At-risk kids forced to sleep in Families SA offices because there’s nowhere else to go

VULNERABLE children are sleeping on mattresses in Families SA offices after being removed from their parents as the child protection agency struggles to find foster carers for them.

• Families SA staff close doors, refuse to work overtime over staff shortages

VULNERABLE children are sleeping on mattresses in Families SA offices after being removed from their parents as the child protection agency struggles to find foster carers for them.

Figures also show, for the first time, the cost of emergency hotel accommodation for at-risk children blew out to more than $660,000 for the month of June last year — triple the amount paid a year earlier.

The revelations come as social workers plan to escalate industrial action amid growing concerns over staff shortages and under-resourcing.

The Public Service Association, which represents Families SA workers, says it is common for children to spend the night in an office, cared for by a social worker, because a suitable foster home, state-run unit or hotel room cannot be found.

The problem has significantly worsened in the past three to six months, union representatives say.
Some Families SA offices have cots for young children to sleep in while others have had to be supervised at police stations.

Families SA boss Etienne Scheepers has told The Advertiser that staff sometimes have to supervise young children in offices late at night or in the early hours of the morning as they try to find a foster family or hotel room for them.

Mr Scheepers reportedly told a foster carer forum in April that, of about 30 potential carers available on the weekend of March 19 and 20, only one was able to take a child who had been removed from their family and the remainder of the children were “on mattresses in offices”.

This was because the children had complex behavioural or health needs which most of the carers did not feel able to manage.

“Some removals (of children) are at 11pm. In one case we found a kinship carer who was willing to take a child at 1.30am,” Mr Scheepers later told The Advertiser.

“To find a motel to take them to takes some time. It’s not our practice for them to sleep overnight (in offices). We work very hard to keep this to an absolute minimum.

“They’re in the office until we can move them into the accommodation when it’s available.”

Mr Scheepers said certain times, such as public holidays or Royal Adelaide Show week, it was “a very big struggle” to find suitable accommodation.

There are growing numbers of South Australian children needing to be removed from unsafe parents and fewer people volunteering to be foster carers, forcing Families SA to rely more heavily on paid accommodation.

There are more than 3000 children in state care, up from about 2600 in mid-2014.
A count of children in emergency housing at the end of March found 142 children in hotel rooms or rented apartments, up from 68 in mid-2014.
Figures released to the Opposition under Freedom of Information laws show Families SA spent $4.7 million on emergency accommodation last financial year, $2 million more than in 2013-14.
Mr Scheepers conceded the agency was “paying a lot of money for what is the least desirable outcome”.

Opposition child protection spokeswoman Rachel Sanderson said Families SA should make better use of emergency foster carers and contracted workers at high demand times such as weekends.

“With violence, alcohol and drug abuse more prevalent on the weekend there is an increase in the number of children at risk of neglect and abuse,” Ms Sanderson said.

Mr Scheepers said the Government was working to sign up more carers with the skills to take in children with complex needs.

The State Government has committed $3 million to recruiting and training 130 extra foster carers.

Parliament earlier this month passed laws to better protect at-risk children, in the wake of the coronial inquest into the death of four-year-old Chloe Valentine while in the care of her neglectful mother and her mother’s then-partner in 2012.

She had been the subject of more than 20 notifications to Families SA.

Chloe’s grandmother Belinda Valentine said it was “unbelievable” that children were having to wait in Families SA offices because there was nowhere else for them to go.

“We have vulnerable children sleeping in offices. Where is the urgency?” she said.

“That is unbelievable. What are they doing with their resources?

“What is going on within this department and within society that we have to do this sort of thing?”