No safety net for children at risk in the NT

The utter failure of the NT's child protection system is finally exposed

AT a remote health clinic in the dusty reaches of central Australia, a toddler is being airlifted to hospital. The little boy, John (not his real name), has been burned so badly he needs skin grafts. Despite the severity of his burns and his agonising pain, John's Aboriginal carers have not sought medical aid for the boy. Amid the alcohol-ridden violence of their remote community life, it takes a lot to trigger an emergency.

In the offices of Northern Territory ministers, there is a growing understanding that the crisis in child protection is finally coming home to roost.

The department is being exposed as bureaucratically incompetent and critically understaffed. And the social background to the crisis is pressing. The inter-generational catastrophe of chronic welfarism, unemployment and alcohol abuse is placing unprecedented pressure on the system as a generation that largely cannot read or write comes of age, and the teenage pregnancy rate climbs through the roof.

A wide-ranging report by Howard Bath, a psychologist and director of the Canberra-based Thomas Wright Institute, exposes a system in near-total collapse. Its full contents have been suppressed by the Territory government.

But Inquirer has obtained the full Bath report and for the first time can reveal the extent to which the Territory government has failed vulnerable children.

At the centre of the crisis is a particular failure to protect Aboriginal children, who are routinely placed in the care of relatives in unsafe circumstances, where they are often exposed to sexual abuse and violence.

Bath blames the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle -- a national guideline that stipulates indigenous children should be put in the care of relatives wherever possible to maintain links to their culture -- for the lack of rigour in assessment of relative carers.

"The present data suggests, as do some of the decisions in the case studies, that in some cases this principle appears to be given primacy over basic child protection considerations," Bath says.

"It was never the intent of the principle that children should be placed in unsafe situations."

Bath also found:

• Case workers fail to regularly monitor the welfare of children in care. Policy guidelines state FACS must check on a child in the care of the minister every three weeks. An audit of 45 out-of-home care cases, only five children had been visited on a three-weekly basis.
• The minister routinely neglected to regularly review cases. Under the Community Welfare Act, the minister must review the circumstances of children under guardianship orders at least once every three months. In only 29 of the 45 cases did this happen.
• The assessment and training of carers was poor. Background checks on kinship carers (Aboriginal relatives) were rarely done.
• Risk assessments were often not carried out and there were no clear guidelines for assessing risk in indigenous families.
• There was a desperate shortage of therapy services and accommodation for at-risk children.
• Cases were shunted between FACS offices in Alice Springs, Palmerston and the Barkly region, and case workers were reluctant to take ownership of files.
• There was a critical lack of support services for high-risk adolescents who hang out in groups and sniffed petrol, sold sex for drugs, and were often the victims of repeated sexual abuse.

The Territory government released the executive summary and recommendations of Bath's report in late 2007. But the full picture of the crisis engulfing its child protection system has been kept hidden from the public. Even as the government tried to implement Bath's recommendations without public scrutiny, experienced bureaucrats were warning a succession of ministers who took up -- and then were dumped from -- the troubled portfolio that the full extent of the child protection crisis was only just beginning to be seen.

Recent coronial hearings into the deaths of 12-year-old Deborah Melville and a seven-week-old baby hinted at the extent of the government's failings.

The government has overhauled its legislation and attempted to implement systemic changes in child protection since the Bath audit.

It has reviewed its carer assessments protocols to standardise the checks conducted on relative and non-relative foster carers.

It has introduced a flagging system to alert case workers when child visits are not occurring. And it appointed Bath as its Children's Commissioner, an independent authority able to investigate complaints and monitor compliance with new child protection laws.

But late last year, Bath warned child protection had "slipped off the radar" in the Territory.

He warned many recommendations of his audit report had not been implemented. As new cases continue to emerge and the political pressure grows, the Henderson government has called a fresh inquiry into child protection, to be chaired by Bath, Victorian professor Muriel Bamblett and pediatrician Rob Roseby.

Health chief David Ashbridge -- who had taken the rap for the government for the child protection failures identified in the coronial hearings -- resigned his post this week.

The Territory's most senior child protection bureaucrat, Jenny Scott, also recently resigned.

Current Child Protection Minister Kon Vatskalis now leads the government's latest attempt to face the crisis. He says the inquiry "will provide a way forward for the child protection system".

"I am absolutely committed to continue reforming the child protection system to meet the increased challenges faced by the department that is under significant pressure -- like all other states," Vatskalis says.

But the Territory is not like all other states. The Little Children are Sacred report and others like it have given us some idea of the scale of the terrible abuse and neglect of children wrought by the "rivers of grog" and the family and community violence it spawns. As senior bureaucrat Leonie Warburton told the government in an internal report, the number of children at high risk is likely to explode in coming years.

The Country Liberals' member for the Alice Springs seat of Araluen, Jodeen Carney, says the scale of the crisis is on clear display in the streets of Alice Springs, where children as young as five roam the streets in packs at midnight.

"In Aboriginal communities and in Alice Springs, anyone can walk down the street and see children who are clearly neglected," she says.

"And there seems to be an acceptance of that neglect. Anywhere else in Australia, those children would be reported to welfare and they would be taken away from their families because they are not being fed properly, they are allowed to roam the streets at night and they are not going to school. If that's not child abuse, I don't know what is."

Despite the unprecedented attention turned on the Territory with the federal intervention in remote Aboriginal communities, Carney continues to attempt to force change on child protection through the only means at her disposal -- ferreting information from her legal contacts, posing forensic questions in Senate estimates hearings, and issuing press releases of increasingly urgent tone. The former lawyer is boiling with anger.

"I am so angry with this government when it comes to child protection. It is only in my view interested in child protection when it is an issue in the media or in parliament, or both.

"It feigns interest until something else comes along. And that is a despicable way to deal with this problem, particularly when the eyes of the nation have been on us since the intervention."

Hearings begin in the Bath child protection inquiry in Nhulunbuy on Thursday.

* * *

Consequences of neglect can prove fatal

Harrowing details illustrate the inadequacies of the child protection system

DEBORAH MELVILLE
FOSTER child Deborah died in the dirt in a suburban Darwin backyard, propped against a trailer.

She was suffering from a leg infection that had spread into the bone, and was visited by FACS case workers the day before she died.

A FACS worker assured the child, "I'm not here to take you away."

A manslaughter trial and coronial hearing was told that Deborah probably died in excruciating pain, and had been unable to control her bowel or bladder in the days before her death. Because of this, her carers Denise Reynolds and Toni Melville put her outside to sit in the dirt.

One witness told the manslaughter hearing that Reynolds that said "if Deborah wanted to wet and soil herself, she can go outside and do it like an animal".

But the jury rejected the evidence and the two carers were acquitted of manslaughter in 2008.

Coroner Greg Cavanagh handed down his finding into Deborah's death late last month, blaming FACS.

FACS also failed to compile reports on Deborah's circumstances once every three months, failing to do so for 2 1/2 years in one instance.

Though she was living in filthy circumstances, FACS reported she was happy and healthy.

Deborah's biological mother is pursuing civil proceedings against the department.

* * *

PETER
SEVEN-WEEK-OLD Peter starved to death in the back of a hot car on the Stuart Highway in 2005. Peter was born to a drug-using mother whose six other children had all been known to FACS.

In 2002, one of the children, a daughter, was taken to Alice Springs hospital at three months old looking "haunted and as though she was a bony skeleton".

The child weighed 500g less than her birth weight. During his brief life, FACS officers were repeatedly contacted with reports that Peter appeared extremely skinny. There were various attempts to remove Peter from his mother's care, but she was unco-operative and FACS workers did not ask the police to forcibly remove the baby from the mother's care, as they could have.

Peter's mother fled with two of her other children to South Australia, arriving in Port Wakefield with no money, fuel or food.

Peter was discovered dead in the back of the car at a service station. At the time of his death, he weighed 2390g -- more than 1kg less than his birth weight. Coroner Cavanagh handed down his findings into Peter's death and blamed staff inefficiency, inexperience, lack of training and poor liaison between FACS and Territory police for Peter's death.

* * *

MICHAEL
MICHAEL -- whose violent behaviour is one of two cases that triggered Howard Bath's report -- killed his uncle, who was his approved carer, in July 2007.

By the age of six, it was clear to teachers and health workers that Michael had global developmental delay and severe behavioural problems.

Schools could not handle the child, who was impulsive and aggressive, had periods of head-banging, drinking his own urine, terrorising younger children and the elderly, as well as being cruel to animals.

Disturbing incidents, including Michael biting the head off a brown snake and dismembering a puppy with an axe, failed to raise alarm within the bureaucracy.

He was also seen walking around a sleeping member of his Aboriginal community wielding an axe. Michael was declared a child in need of care and assessed by a psychiatrist, who found his intellectual impairments were compounded by exposure to ridicule and violence.

Disability services became involved when Michael was 10. In January 2007, Michael stabbed a female relative twice. The relative told a doctor that "Michael is dangerous and needs to be locked up". Still, there was no supervision of Michael or risk plan carried out by the department. In May that year, Michael assaulted a young girl with a star picket. Still there was no escalation through the community services hierarchy.

Two months later, Michael stabbed his uncle to death.

* * *

SANDRA
DESPITE being assessed as a case of extreme risk, the Aboriginal teenager, who grew up in an Alice Springs town camp, continued her near-fatal spiral during her eight-year history with FACS.

Having grown up in a violent family, she sniffed glue and petrol from the age of eight, and at 16 years old weighed just 32kg.

Sandra was admitted to hospital in 2007 "in a state of near total physical collapse".

FACS was repeatedly unsuccessful in securing her safe, stable care, partly because Sandra continually would run back to her town camp to sniff.

Case workers struggled in vain to protect Sandra in the alcohol and drug-ridden town camp.

"Spoke to [supervisor] about concerns and expressed our ethical dilemma in relation to leaving a young woman in such a volatile state and such an abusive situation," one case worker reported. Sandra's government-appointed lawyer begged FACS that "we must do something to break the cycle".

But a FACS supervisor said the department's hands were tied: "Unfortunately there are no services that provide juvenile drug rehabilitation and our only option is extended family. This does present a situation where Sandra will remain highly at risk . . . at this time we can only continue to monitor her situation and deal with crises as they present."

Sandra shifted to Darwin with an aunt and continued to abuse substances, but Top End FACS offices refused to accept the transfer of her file. By September FACS Alice Springs was so concerned about Sandra that it sent a case worker to Darwin.

FACS Casuarine organised her discharge from hospital into the care of an uncle, but failed to carry out an assessment into his background. Sandra continued abusing drugs and living an itinerant lifestyle before finally being signed up to receive alcohol rehabilitation.

* * *

JOY
JUST weeks after FACS closed its case files on 16-year-old Joy, an Aboriginal girl living in a remote town, the teenager was revealed to be one of eight girls at the mining town who had been sexually abused by a government official.

Joy's case was full of red flags that should have made her a high priority for those tasked with child protection: police reported she was selling sex for drugs, was staying at the house of a known drug dealer, was sniffing petrol and glue, and abusing alcohol and cannabis. But repeated attempts by police to get FACS to intervene to protect Joy came to nothing.

The teenager, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, had a long history of neglect in her Aboriginal family.

As early as age two, she was deposited at the local health clinic because nobody was caring for her. By the age of four, she had to have her stomach pumped because of ingested pills.

Joy was assessed by health workers as being "at risk of severe harm". Police begged FACS to intervene in her case in four separate notifications. Howard Bath said in his report that "the sense of urgency around finding a safe place for Joy to live was not shared by FACS, who rated her as a child of concern. From the available records there was no apparent further action taken."

Apart from Deborah Melville, the children's names have been changed.
Natasha Robinson