Child Protection Department reveals $2.3 million cost to provide ‘emergency’ accommodation for vulnerable child over almost five years.
THE State Government has spent more than $2.3 million housing one child in emergency accommodation since mid 2012, The Advertiser can reveal.
THE State Government has spent more than $2.3 million housing a single child in state care since mid-2012, The Advertiser can reveal.
Child protection authorities have also confirmed that the same boy has been living in a state-run home for a record 1772 days, or almost five years.
The extraordinary figures are revealed by the Child Protection Department in response to questions from a parliamentary committee.
The cost has been described as “obscene” by the Opposition. However, Child Protection Department chief executive Cathy Taylor said the case was “extremely complex” and there were “very limited options in terms of providing the most suitable care” for the boy.
“The child is in a house — without other children — because he has extreme behavioural issues and requires intensive care,” she said.
It is understood he is looked after by a team of regular agency carers. The Guardian for children in state care has warned that attempts by the department to “get the numbers down” in emergency accommodation — such motel rooms, rented apartments or caravans — are pushing young people into equally unsuitable places elsewhere.
The department has been under sustained pressure over the high number of children being housed in emergency care because more stable homes cannot be found.
Latest figures show there were 188 children sleeping in this kind of temporary housing at the end of last month, after being removed from abusive or neglectful parents. That figure peaked at 212 children at the end of July last year.
Guardian for Children and Young People, Amanda Shaw, said the pressure to reduce the number of children living in emergency accommodation was spurring authorities to make decisions about housing which were “hastily planned and executed, poorly matched and ignored the views of children”. “A number of matters coming before (my office) ... recently have raised my concern that an emphasis on ‘getting the numbers down’ is once again coming at the expense of good placement matching,” Ms Shaw writes in her latest newsletter.
A review of children in care by Ms Shaw’s office found that 7 per cent were in placements considered “inappropriate”, because of factors such as their age, gender or the skills of foster parents. Opposition child protection spokeswoman Rachel Sanderson described the $2.3 million cost as “obscene” and said it was “a form of child abuse” to keep a child in emergency housing for almost five years. “Emergency care is the most expensive form of care and produces the worst outcomes for the children subjected to it,” she said.
The State Government has allocated $9 million to recruit an extra 130 foster carers over three years. Ms Taylor insisted that placement decisions were “considered and not rushed, but do occur in a timely way to meet the needs of children”.