‘Stolen Generation’ fears blind agencies to needs of abused

OUR child protection agencies are committing children to lives of abuse and dysfunction because adults aren’t brave enough to face the truth, writes Peta Credlin.

Four-year-old Chloe Valentine was the subject of more than 20 notifications to Families SA from people concerned for her welfare before she died in 2012. (Pic: Court released image)

IN MOST newspapers, most days there’s a sickening story of an infant or child who’s suffered at the hands of the very people who should be their protectors.

If they survive the abuse, there’s often a line at the end that says they’re in the care of community services, and we move onto the next page.

Our concern shouldn’t end there because too many of these children end up shuttled between foster homes if they’re lucky, or in an emotional tug of war with parents who never get their act together, if they’re not. Or worse.

This week the NSW Liberal government took further steps to make adoption easier by boosting support payments to foster parents who adopt the child in their care.

It builds on earlier decisions made to break through the cultural opposition to adoption that is still at the heart of many government departments. The basis for this hostility is an overcorrection to the “stolen generations” that ranks the rights of an unfit parent, or parents, ahead of the right of a child to a safe and loving home. But NSW is an isolated case of common sense on this issue.

In Australia right now anti-adoption ideology is killing our kids — quite literally — because child protection agencies are biased in favour of leaving at-risk kids with abusive parents. Take Chloe Valentine, a four-year-old who died after being forced to ride a motorbike that she repeatedly crashed while her mother and partner filmed the carnage. Her drug-addicted parents failed to get her medical attention.

In 2010, there were 24 homicides of children under 15. Six infants under one were murdered that year.

Between 2010 and 2012, says the Australian Institute of Criminology, there were 61 murders of children, of which 34 were directly attributed to a parent or step-parent.

These figures are almost certainly just the tip of an iceberg of family violence against children. The Institute of Family Studies cites research that a third of injured children admitted to hospital are “known to child protection authorities”.

Yet child protection authorities right around the country regard the removal of children from their homes, especially from the care of their biological mothers, as an absolute last ­resort and regard adoption as a kind of crime against a mother’s right to have her child and a child’s right to know its identity and culture.

How do we know there’s an epidemic of child neglect taking place?

Because despite officialdom’s extreme reluctance to remove children from a dysfunctional parent and abusive home, there are now 43,000 children in out-of-home care. The number of children in care has more than doubled since 1990.

The number of children in Australia living in care has doubled since 1990. This alone should make authorities push for change. (Pic: iStock)

How do we know that authorities’ adoption-phobia is ideological?

Because despite the rising numbers of children who need a stable and loving home, the number of adoptions is at a record low. Just 278 children were adopted in Australia last year. That’s a near fourfold fall in the quarter century since 1992 when there were 1052 adoptions.

In the US, more than 50,000 are adopted annually. If children were adopted here at the same rate, we would have about 5000 adoptions a year. This shows the scale of our aversion to giving children stable rather than dysfunctional homes.

We all know that, years ago, unmarried mothers were often expected or forced to surrender children for adoption. I worked on the issue of Julia Gillard’s apology to these mothers and their experience was harrowing and wrong.

I know personally that many of these women have endured a lifetime of grief as a result. Today, there’s no pressure whatsoever on single mothers to give up their children and we’re right to give mothers, especially vulnerable ones, every possible support.

But what about parents whose substance abuse or choice of partner makes a decent life impossible for their children? Why should the people charged with protecting children be so adamant that only a birth parent’s care will do — and if impossible, that any separation must only be temporary even if it means the child moves from one foster home to ­another and lives a life that’s permanently temporary?

If we can accept a parent loving a child where there’s no biological connection (for example, via IVF and a donated egg), or not having an attachment even though they’ve given birth (such as a surrogate), why do we still have this phobia with adoption?

Children’s safety must come first, even if this means taking them from their biological parents and finding them loving homes. (Pic: Getty Images)

As research scholar Dr Jeremy Sammut has noted: “Child protection authorities in Australia repeatedly fail to properly protect children because the overemphasis on ‘family preservation’ at almost all costs exposes them to prolonged abuse and neglect by dysfunctional parents. When finally removed as a last resort, many children are further damaged by highly unstable foster care and repeat breakdowns of family reunifications.”

Because of our adoption-phobia, Sammut says “adoption is almost non-existent in Australia because child protection authorities simply will not take action to legally free children to be adopted”.

Too many people who should know better have let yesterday’s problems and today’s ideological fixations stand in the way of a better, more stable life for abused children. Almost a third of the 43,000 children in care are indigenous. Warren Mundine ­recently wrote that indigenous children are eight times more likely to suffer abuse or neglect. Almost 90 per cent of indigenous children in out-of-home care have experienced family violence and been exposed to substance-abusing parents.

The Abbott government put adoption on the COAG agenda and asked the states to progress adoption reform three years ago next month.

Why should we consign any child to living a life of abuse and dysfunction, or worse, because adults aren’t brave enough to tackle the problems of a bureaucratic resistance and anti-adoption ideology? In the end, it must always be what’s best for the child and not what’s too hard to fix.