‘Too little spent to protect children’
South Australia’s child protection system has come under fire again, with claims it is the most poorly funded in the country.
The claims, contained in a new report by the State Guardian for Children and Young People, come as the State Government battles with the fallout of the House of Horrors inquiry.
The Guardian’s report says South Australia spends less on child protection than any other state on a per-child basis and is pushing too many children into foster homes.
“It’s unsustainable, what we’re doing,” State Guardian Pam Simmonds told InDaily this week.
“Financially it’s unsustainable, but it’s also unsustainable in relation to being able to respond appropriately to children’s needs by continuing to operate as if the best solution is to bring children out of their families and into state care.”
Using National Productivity Commission figures, the report also calculates that the state spend per child for intensive family support services – the equivalent of preventative medicine in the child support system – is only 36 per cent of the average amount spent by other states.
SA spent $142 per child on child protection services in 2011-12, compared with the $203 national average, and $26 per child on intensive family support services, compared with the national average of $73.
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However, national average figures are skewed by the enormous expenditure by the Northern Territory, which spends $661 per child on child protection services. The next highest-spending state was Queensland ($283 per child), while Victoria was the second-lowest ($149.90).
Simmonds said insufficient spending on family support programs led to too many children being moved into foster homes, which is why South Australia spent more than the national average on out-of-home-care last year.
However, the State Government says South Australia has fewer children in out-of-home care than the national average, which it argues is an indicator of the health of the system.
“For a variety of reasons, sometimes out-of-home care is the only option,” Minister for Education and Child Development Jennifer Rankine said in a statement released to InDaily.
“In the 2013-14 budget, we announced an additional $27.2 million over four years to support some of our most vulnerable children.
“We are currently training an additional 360 full-time Families SA staff to help, care, protect and look after vulnerable children who require out-of-home care – as well as building new houses to accommodate young people for whom foster care is not an option.”
Family support typically involves a caseworker spending several hours a week at a family’s house. They can help children get ready for and go to school in the morning, or cook for them in the evening, maintaining a safe and healthy home for the child even if the parent is not able to.
The number of children in state care in SA has increased by more than 30 per cent since 2008, according to Simmonds. In June last year, there were 2544 children in state care – less than the national average.
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“When social workers are faced with a crisis in a family, and they’re not able to provide the level of support that the family might need, they’re left with very little choice but to remove a child from the family,” Simmonds said.
Simmonds said child protection funding should be substantially increased from the current $9 million a year the South Australian Government spends.
She said SA’s underspend was the legacy of low funding from the 1990s. In the last decade, investment in family support services and the foster-care system has more than tripled, but despite that, it is still lower than in the rest of the nation.
The state’s child protection system has come under scrutiny after the release of a report in May into the neglect of several children at a house in Adelaide’s north – a case the media quickly termed the House of Horrors.
That report revealed a range of failings across the system. It specifically recommended that Families SA “review the priority and resources assigned to notifications of neglect, in light of the research about the seriousness of the impact of neglect on children”.
Welfare organisations at the child protection coalface told InDaily this week they did not have enough resources to meet demand.
Anglican Community Care CEO Rob Foggo said most of his offices could afford to employ only part-time family support workers.
“The limited pool of resources means that the money is spent at the crisis end, and not in early intervention,” Foggo said.
“Yet it’s the crisis end of the care system which is the most expensive to sustain, leaving little funding left for early intervention programs.”
Child and Family Welfare Association head Angela Andary said that with some support, many parents could keep their families together.
“We all know of the concept of the ‘good enough’ parent, and many parents who fall within this category are able to parent with appropriate resources and support.”
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