Push to overhaul child protection laws after thousands of children removed from their families
Thousands of children have been removed from their families in Victoria with no hope of ever being returned, prompting calls for an urgent overhaul of the state’s child protection laws.
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Thousands of children have been removed from their families in Victoria with no hope of ever being returned, prompting legal experts to call for an immediate overhaul of the state’s child protection laws.
Victoria Legal Aid has warned laws that give parents only 24 months to get their lives in order or lose their children forever, is funnelling thousands of children into an already overburdened and crisis-riddled child protection system.
Known as the “permanency laws” the care orders were originally designed to remove children from high risk situations where there was little prospect of reunification
Instead they were to be placed in more stable longer-term foster care placements.
However, with foster carers in short supply and skyrocketing numbers of kids in care many children are being shipped around between crisis accommodation or placed in residential care units, often suffering serious emotional and physical abuse.
One family lawyer speaking anonymously told the Herald Sun “in many cases these children are better off with the family”.
Sources also revealed that in many cases parents have got their lives together after the two-year deadline, but have no legal recourse to get their children back home.
VLA Executive Director, Family Youth and Children’s Law Joanna Fletcher warned the permanency amendments, and the state’s child protection system as a whole, was in need of total reform or future state governments will be forced to make grovelling public apologies similar to what has occurred with forced adoptions in the 1970s and children placed in institutional care before the 1990s.
“Two-year timelines for family reunification puts parents in an impossible position where they can’t get the support they need in time to reunify with their children,” Ms Fletcher told the Herald Sun.
“More and more children have been placed on short term protection orders and often end up living in residential care, without certainty of family contact or independent oversight of their placements.”
She added that Indigenous families were especially impacted and that the permanent removals of many children in to state care “was an apology waiting to happen”.
In 2016, the government introduced changes to the Victorian child protection law, known as the ‘permanency amendments’, which introducing the two-year deadline on cases.
In some cases parents had lost custody of their children because they were languishing on waitlists for placements in underfunded drug and alcohol programs, which are typically required for reunification.
During Covid, the state government extended the 24-month deadline for six months to counteract lockdowns and people not being able to access services.
The Herald Sun was told some family lawyers and the Children’s Court were now actively working together where possible to circumvent issuing protection orders to avoid ”starting the clock”.
Victoria’s child protection system has already reached crisis levels with more than 8000 children bunking down in out-of-home care any given night
On top of the thousands of children already removed in the past 8 years, Victorian data shows tens of thousands of children are currently subject to orders with many facing the real prospect of removal in the future.
In May last year, Minister Lizzie Blandthorn appeared at the state’s Indigenous truth-telling commission and described the laws as a “blunt instrument” and ordered a review”.
But no changes have yet been announced.
In 2023, the state government apologised for 40,000 forced adoptions that occurred between 1958-84. These were children taken away from unwed and young mothers supported by state laws.
It was accompanied with a $4 million compensation scheme.
This year Premier Jacinta Allan formally apologised to Victorians who experienced historical abuse and neglect as children in institutional care and orphanages.
This impacted 90,000 Victorian children placed in care away from family from 1928 until 1990.
Opposition spokesperson Roma Britnell said “the system is broken and yes I have no doubt apologies will have to be made to children into the future”.
“Clearly Labor are failing in the child protection space.”
“Labor has changed child protection ministers five times in the last few years, they can’t even get their own house in order.
“Childhood is a short period of time, and a critically important period. There isn’t room for a broken system in the child’s life.”
A Victorian Government spokesperson said: “All decisions by child protection must seek to promote the best interests of the child which includes reunifying children with their families when it is safe to do so.”
The Victorian Government has invested a record $3.1 billion invested in the Child Protection system since 2019.
Originally published as Push to overhaul child protection laws after thousands of children removed from their families
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