government actually put processes in place to collect the numbers.

it seems roughly 10% of reported abuses are found to have substance. In the current financial year they’re well on track to record a wopping 10,000 reports. Indicating that one in 300 Canberrans is an abused child.

How many children are there in the ACT anyway?

UPDATED: Katy’s media release is now online with a weirdly triumphal headline: “CARE AND PROTECTION FIGURES CONTINUE TO SOAR”

Also we have a laundry list of procedural changes promoted as achievements.

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CHILD ABUSE, well I have been told and lead to believe that the DEPARTMENT OF CHILD PROTECTION is PUT in place to stop that happening to our loved ones. I am at the moment dealing with my local office to get my grand daughters away from their very abusive junkie father. My daughter could not deal with the abuse and stalking any longer so she fled town leaving my grandaughters in my care ( she did not have custody but signed a affidavit ) to say she wanted us to take care of her children . The DEPARTMENT warned her once before if she did not keep them away from the situation they could be taken away from her. Wel being the nice caring people we are we let the father have a visit, he told us he would have them back late evening that was 2 wks ago. We had been to the local office with concerns a week earlier and wanted a order put in place , but were told it not neccesary as they were safe with us .Now this PHYSCO JUNKIE known to police have these 2 little girls and the DEPARTMENT OF CHILD PROTECTION THINK IT IS NOT A PRIORITY CASE. COMMON WAKE UP . I HAVE TWO WORDS AND SEE IF THEY RING ANY BELLS *** *****GIRL***** BRIDGE

Yes – but now the homeless have a statement of rights!
Unfortunately they don’t have a right to a roof over their head….

I think they’re 10,000 instances – it sometimes takes multiple reports about the same child before any action is taken. There’s a process of weighing up priorities – which case appears to be more urgent etc and then sending out an appraisals team. Hence loads of kids who are reported as being at risk aren’t having their needs addressed quickly – they’re on a list somewhere.

Meanwhile a few of them die, some are abused, some are neglected and some of them suffer irreparable damage and emotional abuse.

But there aren’t enough people to appraise them all, nor to case-manage them once they’re taken from their parents, nor foster-carers to look after them, nor the funding to pay the foster-carers an adequate amount to support the kids considering the risks and sacrifice.

And again, what’s mouthy Katy G doing about it?

Right on, Nyssa76 – NOTHING.

I wonder if the estimated 10,000 reports are 10,000 children, or 10,000 instances of someone reporting an incident? Because if it’s the latter, you could have 3 people make a report about the same incident; or you could have one child with many separate reports about separate incidents.

It’s still a scary high number, but 10,000 reports doesn’t necessarily mean 10,000 abused kids.

Nothing.

Maybe if her department actually had an adequate number of Child Protection workers instead of the overworked, underpaid sorry lot that are left since the mass evacuations from the department, there’d actually be some Child Protection for children.

Don’t let Ms Gallaher’s stats and other waffle fool you. Her department is in CRISIS, can’t retain employees and the kids in care suffer with an endless stream of disgruntled case-workers.

So if the numbers are soaring, what’s she doing about recruiting enough case-workers to deal with it?

There are about 60,000 school children (from the last ACT in Focus, but not all are ‘children’). If you add about 4000 births each year for the 0-4 year olds, that would give about 76,000 children.

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