App gives foster kids chance to report abuse

Foster care and group home children will be able to report abuse directly to caseworkers and emergency contacts via a phone app.

A total of 300 children aged 10-17 will trial the app for six months across Western Australia. Image: iStock

Children and teens in foster care and group homes will be able to report abuse or ask for immediate help on a phone app that for the first time connects them directly to their case worker and emergency contacts.

Western Australia is the first state or territory in Australia to trial the newly developed MyView app as part of the state’s response­ to the 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Res­ponses to Child Sexual Abuse.

In the farming and mining region­ of Murchison, north of Perth, the McGowan Labor govern­ment is giving mobile phones to foster kids and others aged 10-17 in out-of-home care so they can use the app.

In the city of Rockingham on the fringe of Perth’s southern suburbs­, children and teens who already have phones have started taking part in the trial.

A total of 300 children aged 10-17 will use the app for six months. This will include children aged 10-17 in the semi-rural regio­n of Peel, south of Perth.

Judith Garsed, the McGowan government’s Advocate for Children, said the app is “what young people told us they wanted. We may see more complaints. That’s good,” she said.

“We are happy with that becaus­e that is the way we know where we are doing things well (and) where we need to change things.”

WA Child Protection Minister Simone McGurk announced the trial on Sunday, pointing to the royal commission’s finding that a child-focused complaints process was an important strategy for helping children in institutions.

Ms Garsed spoke to young adults who had been in care after she commissioned the app.

The McGowan government has implemented all but seven of the recommendations of the royal commission that related to WA. Among the changes already made is an amendment to state law that requires ministers of religio­n to report child sexual abuse, with mandatory reporting extended to information gained during confession.

The Australian has been told the app for children in out-of-home care will be rolled out to all wards of the state in WA if the resul­ts are good.

The number of children in care has been increasing faster than the population in WA, in line with a more risk-averse approach.

In June 2010 there were 3334 children in the care of the state but by June this year that number was 5379. Indigenous children comprise only about 5.5 per cent of the overall child population in WA, but more than half of all remove­d children are indigenous.