Opposition says children removed from unsafe parents must not languish in emergency housing for more than three months
CHILDREN removed from unsafe parents must not be left to languish in emergency housing for any longer than three months, the Opposition says.
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CHILDREN removed from unsafe parents must not be left to languish in emergency housing for any longer than three months, the Opposition says.
It is also calling on the State Government to halve the number of children in emergency housing, such as rented apartments, caravans or hotel rooms, and state-run group homes, within a year.
The calls follow revelations in The Advertiser on Thursday that a 12-year-old boy has spent the past five years living in rental accommodation.
A report by the Guardian for children in state care found that child protection workers had been unable to find him a more suitable home.
Opposition child protection spokeswoman Rachel Sanderson said leaving children in what should be temporary housing for long periods of time amounted to “a form of child abuse”.
Ms Sanderson is calling on the Government to limit how long any child can be kept in emergency care and set “concrete” targets for reducing the number of children living in that type of housing.
“Three months should be the maximum period a child is housed in emergency care and the (Child Development) Minister should commit to halving the total number of children in emergency and residential care within 12 months,” she said.
“The minister needs to initiate an ongoing audit of the number of children in these undesirable forms of care to benchmark her performance against the targets.”
Earlier this year, Child Development Minister Susan Close confirmed that the average time vulnerable children stayed in emergency accommodation was 157 days – or about five months.
New Child Protection Department chief executive Cathy Taylor told The Advertiser early last month that she wanted to slash the number of children living in emergency housing from almost 200 to fewer than 10 – but warned that it could take 18 months.
Ms Taylor, who was previously deputy director general of Queensland’s Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services Department, said there were “anywhere between zero and 10” children in that larger state in emergency housing on any given night.
Meeting the target would require many more people to volunteer as foster carers to provide other housing options, she said.
The State Government has committed $9 million to recruit an extra 130 foster carers, in a bid to place more children with families and fewer in tenuous situations.
Latest figures – taken on the night of November 31 – show there were 193 children in expensive and undesirable emergency accommodation, with a further 331 in state-run homes under paid carers’ supervision.