'Drug-addicted parents have no rights to kids'

THE case of a ice-addicted mother fighting to keep her ninth baby has sparked calls for parents to gain qualifications before they have children.

THE case of an ice-addicted mother fighting to keep her ninth baby - after eight were taken off her - has sparked calls  for parents to gain qualifications before they have children.

Alan Jones made the suggestion to stop addicted parents using children as an "instrument to get money from the taxpayer, and spend it on drugs".

The comments came as a NSW mother who is addicted ice and her partner who has a history of family violence try to maintaining custody of their baby despite eight other children having been taken away from them.

The pair, from Blacktown, in Sydney's western suburbs, could be allowed to keep their ninth baby as part of a radical new NSW government child protection scheme that includes a full time care worker in their home.

The pilot program is being trialed in a bid to reduce the number of children in the foster care system.

The child, now believed to be seven months old, is one of more than 2000 unborn babies across the state each year to be identified as "at risk of significant harm".

Alan Jones

"We are going to have to bite the bullet and introduce certain qualifications for as to when people have children," Jones said on his radio program.

"You can have them, but you can't use them as an instrument to get money from the taxpayer, and spend it on drugs."

Children of two of the nine couples involved so far in the new child protection scheme have been taken into care, while seven, including the Blacktown baby, have been allowed to remain with their parents.

The new child protection scheme comes after news of a teenager, dubbed "Girl X", died of drug overdose and was left open to predator abuse by state care system.

Last month, a NSW coronial inquest into the 15-year-old girl's death found she was raped by foster carers while living in an inner Sydney shelter.

The court heard "Girl X" had been dragged into the world of drugs and crime at just 14 years of age and was "failed" by the state care system.