Mike O’Connor: We are failing the children who need us the most

While the state government moves to protect our children from Covid with vaccination rollouts and the postponement of classes, there is one aspect of childcare that is being overlooked, writes Mike O’Connor.

While the state government moves to protect our children from Covid with vaccination rollouts and the postponement of classes, there is one aspect of childcare that is being overlooked.

In the 12 months to June 30 last year, 55 children known to the state’s Department of Child Safety died. Ten of these children died as the result of assault or neglect, nine deaths were unexplained, seven are being investigated, six were attributed to suicide, two to drowning, two were accidental and 10 were attributed to natural causes.

Of the 378 children who died in 2019–20, 53 were known to Child Safety in the 12 months prior to their death. In that year, the mortality rate for children known to Child Safety was almost twice the Queensland child mortality rate, being 61.4 deaths per 100,000 compared with 34.0 deaths per 100,000 for those not known to the department when averaged over five years.

Further, the mortality rate for children known to Child Safety was four or more times the rate for all children in Queensland for fatal assault and neglect, drowning, suicide and other non-intentional injury.

Children known to Child Safety were also over-represented in Sudden Unexpected Deaths in Infancy with 29 per cent of these deaths over the previous five years being infants known to Child Safety.

The statistics are sobering. If more than a child a week was succumbing to Covid-19, there would be a public outpouring of grief and sympathy. Occasionally, a particularly tragic case draws attention and we all agree that it is a terrible thing and wonder how it can be that children can suffer such fates but then the issue fades, lost in the grey noise of a 24-hour news cycle and a public attention span increasingly measured in seconds.

Mason Jet Lee was let down by the entire system.

It took the death of 21-month-old Mason Jet Lee to stir the government into action. Mason died after being punched so hard by his stepfather that his small intestine ruptured.

An inquest ruled that the Department of Child Safety and 21 of its employees had comprehensively failed in their duty of care to the child. While known to the department as being at risk, no one bothered to check on Mason in the three months prior to his death.

If you thought that these were isolated incidents, then consider that in the past financial year, the department received 134,012 reports of harm, or risk of harm, to a child. That’s an increase of 35 per cent in five years.

Tellingly, one or both parents of almost half of the children taken into care have a record of methamphetamine use.

A Child Death Review Board was set up by the Palaszczuk government in 2020 to find out how the system was failing to prevent the deaths of children who were known to the protection system.

The government has had its report since October and has said it will release it early this year. I don’t imagine that it will make for pleasant reading for that the system has failed in the past is beyond all doubt.

In defending the department, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has said that “it would be wonderful if everyone loved and cared for their child the way they should but, sadly, some awful things happen in society”.

She’s right. You can’t legislate against selfishness, self-indulgence, stupidity, irresponsibility and any sense of morality. Some people do terrible things, acting in a way that is beyond comprehension to parents and others who love and cherish the children in their care. Put simply, they should never have children.

What is equally clear is that the system is not coping.

The Queensland Family and Child Commission has complained that it is suffering from a loss of experienced frontline staff, especially in remote and regional areas. Given the confronting nature of the job, a high burnout rate is hardly surprising.

As a result, the commission said, these frontline roles were being filled with inexperienced graduates.

The pressures are going to continue to build and more and more children will be put at risk and when the system fails for whatever reason, children suffer.

When the Child Death Review Board’s report is released – and it must be – its recommendations will present an opportunity to reset the state’s childcare system.

It has to be grasped. Too many children have died.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” – Matthew 18:6.