Gold Coast Health dismantles child safety home visiting program axed by state government, petition against move gains traction
Devastated health care workers stage last ditch attempt to stop axing of Coast service that protects at-risk toddlers from harm. CAN YOU HELP?
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DESPERATE health care workers have started a petition in a last-ditch attempt to stop the axing of a home visiting program that protects vulnerable Gold Coast children from domestic abuse and violence.
In just a few hours the Save the Gold Coast Community Child Health Home Visiting Programme change-org petition had close to 200 signatures.
Ngaire Jones, a previous client of the service, signed the petition and said it was a “godsend for me when I had my first daughter”.
“It was through this service that I met my mums group and connected with a community. Especially when I had high post-natal anxiety and hardly left the house. Please don’t stop the funding,” she begged.
FULL DIGITAL ACCESS: JUST $1 A WEEK FOR FIRST 12 WEEKS
It comes as a source reveals health authorities have already “started work to reduce the program, although the clients have not yet been informed”.
“Last week one of the clients told her nurse how much it meant to her that someone actually cared,” said the source.
“She was so grateful saying ‘I’m so lucky you have not abandoned me like everyone else in my life’.
“This person will be beyond devastated to learn she is about to be abandoned by the system that’s meant to help and protect her.”
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According to the petition, home visiting program nurses helped “families most vulnerable who may be experiencing mental health, domestic abuse, substance misuse …”.
“Work is already in place to dismantle this vital service.
“Please sign this petition in support for the most vulnerable families on the Gold Coast.
“These families need our support and to advocate on their behalf, to ensure they have access to services which help protect the most at risk in society.”
Many who have signed the petition expressed their frustration at the axing of the service.
Trish Parrott wrote: “This is a vital service. We must give our smallest Australians a fair start in life particularly if their parents are facing challenges. It is so short sighted to cut this service. It will cost society so much more in the long run if this support is stopped”.
When signing, Abbie Christiansen wrote: “This funding it vital. It’s no secret the Gold Coast is at crisis level with domestic violence”.
Lindsay Foster said: “As a community with a vulnerable demographic, we need to continue to offer this important support program to ensure little ones have the best chance to grow and thrive”.
EARLIER
‘I FEEL SAD AND SCARED FOR FAMILIES LIKE MINE’: COAST MUM’S TERROR
June 18, 2021
A DOMESTIC violence victim fears for the lives of Gold Coast mothers and their children following the axing of a home visit program she credits with saving her life.
“If my nurse had not visited me in my home and had not been able to observe my relationship with my daughter’s father wasn’t right, then I would have still been there now,” said the single parent.
“Or even worse, maybe I would not be alive.
“I’m in shock and disbelief (about the funding cut). I worry for other mums on the Gold Coast and I worry for their children.”
FULL DIGITAL ACCESS: JUST $1 A WEEK FOR FIRST 12 WEEKS
The survivor, who now lives away from her daughter’s father, said that since the birth of her child a year ago she’d been supported by a community child health nurse through the Home Visiting Program.
“I was experiencing domestic violence with the child’s father which became much worse after my daughter was born,” the mother said.
“My child health nurse was able to recognise the signs and helped me see the relationship was not healthy and linked me in with other support services and made referrals on my behalf which then resulted in me being able to get a DVO (domestic violence order) against her father and protect me and my daughter.”
Suffering from anxiety and depression, the woman was unable to go out and actively sought support, relying on help from the visiting nurse. She’s been told that the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women has stopped funding the program and that Gold Coast Health would not take over and continue to operate the home visit program.
“This makes me feel sad and scared for families like me. My nurse has been working with me providing education so I can help my daughter develop and be healthy.
“She is also helping me to ensure my child isn’t affected by my health or by what she may have previously seen.
“I also feel angry that mental health and domestic abuse is taken so lightly, when recently the government was putting more money into these services. Surely child health is part of that.
“There have been people seriously injured and hurt through domestic abuse. I thank the lord each day that I made it out with mine and my daughter’s lives.”
STAFF ‘HORRIFIED’ AS COAST CHILD SAFETY PROGRAM AXED
June 17, 2021
THE state government is pulling all funding from a long-running child safety program that is helping to protect 537 vulnerable Gold Coast children and families from potentially violent situations.
$2.6m will be saved by absorbing the 11-year Home Visiting Program (HVP) into existing services because it is deemed a “financial risk”.
However, a leaked document to the Bulletin reveals the demand is already at breaking point and comes in a climate of unprecedented domestic violence and children as young as 10 carrying knives, regularly stealing cars and youth gang thuggery on public transport.
Previous Bulletin investigations have revealed taxpayers are coughing up on average $500,000 a year for residential care kids, only for them to join street gangs and be babysat in police station corridors.
A source says staff involved in community child health are “horrified at the impact of what is being proposed” and there’s a “huge amount of understandable stress and anxiety”.
“There will be huge numbers of the most complex and vulnerable families on the Gold Coast who will lose this vital service,” the insider said.
“There is acknowledgment in the document that services needing to attempt to absorb these vulnerable families are already at full capacity.
“It’s basically abandoning these very vulnerable families and expecting other already-overburdened services to pick up the slack.”
Set up in 2010, the Home Visiting Program was designed to “prevent child safety risk and ultimately, child protection involvement”.
Through home visits, child health nurses provide sustained support for the “Gold Coast’s most complex and vulnerable young families” from birth until two years of age.
Based within the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service (GCHHS) and Children’s Health Queensland, the program was funded by the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs at a cost of $2.5m a year. As of June 9, 537 children and their families were receiving services through the program.
In December last year, Gold Coast Health learned that the department would cease recurrent funding from June 30, 2021. On June 8, after six months of “ongoing correspondence”, all parties involved failed to secure longer term permanent funding. GCHHS stopped taking referrals to the HVP on June 14.
It is understood staff would be absorbed into Gold Coast Health as part of the “organisational change”.
When discussing the HVP program, the document refers to it as a “$2.6m financial risk” for GCHHS, including a “substantive permanent workforce” of 30 staff.
A Gold Coast Health spokesperson said while the “Home Visitation Program” would no longer be available, “our community child health team will still offer a range of support programs to ensure families receive appropriate levels of health care”.
“Our team of child health nurses will continue to provide parenting strategies and support for parents either at a community health centre or in the home, as appropriate, and will continue to work in partnership with other key community agencies to ensure families are linked in with any additional supportive services.
“The funding was allocated to Gold Coast Health and Children’s Health Queensland, with the program available to families living in the Gold Coast, Logan, Beenleigh and Browns Plains areas.
“It has always been understood the funding contract was to end on 30 June 2021.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs said various forms of the program had been delivered since it started in 2010. It confirmed the contract for the current service model, which started in 2018, would end on June 30 so it could redirect “that funding to other priority areas”.
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“More specifically, this will include the expansion of foster and kinship care services for children in care. These supports and services are a vital part of keeping children and young people safe when they can no longer live safely at home.
“Residents of the Gold Coast will continue to have access to the usual range of child and maternal health services available to families across the state.”
It’s understood the department does not fund home-visiting services anywhere in the state.
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